Emotion & Social Cognition
VU Amsterdam, Year 3, Period 4 (or as a honors course)
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Chapter 2 & 3
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, Chapter 1: Introduction
Lecture 1, Week 1
I
Social cogniton = the study of how people make sense and feel about other people & themselves
Phenomenology = the study of social cognition through asking ordinary people to describe how
they experience their world
Two viewpoints of 1. Naive psychology = people’s everyday theories about each other & themselves
social cognition 2. Cognitive psychology
Ash’s competing Ash (1946) theorized: 1. That we experience another person as a unit
models 2. That we fit the person’s various qualities (traits) into
a single unifying theme (our impression)
In one study, two groups of students were given two descriptions of an
‘intelligent, skillful, industrious, determined, practical and cautious’
person. One group also got ‘cold’ while the other got ‘warm’. This created
different impressions between the groups. The cold intelligent person was
seen as calculating while the warm intelligent person was deemed wise.
1.Configural model = hypothesizes that people form impressions by making individual elements
fit in the context of the overall impression. They do this through:
- people change the meaning of ambiguous terms
: (an intelligent con artist is sly, an intelligent grandmother wise)
- people resolve apparent clashing terms
(someone brilliant & bumbling can be an absent-minded genius)
2. Algebraic model = hypothesizes that people form impressions by evaluation each individual
element in isolation and later combines these in a summary evaluation
Elemental approach = breaks problems in pieces, analyzing them separately before combining them
Holistic approach = analyzes the pieces in the context of their entirety and their relationships
(Uses phenomenology. Gestalt psychology drew on initial holistic insights)
,Psychological field = the influence of the social environment as perceived/interpreted by the
individual, which according to Lewin, consists of a configuration of forces.
i
Lewin’s Person- The total psychological field (and thus behavior) is determined by 2 pairs:
Situation Field 1. The person in the situation
Theory (motivated student in a library is a better predictor than only motivation)
2. The cognition and motivation
- Cognition provides interpretation & what sb will do
(Incomplete cognitions in new situations = unstable behavior)
- Motivation predicts whether behavior will occur & how much
These 2 pairs of factors will create positive or opposing driving forces which will
congregate to form the final motivated behavior (holistic approach)
History of cognition 1. First psychologist relied on introspection (Wundt)
in experimental 2. However, this did not uphold because this technique wasn’t reproducible and
psych. introspection, and with it cognition, was abandoned
3. Behaviorist period followed (Skinner, Thorndike, stimulus-response theory)
4. Fresh interest in cognition in 1960s/70s because:
.- The stimulus-response framework couldn’t account for language
- New approach called information processing (breaking down mental
operations in sequential stages) arose (stimulus-organism-response)
5. In the 1990s, cognitive neuroscience arose
History of cognition In contrast, social psychology has always relied on cognitive concepts, because:
in social psych. 1. After Lewin, they decided people’s perceptions were best as a basis
2. The end result of social perception also relies heavily on cognitive terms
3. They viewed the organism between the S-R as a thinking organism
, The 5 views of the Five views of the thinking organism emerged in social psychology:
thinking organism
I
Consistency
seeker
Naive scientist
Cognitive miser
Motivated
tactician
Activated actor
Basic features of SC 4 basic features:
research 1. Commitment mentalism (what they study)
(= belief in importance of cognitive representations)
2. Orientation toward process mechanisms (how they study)
3. Cross-fertilization between cognitive & social psychologies (whence)
4. Concern with real-world issues (why they study)
Neuroscience
techniques for SC
