Social Cognition

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Social Cognition

• AP Psychology

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Social Psychology

• The scientific study of how peoples thoughts and
  feelings influence their behavior toward others,
  and how the behavior of others influences
  peoples own thoughts
• Social Cognition mental processes associated
  with the ways people perceive and react to other
  individuals and groups

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Social Influences on the Self

• Self-concept the beliefs we hold about who we
  are and what characteristics we have
• Self-esteem the evaluations we make about how
  worthy we are as human beings

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Social Comparison
Leon Festinger people make two types of
comparisons
Temporal Comparison Considering your present
condition in relation to how you were in the past
Social Comparison Evaluating yourself in
comparison to others - using others as a basis
for evaluating your attributes
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Social Comparison

• Reference Groups categories of people to which
  you see yourself as belonging and to which you
  compare yourself
• Downward social comparison strategy of choosing
  someone as the target of comparison to oneself
  who is not as good on some dimension of
  importance
• Upward social comparison comparing yourself to
  people who do much better
• Relative deprivation the belief that no matter
  how much you are getting, it is less than you
  deserve

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Social Identity

• Our beliefs about the groups to which we belong,
  and thus is a part of our self-concept
• A group identity helps people to feel part of a
  larger whole (may foster an us versus them
  mentality) http//www.youtube.com/watch?vgZ_qXmxd
  gGM

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Self-Schemas

• Mental representations of peoples beliefs and
  views about themselves
• Unified self-schemas regard their attributes as
  stable across every situation and role
• Differentiated self-schemas regard their
  attributes as changing in different roles or
  situations

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Social Perception

• The processes through which people interpret
  information about others, form impressions of
  them, and draw conclusions about the reasons for
  their behavior
• Schemas a coherent, organized set of beliefs
  and expectations we use schemas we already have
  to perceive and interpret new information

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Impressions

• First Impressions quickly formed, difficult to
  change, long-lasting influence
• People are confident about their judgment
• Easier to remember
• Behavior is often consistent with impression
• Forming Impressions schemas create a tendency
  to infer a great deal about a person on the basis
  of limited information
• Lasting Impressions difficult to change,
  long-lasting influence

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Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

• Without our awareness, schemas cause us to subtly
  lead people to behave in line with our
  expectations
• 4 steps
• Adopting an attitude concerning a person
• Behave as though your attitude is correct
• Others react to your attitude
• Your prophecy comes true, not because you were
  right, but because your behavior/attitude caused
  the prophecy to come true

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Attribution

• The process people go through to explain causes
  of behavior
• People tend to attribute behavior in a particular
  situation either to primarily internal
  (characteristics of a person) or primarily
  external (situational) cases

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Sources of Attributions

• Harold Kelleys 3 Elements
• Consensus the degree to which other peoples
  behavior is similar to that of the actor. Ex if
  it is similar, it has high consensus. If it is
  dissimilar, it has low consensus
• Consistency the degree to which the behavior
  occurs repeatedly in a situation. Ex if it
  always occurs, it has high consistency. If it
  occurs intermittently, it has low consistency
• Distinctiveness the extent to which similar
  stimuli draw the same behaviors from the actor.
  Ex if it is highly predictable, then it has low
  distinctiveness. If it is not predictable, it has
  high distinctiveness.
• An internal attribution is most likely when there
  is low consensus, high consistency, and low
  distinctiveness. External attributions are made
  in response to other information patterns.

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Attributions
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Biases in Attribution

• Fundamental Attribution Error a tendency to
  over-attribute others behaviors to internal
  factors, such as personality traits
• Actor-observer bias tendency to attribute
  others behavior to internal causes but attribute
  your own behavior to external causes
• Self-serving bias tendency to take credit for
  success (internal) but to blame failure on
  external causes

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Attitudes

• The tendency to think, feel, or act positively or
  negatively towards objects in our environment
• 3 Components
• Cognitive set of beliefs about attributes of
  the attitude object
• Affective feeling about the object (emotional)
  a like or dislike
• Behavioral involves a way of acting toward the
  object

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3 Components of Attitude
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Forming Attitudes

• Modeling children learn from their parents what
  one should believe and feel about certain objects
• Classical Conditioning people are more likely
  to form a positive attitude toward an object when
  it is paired with stimuli that elicit good
  feelings
• Mere-exposure effect attitudes toward an object
  tend to become more positive as people are
  exposed to that object more often

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Changing Attitudes

• According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model,
  there are two routes to attitude change
• Peripheral route attitude changes respond to
  peripheral persuasion cues, rather than to
  central content (appearance, confidence, etc)
• Central route attitude changes respond to the
  message and validity of its claims. People
  rationally analyze the content of the persuasive
  message

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Changing Attitudes
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Changing Attitudes

• Cognitive Dissonance people want their thoughts
  and beliefs to be consistent with one another.
  When their cognitions are inconsistent, people
  become anxious and are motivated to make them
  consistent
• Self-perception theory people are not sure
  about their attitude so they look back to their
  behavior and then infer what their attitudes must
  have been

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Cognitive Dissonance
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Prejudice and Stereotypes

• Prejudice positive or negative attitude toward
  an individual based on his or her membership in
  some group
• Stereotypes Perceptions, beliefs, and
  expectations a person has about members of some
  group schemas about the entire groups of people

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Theories of Prejudice

• Roots of Prejudice
• Social inequalities the haves vs. the have
  nots
• Blame-the-victim dynamic if the circumstances
  of poverty breed a high crime rate, someone can
  use the high crime rate to justify discrimination
  against those living in poverty
• Us vs. Them Ingroup vs. Outgroup (ingroup bias)
• Scapegoat Theory finding someone to blame when
  things go wrong can provide a target for ones
  anger (9/11)
• Other-race effect (other-race bias) to those in
  one ethnic group, members of another group often
  seem more alike than they really are in
  appearance, personality, and attitude

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Just World Phenomenon

• Good is rewarded and evil is punished
• Hindsight bias (she should have known better.)