Week 1
H1: What is social cognition research about?
,Social environment is complex and dynamic, and individuals need to
understand every situation in order to interact successfully with others.
Making sense of social situations = enormous challenge. Need for highly
differentiated system of tools to accomplish this task.
Same stimulus may result in different interpretations of a given situation
(confident person/ arrogant person). Individuals construct own subjective
social reality based on perception of the input construction of social
reality rather than objective input. Determines how individuals think, feel
and behave.
Heart of social cognition = how is an objective situation translated into
subjective reality?
Interpretation is determined by the input, but also determined by
interpretation of situation.
3 aspects in different approaches and perspectives of social cognition
- Speed
- Accuracy
- Consistency
- Combination of above
Consistency seekers
Individuals who strive for consistency between their prior beliefs about the
world and their interpretation of a specific new situation (I am smart I
did poorly on the exam = exam was poorly constructed). Major influence
on the way individuals construct social reality (dissonance theory =
inconsistencies in social thinking can create negative feeling create
aversion reduce inconsistency/ change element of inconsistency).
Naïve scientists
Need to perceive the world accurately; gather all relevant information
unselectively and construct social reality in an unbiased manner. Draw
conclusions logical/ scientifically. Attribution theories = particular
situational circumstances.
Cognitive misers
In many situations not able to engage in elaborative thinking make
quick judgments. Simple social interactions contain a lot of information to
be processed. When under time pressure or confronted with unusually
complex situation, strive to simplify the cognitive processes. Aim for high
accuracy but under constraint of strategies that are faster and require less
effort. Rely on simplifications.
Motivated tacticians
Individuals seem to be flexible in strategies; multiple, applied depending
on the situational constraints. Situation highly relevant = more likely to
engage in elaborative processing. Strong time pressure = rely on available
shortcuts.
,Activated actors
Much of social thinking is highly automatic. Cues in environment
automatically bring to mind relevant knowledge about adequate
interpretations and behaviors.
Social cognition
- Social elements
social nature of the stimulus
Target of social perception (trustworthiness) is different from the
target of non-social perception (estimating size of rectangle). How
directly can you observe attributes? For social targets, many cannot
be directly perceived (love, aggressiveness), requires more
constructive processing (inferring/ go beyond given information).
Accuracy of social judgment often difficult to check + attributes
often ill-defined.
nature of the processing
Processing of social information is a genuinely social process. Mutual
process; construction social reality influenced by constructions of
others. Strong link perception social world and self-conception.
Information important to the Self = extensive processing +
influences direction of processing (self-threatening).
Strong time constraints; amount of processing reduced to sufficient
level.
- Cognitive elements
Internal mediating process, cognitive processes cannot be observed
objectively. Internal processes as black box phenomena. (Large
variety of cognitive processes: attention, perception, organization
and function memory, logical reasoning, creativity)
Context dependency; response to stimulus depends on context in
which the stimulus is embedded.
Function of other stimuli that are present
Prior knowledge
H2:
General framework of social cognitive processing
General overview social cognition framework. 3 ingredients for
constructing social reality:
- Input from the given situation
- Input in the form of prior knowledge that individuals bring to the
situation
- Processes that operate on the input
Input from the given situation
Can be perceived in various forms; inputs result from sources that are
external to the perceiver. Also internal inputs (feel hungry/ nervous). The
situational input plays a key role.
Input in the form of prior knowledge that individuals bring to the situation
, Fate of a particular stimulus depends also on the prior knowledge the
perceiver brings to the situation, may take different forms.
- General knowledge
Correct or incorrect generalized knowledge about groups of people/
unusual sequence of social situations/ general assumptions.
- Specific episodes
Personally know an unassertive male/ remember specific event/
experience with cheating. Recall on previous behaviors.
Processes that operate on the input
Process information quickly and superficially, or mull it over. More
automatically or more controlled. More direct input or prior knowledge.
General themes underlying the construction of social reality
1. The limitation of human processing capacity and the allocation of
processing resources
Humans processing capacity is limited;
- cannot process all relevant information to situation
- time constraints
Response = simplification that is also highly efficient provide
adequate basis for persons responses to the social environment.
selection of information, context-dependent. Depend on cognitive
rules of thumb/ mental shortcuts/ heuristics (make judgments that
require little processing capacity stereotypes). May result in
systematic bias.
Processing has an adaptive quality, depends on:
- Processing capacity
- Processing motivation
2. Top-down and bottom-up processing
Interplay of situational stimuli and prior knowledge. When
information is stored in memory, new input is related to prior
knowledge and this alters the prior knowledge that individuals bring
to the next situation.
Concept driven (top-down) = guided primarily by prior knowledge
and expectations librarians are introverted. Stereotype.
Data-driven (bottom-up) = influenced by stimuli from a given
situation, observed behavior Lara is an extroverted librarian.
New input may contribute to change of the stereotype
3. Automatic and controlled processes
Cognitive processes can differ with respect to automaticity and
controllability. Automatic processes = unintentional, require very few
resources and cannot be controlled. Controlled processes = demand
resources, requires conscious regulation, within scope of awareness.
Control:
- Ability to bring a particular content to awareness
- Ability to suppress a particular content
Fluid differentiation between automaticity and control. Control more often
in unfamiliar situations.
Sequence of information processing
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