Social Cognition: Thinking and Learning About Others

The human brain contains about 100 billion neurons, each of which can make contact with tens

of thousands of other neurons. The distinguishing brain feature in mammals, including humans,

is the more recently evolved cerebral cortex—the part of the brain that is involved in thinking

(Figure 1.3 "The Cerebral Cortex"). Humans are highly intelligent, and they use cognition in

every part of their social lives. Psychologists refer to cognition as the mental activity of

processing information and using that information in judgment. Social cognition is cognition

that relates to social activities and that helps us understand and predict the behavior of

ourselves and others. Social cognition involves the active interpretation of events. As a result,

different people may draw different conclusions about the same events.

The Cerebral Cortex

The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that is involved in thinking. A big part of its job is
social cognition—thinking about and understanding other people.
What Is a Heuristic and How Does It Work?

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments

quickly and efficiently. Heuristics are helpful in many situations, but they can also lead

to cognitive biases. For example, when trying to decide if you should drive or ride the bus to

work, you might suddenly remember that there is road construction along the standard bus route.

You quickly realize that this might slow the bus and cause you to be late for work, so instead,

you simply leave a little earlier and drive to work on an alternate route. Your heuristics allow

you to think through the possible outcomes quickly and arrive at a solution that will work for

your unique problem.

Types of Heuristics

Some common heuristics include the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic.

The availability heuristic involves making decisions based upon how easy it is to bring

something to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, you might quickly remember a

number of relevant examples. Since these are more readily available in your memory, you will

likely judge these outcomes as being more common or frequently-occurring. For example, if you

are thinking of flying and suddenly think of a number of recent airline accidents, you might feel

like air travel is too dangerous and decide to travel by car instead. Because those examples of air

disasters came to mind so easily, the availability heuristic leads you to think that plane crashes

are more common than they really are.

The representativeness heuristic involves making a decision by comparing the present situation

to the most representative mental prototype. When you are trying to decide if someone is

trustworthy, you might compare aspects of the individual to other mental examples you hold. A
sweet older woman might remind you of your grandmother, so you might immediately assume

that she is kind, gentle and trustworthy. If you meet someone who is into yoga, spiritual healing

and aromatherapy you might immediately assume that she works as a holistic healer rather than

something like a school teacher or nurse. Because her traits match up to your mental prototype of

a holistic healer, the representativeness heuristic causes you to classify her as more likely to

work in that profession.

Heuristics Can Lead to Bias

While heuristics can speed up our problem and decision-making process, they can introduce

errors. Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will work again, and

relying on an existing heuristic can make it difficult to see alternative solutions or come up with

new ideas. As you saw in the examples above, heuristics can lead to inaccurate judgments about

how common things occur and about how representative certain things may be.

Heuristics can also contribute to things such as stereotypes and prejudice. Because people use

mental shortcuts to classify and categorize people, they often overlook more relevant information

and create stereotyped categorizations that are not in tune with reality.

Automatic Processing is sort of like muscle memory. When you start to do something that you

have done many times, and you can complete it successfully without giving it any thought, that's

automatic processing. It can actually be disruptive to begin to think about the process once it has

started automatically. If you have ever played the piano, or knitted a scarf, you know how your

hands seem to move on their own while your mind goes somewhere else. When you look back at

your music or yarn,you might lose your place and stumble over the next steps, interrupting the
automatic process. For example, someone can be driving, listening to the radio, thinking about

where they are going, and possibly could be doing other things. The driving is automatic.

Controlled processing is a systematic, logical and highly effortful process. For example, when

you were learning to drive,(especially if you learned on a stick shift), you had to pay careful

attention to everything you did. Steering and operating the pedals (and shifting gears in a manual

transmission) all required conscious processing. So did attention to other cars, traffic lights, etc.

So sometimes you pressed the wrong pedal or turned the wheel too far, when you were paying

attention to a street sign or another car. And having a conversation with someone was both

difficult and dangerous, because talking also requires controlled processing.

What is a Schema in Psychology?

It is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. Schemas

can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of

information that is available in our environment.

However, these mental frameworks also cause us to exclude pertinent information to focus

instead only on things that confirm our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. Schemas can contribute to

stereotypes and make it difficult to retain new information that does not conform to our

established ideas about the world.

Schemas: A Historical Background

The use of schemas as a basic concept was first used by a British psychologist named Frederic

Bartlett as part of his learning theory. Bartlett's theory suggested that our understanding of the

world is formed by a network of abstract mental structures.

Theorist Jean Piaget introduced the term schema, and its use was popularized through his work.

According to his theory of cognitive development, children go through a series of stages of

intellectual growth.

In Piaget's theory, a schema is both the category of knowledge as well as the process of acquiring

that knowledge. He believed that people are constantly adapting to the environment as they take

in new information and learn new things. As experiences happen and new information is

presented, new schemas are developed and old schemas are changed or modified.

Schema Examples

For example, a young child may first develop a schema for a horse. She knows that a horse is

large, has hair, four legs, and a tail. When the little girl encounters a cow for the first time, she

might initially call it a horse.

After all, it fits in with her schema for the characteristics of a horse; it is a large animal that has

hair, four legs, and a tail. Once she is told that this is a different animal called a cow, she will

modify her existing schema for a horse and create a new schema for a cow.

Now, let's imagine that this girl encounters a miniature horse for the first time and mistakenly

identifies it as a dog.

Her parents explain to her that the animal is actually a very small type of horse, so the little girl

must at this time modify her existing schema for horses. She now realizes that while some horses
are very large animals, others can be very small. Through her new experiences, her existing

schemas are modified and new information is learned.

Which schemas guide our thoughts?

Priming Schemas

A situation that occur when stimuli and event increase the availability in memory or

consciousness of specific types of information held in memory.

Unpriming schemas

Refers to the fact that the effects of the schemas tend to persist until they are somehowexpressed

in thought or behavior and only then do their effects decrease