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Social Cognition

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Definition: How we think about social relations and the things that influence those relations ... The need for social cognition is often thought to have been a ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Social Cognition


1
Social Cognition
  • Geir Overskeid
  • http//on.to/geir

2
Social cognition What are we talking about?
  • Definition How we think about social relations
    and the things that influence those relations
  • This definition comes in many variations
  • The need for social cognition is often thought to
    have been a driving force behind the evolution of
    human cognitive abilities

3
Two important concepts
  • Intuition (System 1)
  • Reasoning (System 2)

4

  • From Kahneman (2003)

5
Another important concept
  • Accessibility, not to be confused with
    availability.
  • All aspects of a situation, a thing, a person
    tend not to be equally accessible to an observer.
    What is easily accessible often becomes the basis
    for judgments and decisions that are mainly
    intuitive (Syst. 1)
  • Most decisions are mainly intuitive

6
Accessibility
7
The fundamental error of attribution
  • In explaining the behavior of others, we tend to
    overestimate the importance of the actors stable
    dispositions and underestimate the power of the
    situation
  • The fundamental attribution error has been found
    wherever researchers have looked, but seems
    somewhat weaker in East Asia
  • The exception Explaining ones own behavior. Her
    the pattern may be the other way around.

8
Intuitive judgments
  • Intuitive judgments leave little room for
    uncertainty People often feel strongly that
    this is the way it is.
  • Normally, only one alternative is represented
  • Heuristics form the basis of many intuitive
    judgments

9
Heuristics
  • Heuristics are often useful, but can cause bias
    and lead to irrational behavior
  • Behavior is rational when it is efficient in
    reaching the actors goal
  • We often overestimate the degree to which we
    engage in reasoning. To a great extent, choices
    are based on heuristics and intuition.

10
An example Representativeness
  • The heuristic known as representativeness may
    strongly influence our assumptions regarding a
    persons group membership, or as to whether she
    resembles a stereotype. Let us look at Linda
  • Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and
    very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a
    student, she was deeply concerned with issues of
    discrimination and social justice, and also
    participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
  • Is Linda a bank teller? Is she a feminist and a
    bank teller?

11
Priming - two modern classics
  • John Bargh et al. (1996)
  • Old age is unconsciously primed by way of a
    scrambled sentence test. Result Participants
    walk more slowly.
  • White participants who have subliminally seen the
    face of a young Black male become more hostile
    than those who have subliminally seen the face of
    a young White male.

12
Compensation
  • If people feel they should compensate for
    irrelevant influence, they often compensate too
    strongly. Some examples
  • Priming (contrast)
  • Mood
  • Liking
  • When theres nothing to compensate for

13
Other aspects of intuition
  • A photograph may be sufficient basis for a good
    appraisal of personality
  • Other peoples facial expressions may affect us
    unconsciously
  • Lacking this kind of intuition may increase a
    persons risk of having social problems

14
Nosce te ipsum
  • People often arent very good at understanding
    the causes behind their behavior
  • The basis we have for understanding our own
    behavior may not be much better than our starting
    point for understanding others

15
Consciousness as cause
  • Simply thinking about an action before it takes
    place may make people feel they caused it
  • Even willed processes may not be governed by
    conscious will

16
What can be unconscious?
  • Most things
  • John Bargh assumes that more 99 per cent of human
    behavior is unconsciously controlled
  • Consciousness probably exists primarily for
    planning and simulation

17
What can be unconscious?
  • Among other things
  • Causes
  • What affects my mood? Why did I fall in love? How
    did I get that idea?
  • Processes
  • How did I solve that problem? Why does a
    situation look the way it does to me?
  • Social learning
  • I thought I learnt A, but it was B instead, and
    also C.

18
It takes one to know one
  • We overestimate the extent to which other people
    understand or think the way we do
  • Exception Self-serving bias. We tend to see our
    strengths as unique. Our weaknesses, on the other
    hand, we see as more common than they really are.
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