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PYC3601 Study NotesSocial Psychology
Social Cognition: How we think about the Social World
Schemas: mental frameworks for organising — and using - social information
Through past experience, you have built up a mental framework containing the essential features of this kind of
situation—appointments with a health professional. Similarly, you have formed other mental frameworks related to
eating at restaurants, getting a haircut, shopping for groceries, going to the movies, or boarding an airplane.
Social psychologists term these mental frameworks schemas: They help us to organize social information, guide our
actions, and process information relevant to particular contexts. Since your personal experience in such situations is
probably similar to that of others in your culture, everyone in a given society tends to share many basic schemas.
Once schemas are formed, they play a role in determining what we notice.
The Impact of Schemas on Social Cognition: Attention, Encoding, Retrieval
How do schemas influence social thought? Research findings suggest that schemes influence three basic processes of
social cognition: attention, encoding, and retrieval
1. Attention:
Attention refers to the information we notice.
- Schemes often act as a kind of filter. Information consistent with them is more likely to be noticed and to
enter our consciousness. We especially tend to rely on schemas when experiencing cognitive load—
when we are trying to handle a lot of information at one time (Kunda, 1999). In this case, we rely on our
schemes because they help us process information efficiently.
2. Encoding:
Encoding refers to the processes we use to store noticed information in memory.
- During encoding, the information that becomes the focus of our attention is much more likely to be
stored in long-term memory. In general, the information that is consistent with our schemes is encoded.
However, information that is sharply inconsistent with our schemas—information that does not agree
with our expectations in a given situation—may be encoded into a separate memory location and
marked with a unique ''tag." Inconsistent information is sometimes so unexpected that it literally seizes
our attention and almost forces us to make a mental note of it
3. Retrieval
Retrieval refers to how we recover information from memory in order to use it in some manner—for
example, in making judgments about other people.
- What information is most readily remembered? Is it information that is consistent with our schemes, or
is it information that is inconsistent with these mental frameworks? This complex question has been
investigated in many different studies. Overall, research suggests that people tend to report
remembering information that is consistent with schemes more than information that is inconsistent.
However, this could potentially stem from differences in actual memory or, alternatively, from simple
response tendencies. In other words, information inconsistent with schernas might be present in
memory as strongly as information consistent with schemes, but people simply report the information
that is consistent with their schemas. In fact, the latter appears to be the case When measures of
memory are corrected for this response tendency, or when individuals are asked to actually recall
information rather than indicate whether they recognize it, there is a strong tendency to remember
information that is incongruent (does not fit) with schemas. So, which do we remember better—
information consistent or inconsistent with our schemes? The answer depends on the memory measure
employed. In general, people report information consistent with their schemas, but information
inconsistent with schemes may be strongly present in memory, too.
,Priming: Which Schema Guides Our Thought?
We all develop a large array of schemes—cognitive frameworks that help us interpret and use social information.
That raises an interesting question: Which of these frameworks influence our thought at any given point in time?
One answer involves the strength of various schemes. The stronger and better-developed schemes are, the more
likely they will influence our thinking, and especially our memory for social information
Second, schemes can be temporarily activated by what is known as priming—temporary increases in the
accessibility of specific schemes.
A recent experience activates a schema, which in turn, exerts an effect on our current thinking.
Can priming be deactivated, or are we doomed to see the world in terms of the schema activated by our most recent
experience? Social psychologists describe unpriming as a process by which thoughts or actions primed by a recent
experience dissipate once they find expression.
For primed schemes that are somehow expressed, unpriming occurs, and the influence of the primed schemes
disappears. If primed schemes are not expressed, however, their effects may persist for long periods of time.
Schema Persistence: Why Even Discredited Schemas Can Influence Thought and Behavior
Schemas are often helpful because they permit us to make sense out of a vast array of social information. However,
they have an important "downside," too. By influencing what we notice, enter into memory, and later remember,
schemes can produce distortions in our understanding of the social world. Unfortunately, schemes are often resistant
to change. They show a strong perseverance effect, remaining unchanged even in the face of contradictory
information.
Perhaps even worse, schemes can sometimes be self-fulfilling: They influence our responses to the social world in
ways that make our expectations come true, consistent with the schemes.
So schemas can be a double-edged sword. They can help us make sense of the social world and process information
efficiently, but they can also lock us into acting in ways that create the world that we expect.
Reasoning by Metaphor: How Social Attitudes and Behavior Are Affected by Figures of Speech
A metaphor is a linguistic device that relates or compares a typically abstract concept to another unrelated concept,
by suggesting a similarity between them. Because metaphors can activate different kinds of social knowledge, they
can influence how we interpret events.
How we talk—metaphorically, the pictures we paint with our words—can affect how we interpret and respond to
the social world.
Heuristics: how we reduce our effort in social cognition
At any given time, we are capable of focusing on a limited amount of information.
Any input beyond our limit puts us into a state of information overload where the demands on our cognitive system
are greater than its capacity. In addition, our processing capacity can be depleted by high levels of stress or other
demands on us
To deal with such situations, people adopt various strategies designed to "stretch" their cognitive resources—to let
them do more, with less effort, than would otherwise be the case. This is one major reason that so much of our
social thought occurs on "automatic"—in a quick and relatively effortless manner rather than in a careful, systematic,
arduous way. Well discuss the costs and potential benefits of this thought process later.
Representativeness: Judging by Resemblance
One quick way of making a guess is to compare her with a prototype. If you proceed in this manner, you may quickly
conclude that she is likely to be a librarian. If you made your judgment about your neighbour’s occupation in this
manner, you used the representativeness heuristic.
In other words, you made your judgment on the basis of a relatively simple rule: The more an individual seems to
resemble or match a given group, the more likely she or he is to belong to that group.
,Sometimes, judgments based on representativeness are wrong, mainly for the following reason: Decisions or
judgments made on the basis of this rule tend to ignore base rates—the frequency with which given events or
categories (e.g., occupations) occur in the total population
The representativeness heuristic is also used when judging whether specific causes resemble each other and are
therefore likely to produce effects that are similar in terms of magnitude. That is, when people are asked to judge
the likelihood that a particular effect (e.g.., either many or a few people die of a disease) was produced by a
particular cause (e.g., an unusually infectious bacteria or a standard strain), they are likely to expect the strength of
the cause to match its effect.
However, cultural groups differ in the extent to which they rely on the representativeness heuristic and expect "like
to go with like" in terms of causes and effects. In particular, people from Asia tend to consider more potential causal
factors when judging effects than do Americans
Because Asians consider more information and arrive at more complex attributions when judging an event, they
should show less evidence of thinking based on the representativeness heuristic—a judgment simplification strategy
—compared to North Americans.
Such reasoning differences could potentially result in difficulty when members of different groups seek to achieve
agreement on how best to tackle problems affecting the world as a whole—such as climate change. Westerners may
expect that "big causes" have to be tackled to reduce the likelihood of global warming, whereas Asians may be
comfortable emphasizing more "minor causes" with substantial outcomes such as climate change.
, Availability: "If I Can Recall Many Instances, They Must Be Frequent?"
When estimating event frequencies or their likelihood, people may simply not know the "correct" answer—even for
events in their own lives. So how do they arrive at a response? Ask yourself, how often have you talked on your cell
phone while driving? if you can remember quite a few instances, you'd probably conclude it happens quite often.
This is an example of judging frequency based on the ease with which instances can be brought to mind.
This "ease-of-retrieval" effect may mislead us. We assume that because such scenes are readily available in memory,
they accurately reflect the overall frequency, when, in fact, they don't.
This illustrates the operation of the availability heuristic, another cognitive "rule of thumb" suggesting that the
easier it is to bring information to mind, the greater its impact on subsequent judgments or decisions. Use of this
heuristic makes good sense much of the time. After all, the fact that we can bring some types of information to mind
quite readily suggests that it may indeed be frequent or important, so it shank/ influence our judgments and
decisions.
But relying on availability in making social judgments can also lead to errors. Specifically, it can lead us to
overestimate the likelihood of events that are dramatic but rare, because they are easy to bring to mind.
Consistent with this availability principle, many people fear traveling in airplanes more than traveling in automobiles,
even though the chances of dying in an
In what other way can the availability heuristic influence us? Research suggests that our desires can bias our decision
making toward greater risk taking (Mishra,
Interestingly, research suggests that there is more to the availability heuristic than merely the subjective ease with
which relevant information comes to mind. The amount of information we can bring to mind seems to matter, too
The more information we can think of, the greater its impact on our judgments.
Which of these two factors is more important? The answer appears to involve the kind of judgment we are making. If
the judgment involves emotions or feelings, we tend to rely on the "ease" rule. However, if the judgment involves
facts, or the task is inherently difficult, we tend to rely more on the "amount" rule.
It is also the case that the ease of bringing instances to mind affects judgments that are self-relevant more readily
than judgments about others. In fact, even judgments about objects that we are personally familiar with—such as
consumer brands—are influenced by ease of retrieval more than judgments about brands that we are less familiar
with. This is because when we are aware that we have less information about other people or unfamiliar objects,
making judgments about them seems more difficult, and ease of retrieval is given less weight. But when we think we
are familiar with a task, know more about it, or believe the task itself is easy, then ease of retrieval is particularly
likely to be the basis of our judgment. let's see how this plays out in self-judgments.
Would you find it easier to think of two instances that indicate your own creativity, or six instances? What about
listing instances of creativity that an acquaintance exhibited? In research by Caruso (2008), students found it easier
to provide two examples of their own creativity compared to six examples and, as shown in Figure 2.4, this
influenced ratings of their own creativity. Ease of retrieving examples of an acquaintance's creativity did not affect
ratings of creativity for that other person- That's because when tasks are more difficult, which is the case when it
concerns attributes of another person, subjective ease of retrieval is given less weight.
Anchoring and Adjustment: Where You Begin Makes a Difference
When people attempt to sell something—whether its a house or a car, through an ad in a newspaper or online—they
typically set the "asking" price higher than they really expect to get. Likewise, buyers often bid less initially than they
expect to ultimately pay.
The Anchoring and Adjustment heuristic involves the tendency to deal with uncertainty in many situations by
using something we do know as a starting point (the "anchor") and then making adjustments to it.
The seller's asking price provides such a starting point, to which buyers try to make adjustments in order to lower
the price they pay. Lowering the price makes buyers feel they are getting a very good deal in comparison to the
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