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Summary Social cognition
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CHAPTER 5: COGNITION:Social cognition:
-Broad movement to study any sort of thinking by people about
people and about social relationships.
Attribution theory:
-Developed in the 1960s and 1970s.
-Focuses on how people interpret the causes of events, such as
external pressures or internal traits.
Social psychologists:
-Study how people think about people.
Standard theory:
-The human brain evolved to solve problems in the physical
environment, such as making tools, finding shelter, and obtaining
food.
-Humans evolved to rely on each other for information and help.
-The human mind is designed to participate in society, and its
primary job is dealing with other people.
-Humans get their food by interacting with other people so people’s
brains are designed to think about other people.
-Birds get their food from their environment, and so birds’ brains are
focused on trees and worms and predators.
-Inner processes serve interpersonal functions.
-Humans have large brains (weighs 1.5 kg).
Cortex:
-Part of the brain involved in higher-order functions such as thinking.
,Cognitive miser:
-Describe people’s avoidance to do much extra thinking.
-Thinking is limited so people must conserve it.
Example: When people’s capacity for thinking is already
preoccupied, they take even more shortcuts to reduce further the
need for thought.
-Deliberate thinking requires effort than automatic thinking.
-Automatic system is not good at some kinds of thinking, such as
logical reasoning and mathematics and develops shortcuts which
give rough estimates or good answers.
Stroop effect:
-Created in 1935 by James Ridley Stroop.
Stroop test 1:
-Several rectangles containing different colors. Say the name of the
color in each rectangle out loud as quickly as you can.
Stroop test 2:
-Several words written in different ink colors. Say the name of the ink
color for each word as quickly as you can, ignoring what the word
says.
Example: If the word RED is printed in blue ink, you should say ‘blue’.
-It took longer if the word and ink color didn’t match (incongruent)
than if they did match (congruent).
, -In the incongruent test (when the word and ink color don’t match),
the automatic response is to say the word rather than the ink color.
-It takes conscious effort to override the automatic response and say
the ink color instead.
Five elements that distinguish automatic from deliberate processes:
Awareness
Intention
Control
Effort
Efficiency
- When people are engaging in automatic thinking, they may not
even be aware that they are thinking.
Example: People who have driving experience don’t have to think
about how to do it; they just drive. If road conditions become bad,
however, deliberate thinking overrides automatic thinking and new
drivers must think about what they are always doing.
Automatic thinking is not guided by intention:
-The Stroop effect shows automatic thoughts can intrude on your
thinking even when you intend to think something else.
-Automatic thoughts are not subject to deliberate control, so it can
be difficult or even impossible to avoid having certain thoughts that
have been cued.
-Automatic thoughts do not involve effort whereas deliberate
thoughts often involve mental effort and can feel demanding and
exhausting.
-Automatic thinking relies on knowledge structures.
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