Social Psychology
Hoofdstuk 2 Social Cognition
Cognitie = mentale processen die optreden wanneer mensen waarnemen, informatie verwerken,
leren, denken en problemen oplossen.
Social Psychology and Cognition
Social psychology studies ‘how human thought, feelings and behaviour is influenced by and has
influence on other people’
Thought = the internal language and symbols we use. Something we are/could be aware of
Cognition = refers to mental processing that can be largely automatic
Correspondent inference theory:
Wanneer concluderen we of iemands gedrag correspondeert met zijn/haar eigenschappen?
We prefereren eigenschappelijke attributies omdat dit personen voorspelbaar maakt, en gevoel van
controle laat toenemen
Social cognition (bewustwording) is an approach in social psychology that focuses on how cognition is
affected by wider and more immediate social contexts and on how cognition affects our social
behaviour. It is cognitive processes and structures that influence and are influences by social
behaviour
Behaviourism (gedragspsychologie) is an emphasis on explaining observable behaviour in terms of
reinforcement schedules
Gestalt psychology is a perspective in which the whole influences constituent parts rather than vice
versa
Cognitive consistency is a model of social cognition in which people try to reduce inconsistency
(veranderlijkheid) among their cognitions, because they find inconsistency unpleasant
Attribution is the process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour, and that of others
Forming impressions of other people
Cognitive miser; mensen gebruiken minst complexe en vragende cognities die beschikbaar zijn om
algemeen aangepast gedrag te produceren
Motivated tactician; mensen hebben meerdere cognitieve strategieën beschikbaar, welke ze kiezen
hangt af van de basis van persoonlijke doelen, motieven en benodigdheden
Social neuroscience is an exploration of brain activity associated with social cognition and social
psychological processes and phenomena
Central traits are traits that have a disproportionate influence on the configuration of final
impressions, in Asch’s configural model of impression formation -> bv. Warm/cold
Peripheral traits are traits that have an insignificant influence on the configuration of final
impressions, in Asch’s configural model of impression formation -> bv. Polite/blunt
,Configural model is Asch’s gestalt-based model of impression formation, in which central traits play a
disproportionate role in configuring the final impression
Primacy is an order of presentation effect in which earlier presented information has a
disproportionate influence on social cognition
Recency is an order of presentation effect in which later presented information has a
disproportionate influence on social cognition
We zijn vatbaarder voor negatieve informatie dan voor positieve informatie.
We may be sensitive in this way to negative information for 2 reasons:
1. The information is unusual and distinctive – unusual, distinctive or extreme information
attracts attention
2. The information directly signifies potential danger, so its detection has survival value for the
individual and ultimately the species
Personal construct: idiosyncratic and personal ways of characterising other people. They can be
treated as sets of bipolar dimensions. Ligt eraan welke eigenschappen je belangrijk vindt bij iemand.
Implicit personality theories: idiosyncratic and personal ways of characterising other people and
explaining their behaviour. General principles concerning what sorts of characteristic go together to
form certain types of personality. Hoe je karaktereigenschappen combineert.
Stereotype: widely shared and simplifies evaluative image of a social group and its members
Social judgeable: perception of whether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target. If a target is
deemed to be socially judgeable, judgements are more polarised and are made with greater
confidence
Social schemas and categories
Schema: cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept/type of stimulus, including
its attributes and relations among those attributes. It is a set of interrelated cognitions that allows us
to make sense of a person/situation/event/place on the basis of limited information. Net als
heuristic, snel situatie in kunnen schatten, shortcut.
Types of schemas:
All kinds of schemas influence the encoding of new information, memory of old
information and inferences about missing information
- Person schemas: individualised knowledge structures about people
- Role schemas: knowledge structures about role occupants (pilots, doctors)
Role = pattern of behaviour that distinguish between different activities within the group,
and that interrelate to one another for the greater good of the group
- Scripts: schemas about events
- Content-free schemas: they do not contain rich information about a specific category, but
rather a limited number of rules for processing information.
- Self-schemas: schemas about yourself
Family resemblance: defining property of category membership
Prototype: cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category
Fuzzy sets: categories are considered to be fuzzy sets of features organised around a prototype
Exemplars: specific instances of a member of a category
,Associative network: model of memory in which nodes or ideas are connected by associative links
along which cognitive activation can spread
Categorisation and stereotyping
Stereotypes are widely shared generalisations about members of a social group. they are essentially
schemas of social groups, simplified images, that are often derogatory when applied to outgroups,
and are based on, or create, clearly visible differences between groups.
Stereotypes and stereotyping are central aspects of prejudice and discrimination and of intergroup
behaviour as a whole.
Prototype: weergave van ideale eigenschappen van een categorie. Plaatje in je hoofd van hoe iets er
ideaal uit moet zien.
Easy readiness to characterise large human groups in terms of a few fairly crude common attributes /
slow to change / stereotype change is generally in response to wider social, political or economic
changes / stereotypes are acquired at a young age / stereotypes become more pronounced and
hostile when social tensions and conflict exist between groups, difficult to modify / not inaccurate or
wrong; they serve to make sense of particular intergroup relations
The process of categorisation might be responsible for stereotyping. In making judgements on some
focal dimension, people recruit any other peripheral dimension that might be of some assistance.
Accentuation principle: categorisation accentuates perceived similarities within and differences
between groups on dimensions that people believe are correlated with the categorisation. The effect
is amplified where the categorisation and/or dimension has subjective importance, relevance or
value. Benadrukken van overeenkomsten, verschillen door de vingers zien.
Social identity theory: theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-
categorisation, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of
intergroup-defining properties
Self-categorisation theory: Turner and associates’ theory of how the process of categorising oneself
as a group member produces social identity and group and intergroup behaviour
How we use, acquire and change schemas
Individual differences that may influence the degree and type of schema use:
- Attributional complexity; people vary in the complexity and number of their explanations
- Uncertainty orientation; people vary in their interest in gaining information vs. remaining
uninformed but certain
- Need for cognition; people differ in how much they like to think deeply about things
- Need for cognitive closure; people differ in how quickly they need to tidy up cognitive loose
ends and move to a decision/make a judgment
- Cognitive complexity; people differ in the complexity of their cognitive processes and
representations
Accessibility = ease of recall of categories/schemas that we already have in mind
Schema acquisition and development involve number of processes;
, - Schemas become more abstract, less tied to concrete instances, as more instances are
encountered
- Schemas become richer and more complex as more instanced are encountered
- With increasing complexity, schemas become more tightly organised
- Increased organisation produces a more compact schema
- Schemas become more resilient
3 ways in which schemas can change:
- Bookkeeping – they can change slowly in the face of accumulating evidence
‘Gradual schema change trough the accumulation of bits of schema-inconsistent information’
- Conversion – they can change suddenly once a critical mass of disconfirming evidence had
accumulated, at which point there is a sudden and massive change
‘Sudden schema change as a consequence of gradual accumulation of schema-inconsistent
information’
- Subtyping – they can form a subcategory to accommodate disconfirming evidence
‘schema change as a consequence of schema-inconsistent information, causing the
formation of subcategories
Social encoding ; the process whereby external social stimuli are represented in the mind of the
individual. Depends heavily on what captures our attention. Attention if influences by salience,
vividness and accessibility. 4 key stages:
1. Pre-attentive analysis; automatic and non-conscious scanning of the
environment
2. Focal attention; once noticed, stimuli are consciously identified and
categorised
3. Comprehension; stimuli are given meaning
4. Elaborative reasoning – the stimulus is linked to other knowledge to
allow for complex inferences
Salience = eigenschap van een stimulus die ervoor zorgt dat de stimulus boven de andere uitkomt
Vividness = stimulus moet boven anderen uitkomen, niet door vergelijken met anderen, maar
gewoon omdat die een extreme eigenschap heeft. Salience is meer door vergelijken
Accessibility = toegankelijkheid van de stimuli, hoe makkelijk je het op kan roepen
Memory for people
Social psychology approaches to person memory draw on cognitive psychological theories of
memory and mainly adopt what is called an associative network / propositional model of memory.
Associative network; model of memory in which nodes of ideas are connected by associative links
along which cognitive activation can spread
Onderverdelen in personen/groepen
Personen; gedrag etc. , vooral wanneer mensen die we goed kennen
Groepen; personen in geheel, vreemden indelen die je niet kan inschatten. Mensen die je wel kent,
leg je eigenschappen vast in het geheugen
Social inference
Social inference is the core of social cognition
It addresses the inferential processes that we use to identify, sample and combine information to
form impressions and make judgements.