Social Cognition and

Social Thinking
Summary

Social Cognition
In social psychology, social cognition is a
method that
focuses on the relationship between
cognition and human social behavior, as well
as the impact of larger and more immediate
social circumstances on cognition.

Difference between Thought and cognition

Thought - refers to the internal

language and symbols we use,
often conscious or at least
something we are or could be A short history of
aware of.
Cognition - refers to automatic
cognition in social
mental processing within the psychology
human mind, acting like a
Wilhelm Wundt's Influence on Modern Empirical
computer program. It mediates
Psychology
between the world and people's
• Wundt, a founder of modern empirical
actions, expressions, sayings,
psychology, used self-observation and
and writings. Understanding
introspection to understand cognition.
cognition can help us understand
• This methodology, though unpopular, shifted
how and why people behave the
psychology towards studying external, publicly
way they do.
observable events.
• Skinners and Watsons' Behaviorism, explaining
observable behavior in terms of reinforcement
schedules, emerged as a result.
• As behaviorism failed to explain human
communication and language, a shift towards
cognition emerged.
• The computer revolution further developed this
development, symbolizing the brain and a
cognitive system for information processing.
• Social psychology has always been cognitively
focused.
 A short history of
cognition in social
psychology
Gestalt Psychology and Social Behavior
• Gestalt Psychology views the whole influencing
constituent parts, not vice versa.
• Lewin's perspective views social behavior as
people's perceptions of their world and their
manipulation of these perceptions.
• Cognitive emphasis in social psychology
includes four aspects:
- Cognitive consistency: People strive to reduce
inconsistency in their cognitions.
- Naïve Scientist: People use rational cause-
effect analyses to understand their world.
- Cognitive Miser: People use the least complex
and demanding cognitions to produce adaptive
behaviors.
- Motivated Tactician: People choose multiple
cognitive strategies based on personal goals,
motives, and needs.
Social Neuroscience: Exploring Brain Activity
• Monitors cognitive activity using fMRI.
• Detects electrical activity associated with
cognitive thinking.
• Different brain parts light up when thinking
positively or negatively.
Forming impressions
of other people
Central traits, which are
correlated with other traits, have
a disproportionate influence over
the final impression of a person.
These traits influence the
meanings of other traits and the
perceived relationship among
them. Asch's experiment showed
that warm/cold traits have more
influence on impression
formation than cold/blunt traits.
Warmth is a fundamental
dimension of social perception
and impression formation. In a
naturalistic setting, Harold Kelley
replicated Asch's experiment,
showing that cold traits led to
less interaction and less
sociability. This supports the
Gestalt view that impressions
are formed as integrated wholes
based on central cues. However,
critics question how people
decide the centrality of a trait, as
Gestalt theorists believe that the
centrality of a trait depends on
its intrinsic degree of correlation
with other traits.

Forming impressions of
other people

The primacy effect suggests that

traits presented first significantly
influence the final impression,
potentially due to the similarity of
early information to contextual cues.

A recency effect occurs when later

information has more impact than
earlier information, often due to
distraction or lack of motivation.
Primacy effects are more common,
highlighting the importance of first
impressions.
 Biases in forming Impressions

Primacy and Recency

Personal Constructs and Implicit
• The order in which information
Personality Theories
about a person is presented is crucial Kelly believes that people come up
to overall impressions with their own ways to characterize
• Primacy – an order of presentation, people.
in which earlier present information • Personal constructs: personal ways
has a disproportionate influence on of characterizing other people
social cognition • These different construction
• People are viewed more favorably systems would result in different
when positive descriptions of them impressions.
are presented first • Implicit Personality Theories:
• Recency - order of presentation personal ways of characterizing other
effect in which later presented people and
information has a disproportionate explaining their behavior.
influence on social cognition
• This can occur when you are
distracted or not really paying
attention to someone
Physical Presentation Counts
Positivity and Negativity
Appearance is the first piece of
When there is no information, people
information that
tend to think the best of others,
we have about people, and it is very
creating a positive first impression.
influential
• Any negative information will attract
• Impressions based on appearance
our attention and influence our
are surprisingly accurate
impression.
• Appearance-based judgments
• When a negative impression is
decide whether we find someone
formed, it is very difficult to change.
attractive or not
• We are sensitive to negative
• Physically attractive people are seen
information for two reasons:
to be good, warm, and outgoing.
1. The information is unusual; it stands
• Physical appearance can also affect
out, so we remember it.
a person’s career.
2. The information signifies potential
• Attractive male executives were
danger; the detection of negative
seen as more capable than less
information is a survival skill.
attractive ones, and for
Women it was the other way around.

Personal Construct
Personal constructs, like humour and
intelligence, are bipolar dimensions
that form impressions of people.
They develop over time as adaptive
forms of perception, resistant to
change.
Other Factors
Physical appearance affects affiliation,
attraction, love, and careers, as well as
lasting impressions and initial
impressions. Studies reveal better
incomes during a thirty-year career for
taller males and lighter women, who are
viewed as more attractive in Western
countries.
Stereotypes greatly affect perceptions
since they are predicated on common
beliefs about the characteristics of
individuals, including their race,
nationality, sex, ethnicity, and class. For
example, Haire and Grune's study
discovered that individuals find it difficult
to include stereotype-inconsistent
information—like intelligence—in a if it's marginally positive.
phrase that characterizes a "working
man."
People's perceptions and assessments
of other people are shaped by their
social judgeability, or their capacity for
strong, polarized opinions. The more
polarized and confident the judgment,
the more a target is thought to be
socially judgeable. Conventions and laws
may not be able to stop stereotype-
based discrimination, but they can
support and normalize it.
Implicit Personality Theories
Implicit personality theories, lay theories, and
philosophies of human nature are general
principles forming certain types of personality.
These theories are widely shared within cultures
but differ between them. They are resistant to
change and can be idiosyncratic based on
personal experiences.
Cognitive Algebra
Cognitive algebra studies impression
formation by assigning positive and
negative valence to attributes and
combining them into evaluations. Three
principal models include summation,
averaging, and weighted averaging.
Summation
Summation is a process where the
overall impression is the cumulative sum
of each piece of information. For
example, if we have a mental rating scale
and assign values to traits like
intelligence, sincerity, and boring, our
impression would be +4. To project a
positive impression, we should present
every positive aspect of ourselves, even
Averaging
Averaging is a process where the overall
impression is the cumulative average of each
piece of information. For example, a person's
initial impression is +1.33, but additional
information like humor and generosity worsens
it to +1.25 and +1.20. To project a positive
impression, present only your best facet.
The averaging model, popular but limited due
to information valence and impression-making
context, has been replaced with a weighted
averaging model, varying the importance of
different information.
Social schemas and categories
A schema is a cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or stimulus,
including its attributes and relations. It facilitates top-down, concept-driven processing, filling
gaps with prior knowledge. The concept emerged in non-social memory research and has
precedents in Asch's configural model, Heider's balance theory, and Gestalt psychology. An
alternative approach treats perception as veridical reality.

Types of schema
Person schemas are knowledge Using Schema
structures about specific individuals,
such as a friend's intelligence, a
politician, a well-known author, or a
neighbor.
Role schemas are knowledge structures
about role occupants, such as airline
pilots and doctors. They can also be
understood as schemas about social
groups, which are social stereotypes if
shared among individuals.

Scripts are events' scripts, such as

attending lectures, cinemas, parties,
presentations, or dining out. They make
events meaningful, like attending football
Acquiring schemas
matches. However, a lack of relevant
scripts can cause disorientation,
Schemas are constructed or
frustration, and lack of efficacy,
modified from encounters with
especially for sojourners in foreign
category instances, such as
cultures, such as new immigrants.
exposure to individuals in literature,
media, or face-to-face. As more
Content-free schemas provide a limited instances are encountered, schemas
number of rules for processing become more abstract, richer, and
information, such as balance theory or more complex. As complexity
causal schema, without rich information increases, schemas become more
about a specific category. They help tightly organized, compact, and
maintain balance and attribute causes to resilient. This process should make
behavior. schemas generally more accurate in
mapping social reality, allowing them
People have self-schemas, which are to incorporate exceptions and
complex representations of themselves, maintain validity.
forming part of their self-concept,
discussed in Chapter 4 on self and
identity.
 Changing schemas
Schemas provide order and structure in a complex
social world, but are resistant to change. People Salience
often disregard or reinterpret information, leading to
Salience is the uniqueness of a
lingering inadmissible evidence. Schemas can change
stimulus that sets it apart from
if inaccurate, as demonstrated in a TV program.
others and attracts attention.
Rothbart (1981) suggests three ways schemas can
change.
Vividness
three ways in which schemas can change:
In bookkeeping, gradual schema change occurs as Vividness is a unique characteristic
the accumulation of inconsistent information bits. of a stimulus that makes it stand out
The conversion refers to the sudden change in and attracts attention.
schema due to the gradual accumulation of
inconsistent information.
Subtyping occurs when schema changes due to Priming
inconsistent information, leading to the formation
Priming involves conscious
of subcategories.
awareness of easily accessible
Social Encoding features in stimulus domains, such
as sex discrimination, which can
Social encoding refers to the way in which
impact social information and lead to
external social stimuli are represented in the
depression due to chronic negative
mind of the individual.
self-schemas.
There are at least four key stages
1 Pre-attentive analysis – an automatic and non- Social Inference
conscious scanning of the environment.
is the core of social cognition,
2 Focal attention – once noticed, stimuli are
involving inferential processes to
consciously identified and categorized.
identify, sample, and combine
3 Comprehension – stimuli are given meaning. information for impressions and
judgments. There are two ways to
4 Elaborative reasoning – the stimulus is linked to process social information:
other knowledge to allow for complex automatically relying on general
inferences. schemas or stereotypes, or
deliberatively relying on specific
instances.

Normative models are the most effective

methods for making accurate social
inferences.
Behavioural decision theory is a set of
normative models used to make accurate
social inferences.
 Departures from normality
Gathering and sampling social information
Inference making involves data gathering and
sampling, but reliance on schemas, clinical
judgement, extreme examples, and small samples
can lead to overestimation or exaggeration,
resulting in flawed inferences.
Regression occurs when extreme instances
outweigh the population average, reducing overall
impressions. People often unaware of regression
and make conservative inferences from limited
information, leading to a decrease in overall
impressions.
Base-rate information, general facts about events,
is often underused due to its lack of relevance, but
is increased when it is more relevant than other
information.
Covariation and illusory correlation
Illusory correlation refers to cognitive exaggeration
of the co-occurrence of two stimuli or events, or
the perception of a co-occurrence where none
exists.
Associative meaning refers to the illusionary
correlation where items are perceived as
belonging together due to their 'ought' to, based on
prior expectations.
Paired distinctiveness refers to the illusionary
correlation where items are perceived as
belonging together due to their unique feature.
Heuristics
Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that provide
accurate inferences for most people most of the
time.
Representativeness heuristic is a cognitive
shortcut that assigns instances to categories
based on overall similarity or resemblance to the
category.
The availability heuristic is a
cognitive shortcut that determines
the likelihood of an event based on
how quickly it comes to mind.
Anchoring and adjustment is a
cognitive shortcut that links
inferences to initial standards or
schemas.
Affect and Emotion
Social cognition focuses on thinking,
but there has been an 'affective
revolution' in recent years. Research
explores how feelings influence and
are influenced by social cognition. In
the absence of strong emotion-
evoking events, people generally
feel happy, but when more marked
events occur, emotions change, and
situations can evoke different
emotions in different individuals.
Antecedents of affect
Cognitive appraisals trigger affective
reactions and physiological
responses in individuals. Primary
appraisals occur in the amygdala,
causing fast, autonomic reactions.
Secondary appraisals generate
complex emotions like envy. A
biopsychosocial model of arousal
regulation explains how challenge
and threat motivate performance and
create approach and avoidance-
related emotions.
Consequences of Affect
The affect-infusion model suggests
that mood influences social
cognition, affecting thinking,
judgement, and behavior when
individuals process information
openly and constructively, involving
active elaboration of stimulus details.
 Regression Base Rate Information

• Base Rate Information - Pallid,

• Regression - Tendency for initial
factual, statistical information
observations of instances from a
about an entire class of events
category to be more extreme than
• The main reason that base-rate
subsequent observations
information is ignored is not so
• People can, however, be induced
much that it is pallid and
to make more conservative
uninteresting in comparison with
inferences if the initial information is
vivid individual instances, but
made to seem less diagnostic by
rather that people often fail to
the presence of other information
see the relevance of base-rate
information, relative to other
information, to the
inference task
Covariation and Illusory Correlation
• Illusory correlation - Cognitive exaggeration of the degree of co-occurrence of two
stimuli or events, or the perception of a co-occurrence where none exists.
• Associative meaning - Illusory correlation in which items are seen as belonging
together because they ‘ought’ to, on the basis of prior expectations.
• Paired distinctiveness - Illusory correlation in which items are seen as belonging
together because they share some unusual feature
• Heuristics – cognitive shortcuts that provide adequately accurate inferences for most
of us most of the time
• Representativeness heuristic - A cognitive short-cut in which instances are assigned
to categories or types on the basis of overall similarity or resemblance to the category
• Availability heuristic - A cognitive short-cut in which the frequency or likelihood of
an event is based on how quickly instances or associations come to mind.
• Anchoring and adjustment - A cognitive short-cut in which inferences are tied to
initial standards or schemas

Emotion regulation

Emotional expression varies based on context and cultural differences, with

Chinese athletes expressing less pride than Americans. People regulate
emotions for personal goals, and failure to regulate can result from difficulties
in identifying and implementing regulation strategies.
 Beyond cognition and neuroscience

Research on affect and emotion faces challenges, including

unreliable self-report measures and the need to understand primary
appraisals' connection to stimulus valence, novelty, salience, and
intensity. Margaret Wetherell warns of oversimplification in
contemporary social psychology.

Where is the ‘social’ in social

cognition? Social cognitive processes are often reductionist, focusing on language
and communication. However, social neuroscience maps complex social
behavior to brain activity. Advocates believe this knowledge can help
understand complex behaviors like negotiation and conformity, but
some social psychologists question its application.

Reductionism is the explanation of a phenomenon

using language and concepts from a lower level of
analysis, often losing its explanatory power.

Social Inference
There are 2 main ways that we process social information:
1. We can rely automatically on general schemas or stereotypes in a top-down
deductive fashion.
2. We can deliberatively rely on specific instances in a bottom-up inductive fashion
• Normative models - Ideal processes for making accurate social inferences.
• Behavioral decision theory - Set of normative models (ideal processes) for making
accurate social inferences.
• Central route processing – when people carefully and deliberately process
information
• Peripheral route processing - where people make rapid top-of-the-head decisions
based
on stereotypes, schemas and other cognitive short-cuts