Social cognition

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Social cognition

• How we think about the social world

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People as everyday theorists
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Outline

• Schemas and their influence
• -types, why, and which
• -self-fulfilling prophecy
• Mental Strategies and shortcuts
• -Heuristics
• -the availability heuristic
• -the representativeness heuristic
• Automatic and Controlled Thinking
• -counterfactual thinking

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schemas

• What are schemas?
• - Mental structures people use to organize their
  knowledge about the world
• Different types of schema
• -self-schemas
• -relational schema
• Their influence

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Answer the following

• Why do you think Pats heart was pounding at the
  end of the story?
• Where do you think Pat and Jamie went after they
  heard the noise?
• What do you think Pat and Jamie especially
  noticed while looking at the house?
• Write down everything you can remember about the
  house itself.
• Write down everything you can remember about what
  was in the house.

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Carli (1999)
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• Then why do we have them?

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Which schemas?

• Accessibility
• -def the extent to which schemas and concepts
  are at the forefront of peoples minds and are
  likely to be used
• Two kinds chronic or temporarily accessibility
• Priming
• - The process by which recent experiences
  increase a schemas accessibility

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Priming example
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How people make schemas become true

• self-fulfilling prophecy

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bloomers study (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968)
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• -e.g., university students have schemas about
  what potential dating partners are like.
• -e.g., mothers have schemas about what premature
  babies are like, etc.

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Mental strategies

• Judgmental heuristics
• Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments
  quickly and efficiently

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Availability heuristic

• we rely on how easily different examples of
  schemas come to mind.
• The availability heuristic is a mental rule of
  thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease
  with which they can bring something to mind
• e.g., doctors and diagnoses

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• Do people use the AH to make judgments about
  themselves?

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• Representative heuristic
• -a mental shortcut whereby people classify
  something by how similar it is to a typical case
• Ex

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• In company Orange, a computer software firm,
  there are 20 office staff (administration,
  secretarial, and sales) and 80 programmers/analyst
  s.
• Melissa Jones works for company Orange. She is a
  tall, attractive women, age 28, and has worked at
  Orange for 5 years. She knows how to touch type,
  communicates well with people, and loves her job
  at Orange. Her hobbies are crossword puzzles,
  painting and dancing.
• What is the likelihood that Melissa Jones is a
  programmer/analyst?
• 0
• 10
• 20
• 30
• 40
• 50
• 60
• 70
• 80
• 90
• 100

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Automatic vs. Controlled thinking

• Automatic processing
• Controlled processing
• -counterfactual thinking mentally changing some
  aspect of the past

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Imagine that you get an exam back in class

• How satisfied would you be with this grade?
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very unsatisfied
Very satisfied