PL3238 Social Cognition

Unit 1 Notes Introduction

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Intro

Individuals need to understand each and every situation to

interact successfully with others. Need a highly differentiated
system of tools to accomplish this.

Party - impressions of people, how would you feel, what would

you do if you had to interact with them. It depends how the
perceiver interprets the specific behaviour. E.g. did new
acquaintance not greet you because didnt see you or will you
assume she intentionally avoided respond very differently to
her next time.

The same objective input can be interpreted in very diff ways.

Someone helps friend cheat on exam dishonest or helpful.
Someone claiming success on project arrogant or selfconfident.

Individuals construct their own subjective reality based on

their perception of the input this construction determines
behaviour in complex social world, not objective input. E.g. if
believe she ignored, this guides Bv even if she just didn't see.

2 ppl in same situation may construct very diff subj realities

depending on own perspectives.

Assumption that we construct our subj social reality and that

this construction provides the basis for social Bv. But how is
objective situation transferred to subj reality? How do we
construct soc real? What processes mediate between specific
input situation & Bv?

Why does same input result in diff interpret? How is interpret

influenced by prior soc experiences & knowledge?

Social cognition concerned with the study of social

knowledge & the cognitive processes involved when individuals
construct their subj reality.

Ppl may have diff general motives when construct. History of

research reflects these.

1. Consistency Seekers - indivs try to perceive the world just

as they believe it is strive for consistency between prior beliefs
about the world & their interpretation of a specific new situation.

E.g. believe smart but just failed exam to create consist

between self-image & fail, can discount diagnostic value of exam
thus maintain prior belief.

Incorporated into Festingers Dissonance Theory assumption

that inconsistences in social thinking (smart, failed) can crate a

Different
Perspectives
on the Social
Thinker
Consistency
Seeker

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negative aversive feeling this state motivates indiv to reduce
this inconsistency e.g. by changing one element of it (exam not
that important) or adding additional elements (would have done
well if hadnt partied).

Perspectives
Nave or Lay
Scientist

Perspectives Cognitive
Miser

Perspectives
Motivated
Tactician

But social world not always consistent can create inaccurate

construction. Since we need a reas accurate perception of world
to act successfully, these construct may be maladaptive for soc
interactions.

2. Nave or Lay Scientist - Need to perceive the world

accurately indivs father all relevant info unselectively &
construct social reality in an unbiased manner. Interp of world is
barely influenced by wishful thinking. Conclusions drawn in an
almost logical scientific manner.

Attribution Theories address how ppl explain Bv & events.

E.g. look at other students perf on exam, my perf on other
exam, situational circum that may have caused fail. Nave Sci
holds that we elaborate on available info & process it in an
unbiased manner to find the cause of the event.

Research we act like this under certain conditions but in

many situations we are not sufficiently able or motivated to
engage in systematic, elaborative thinking. E.g. must respond in
reas period of time quick judgements. So much info to be proc
not always willing or able to act as NS. Developed short cuts to
simplify processing:

3. Cognitive Miser - Indiv, esp when under time pressure or

unusually complex situation, strive to simplify the cog processes.
Aim for high accuracy like NS but under the constraint of
strategies that are faster & require less effort.

E.g. watch advert unlikely to process info extensively rely on

simplifications celeb endorses so must be good. May
sometimes come up with diff conclusions to those implied by NS
perspective, but the evolved mental shortcuts often serve very
well in daily life.

Perhaps ppl are quite flexible in strategy when construct subj

soc real. Sometimes act as CS, NS & CM. 4. Motivated
Tactician indivs may have multiple strategies, which can be
applied depending on the situational constraints.

E.g. perceive situations highly relevant personally, more likely

elab proc than Cog miser. Under strong time pressure, less
likely consider all relevant info as a lay scientist more likely rely
on short cuts.

Diff perspectives received diff emphasis at various times. More

interest in the specific cognitive processes of the construction of
social reality. How is social knowledge stored in memory? How

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deal with huge amount of incoming info? How related new info to
prior social knowledge?

The Cognitive
Component of
Social
Cognition

Primary focus recently is on How social info is encoded, How

info is stored & retrieved from memory, How social knowledge is
structured & represented, what processes involved when indiv
compute judgements & decisions.

Study how indivs mentally construct soc real as they believe

that social Bv, rather than being directly determined by the
external stimulus of a situation, is mediated by the internal
mental representations of the situations. Understanding soc
Bv thus requires understanding of these internal mediating proc.

C/f Behaviourists who proposed that soc Bv can be explained

better in terms of reinf contin (reward & punish) rather than in
terms of mediating cog proc. They didnt deny existence of
mental proc but argued that they cannot be observed directly so
treating internal proc as black box phenomena beyond realm of
psych science.

Soc cog scientific theorising about mental proc is fruitful and

testable hypotheses can be derived from these theories.
Grounded in work of Gestalt theorists not the stim per se
that influences v but our perception of it the way we mentally
construct & rep reality.

A resp to a particular stim depends on context embedded in

whole is more than sum of parts. Context can take on 2 diff
forms: 1. Context may vary as a function of other stimuli
present in the same situation or 2. May vary as a function of
prior (social) knowledge used to interpret the target stim.

E.g. identical letters interpreted diff interp altered depending

on which other stim present in situation. Also, prior soc
knowledge brought to situation may constitute diff context &
similarly alter interp of given stim:

Old/young woman prior exposure to another situation can

influence how interpret same input when first shown figure A
more likely to see young woman. First shown B more likely to see
old. They proc the same stim in context of diff prior knowledge
young or old woman is reflected in their subj reality.

The Context Dependency of social judgement in 1 situation

may interpret help to cheat as dishonest & in another as helpful.
Does not mean a flaw in social judgement:

Context sensitivity in constructing soc reality has an

important function for adaptive Bv in complex world. The
greatest adaptive advantage of man is his capacity to modify

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his behaviour as a function of the way in which he perceives
& understands a situation. We study the cognitive link that
causes this context sensitivity.

What is Social
about Social
Cognition?

What is Social
2

Human Bv is beyond rigid biological routines need to theorise

about cog proc that mediate between obsv input & obsv
response to explain social Bv.

2 diffs with cog psych 1. The nature of the stimulus and 2.

The nature of the processing.

Social nature of the stimulus and its relation to the perceiver

aspects in which target of soc perception is diff from target of
nonsoc perception. E.g. judge bldg height vs trustworthiness of
new acquaintance. (i) Unlike inanimate obj. ppl may influence
their env, e.g. appear more trustworthy.

(ii) Ppl may change rapidly and indiv need to adapt their
judgements e.g. appears shy at first but after a while more
extraverted. (iii) Ppl also change when they are aware they are
being observed.

(iv) most important indivs can observe the stimulus

attributes of their physical env colour, size heat etc. Soc cog
numerous attributes that cannot be perceived directly or
assessed objectively e.g. intelligence, love, humour, aggress
no sensory receptors.

These attributes refer to distal entities that must be inferred

from more proximal cues and sometimes have no obj
existence. E.g. aggress cant observe but can obsv hitting
someone & infer it.

Assessment requires more constructive processing must go

beyond info given vs judging inanimate. More inferential
processes.

Because of inference from cues, accuracy of soc judge is hard

to check. Second, the attributes are often quite ill-defined, e.g.
diff ideas about implications of trustworthiness depending on
perceivers prior exp & sit context.

Lack of feedback, verificability & ill-defined nature of concepts

can be difficult to modify constructions of soc reality. Beliefs
about soc world such as stereotypes are often difficult to
change than beliefs about non-soc world.

The processing of social info is a genuinely social process.

Constructing soc real is a highly mutual process construction
is strongly influenced by the constructions of others. Indivs
perceive Bv of others & make inferences about others subj
reality.

Conversely, an indivs constructions colour social perception of

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other ppl. Diff ppl in same sit may construct diff soc realities, but
there is a strong mutual relationship between the constr of
these soc realities.

What is Social
3

Strong link between the way most ppl think about their soc world
and their Self-Conception. Their construction of reality has
strong implications for how they feel & think about self. 2
aspects:

1. When a persons self is involved and the situation is highly

important, indivs more likely to proc incoming info extensively
greater need for accuracy or greater fear of invalidity.
Personal relevance & importance usually increase amount of
processing.

2. Under certain cond, self-involvement influences not only

amount of proc but Direction. Accurate construc of soc real
can at times be self-threatening e.g. failed exam implies not
so smart as thought so proc can be biased or motivated in
one direction to maintain particular position. In some cond, may
prefer to search for & attend to info consistent with prior
beliefs.

Specific nature of soc cog also reflected in its strong Time

Constraints limited time to respond party interpretation of
other persons tone will influence your response which influences
their subseq Bv etc.

Time constraints demand that the amount of proc be reduced

to sufficient level but still must be reas adequate to act
successfully in soc sit. And thus soc cog needs to be highly
adaptive & sensitive to the requirements of a situation.

Importance of social component in cog proc study on stats

reasoning, present students with stats tables indicated female
perf inferior they failed to consider the spurios nature of the
correlation not detect due to 3rd variable.

The stats reasoning was much improved when they were

socially or emotionally involved, as when feminist ppts were
motivated to defend their gender group.

Wason Selection Task logical reasoning ability also

emphasises the social component must find out which info is
needed to test if-then rule poor results even when rule
referred to familiar & meaningful content.

Based on evolutionary approach to reasoning, shown that

embedding same rules into the form of social
contracts/social exchange (if someone wants to use pub
trans, then must have valid ticket) results in huge increase in
correct solutions.

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Suggests social context has very pronounced on indivs

processing introducing soc context changes the mediating
processes (may help or impair). Implies that detaching the cog
tasks from soc context may alter quality of underlying proc. So
within a soc context, these reasoning errors are not necessarily
observable in the form of real mistakes.

Summary: social judgements usually refer to complex & nonobsv attributes. Constructive aspects going beyond the info
given - time constraints, motivational aspects, self-involvement -