Transcript What is Social Cognition? - Web Hosting at UMass Amherst

What is Social Cognition?
Social Cognition: How people think
about themselves and the social world
Key Points
• All of the information in our environment is too
much to process.
– Operating on automatic pilot increases efficiency
• Example: driving a car
• Past experience provides a filter to help us
interpret and evaluate new people and events.
– Advantage = efficiency
– Disadvantage = errors (Amadou Diallo, mistook for
serial rapist, reached for wallet, 41 shots)
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Social Cognition
• Do we generally use all of the available
information about a person when forming
impressions of him/her?
• Why not?
– Impractical or impossible; too much information
– Time constraints
– EX: Political candidates: People often make
judgments based on party affiliation without gathering
additional information about the candidate.
What information do we use?
• Categories, schemas
– We are “cognitive misers” who are willing to
take shortcuts to understand the social world.
– Use information we already have
• Categories: Preppie, political activist, Goth
Schemas
• Mental structures that help organize
knowledge about the social world and
guide the selection, interpretation, and
recall of information.
– Makes world more predictable (know what to
expect)
– Schemas applied to group = stereotype
– Schemas also can be applied to specific
individuals and to ourselves.
What do schemas do?
“The human mind must think with the aid of
categories…orderly living depends upon it.”
--Allport, 1954
• Help us organize information
• Help us remember certain things
• Help us to fill in details when our
information is incomplete
• Can influence behavior
• Help us to interpret ambiguous
behavior
• Influence what information we attend
to
Examples
• Read story
Silver Creek Example
• Read story
Did the event happen in the story?
(Was the event described in the story?) True or False?
Schemas help us fill in details
• Scripts
• This script helps us know what to expect,
and we may fill in things that didn’t actually
happen.
• Memory is RECONSTRUCTIVE.
*What implications might schemas have for
eyewitness accounts of a crime?
Schemas influence attention
• “Graduate Student’s Office” Study
• IV: Grad student office included schema
consistent (stapler, filing cabinets, book
shelves) and schema inconsistent (exercise
equipment) objects.
• DV: Leave room and recall what was in the
room.
• Recalled more schema consistent objects
than schema inconsistent ones, and recalled
more schema consistent objects that were
NOT actually in the office.
Schemas help us to interpret
ambiguous information
• Imagine you are walking down a street
and someone is walking behind you.
• Is that person following you?
• Or, is does the person just happen to be
walking in the same direction?
• Shady characteractivates criminal
schema
• Asks directionsactivates lost person
schema
Ambiguous information
• The Donald Story
Schemas help us to interpret
ambiguous information
• Donald example
– IV: Priming pos (e.g., brave, confident,
independent) or neg (e.g., reckless, aloof,
conceited) - memorized words
– DV: Positivity of impression
• Priming = the process by which recent
experiences increase the accessibility of a
schema, trait, or concept.
• Postive primes: 70% had positive
impression.
• Negative primes: 10% had positive
impression (Fig. 3.3)
Schemas influence behavior
Bargh and colleagues
• IV: Primed polite, rude, or neutral words
(scrambled sentence task)
• DV: How long participant waited to
interrupt the experimenter
• Results: Interrupted sooner if primed
with rude words
Elderly Stereotype Study
• Bargh et al. study:
• IV: Primed elderly stereotype (e.g.,
retired, Florida, old, wise, bingo,
courteous) or neutral words (e.g.,
thirsty, clean, private) – scrambled
sentences
• DV: Assessed walking speed (DV)
How do we decide which schema to use?
• Depends on schema accessibility
– Situational cues: If only woman in a group of men,
female stereotype may be salient.
– Recency of schema activation (ads that promote
feminine stereotype)
• Priming
– All of the Bargh studies
– The Donald Study
– Do not need conscious awareness (Bargh &
Pietromonaco, 1982, in text, p. 66)
• IV: Hostile or neutral words presented subliminally
• DV: Ratings of Donald – ambiguous story where
Donald’s behavior could be interpreted as hostile or not
• Personal chronic constructs - accessibility
Sometimes schemas can get us
into trouble
• Confirmation biases: Tendencies to
interpret, seek, and create information
that verifies our preexisting beliefs or
schemas.
• Examples of confirmation biases
– Belief perseverance: The tendency to
maintain beliefs, even after they have been
discredited.
Perseverance Effect
• Ross et al. (1975)
• IV: Success, failure, or average feedback about
ability to detect “real” or “fake” suicide notes
• Intervention: E explained feedback was
randomly assigned (discredited belief)
• DV: Estimated how well would actually do at
task
• Results: Beliefs persevered. Estimates closely
matched false feedback Ps had received.
• Why? May think of reasons to support…takes
on life of its own.
• Our expectations also can influence how we go
about obtaining new information about another
person.
• Imagine that you are going to meet a friend of a
friend. Your friend tells you that his friend, Dana,
is very outgoing and friendly, the life of the party.
When you meet Dana and are getting
acquainted, will that information influence what
you say and do? Some work suggests that it
will.
Confirming Prior Expectations
• Snyder & Swann, 1978
• IV: Expectations about person to be
interviewed: introverted vs. extraverted
• DV: Selection of interview questions.
Slanted toward extraverted (How do you liven
things up at a party?), introverted (Have you ever felt left
out of some social group?), or neutral.
• Results: Ps asked loaded questions that
confirmed their prior expectations
On being sane in insane places
• David Rosenhan
• +7 colleagues gained admission to mental
hospitals
• “heard voices,” false name, all else true
• Example of confirmation bias
• Stayed in hospital average of 19 days
• Most needed outside help to get out
Conclusions
• Schemas help us make sense of the world
• They increase our efficiency and speed
• They often operate automatically, without
conscious awareness
• But, they can sometimes lead to errors in
judgment!