SOCIAL COGNITION

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• SOCIAL COGNITION

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Trying to make sense of others

• Social cognition is the study of how people
  understand and make sense of others and
  themselves. (Feldman, 2001)
• Social perception is the process of trying to
  understand other peoples (and sometimes our own)
  intentions, traits, motives, and behaviours.

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• Social perception is a two way process, with a
  perceiver formulating impressions of a target,
  and a target busy managing the perceptual cues he
  or she displays.
• Social perception is thus a dynamic and
  reciprocal process.

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What is perception?

• Perception has to do with the taking in and
  making sense of a vast array of sensory
  information. The perceptive process converts
  sensations into mental representation of the
  experience.
• SO WHAT ARE WE SAYING?
• Just as we perceive things about the physical
  world such as color, sounds and objects, so too
  do we perceive things about our social world (ie)
  people and social situations. The perception of
  people is different from inanimate objects
  because we can manage the impression that a
  person makes of us.

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Three approaches to understanding social
perception

• Person perception approach
• Schema approach
• Attribution approach

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Person perception approaches

• These approaches consider the ways we assess and
  combine the traits of persons to form overall
  impressions.
• They are based on the view that people are
  thoughtful and fairly rational perceivers of
  others, who are able to pull together peoples
  traits to form their on impression

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Impression formation and management

• Impression formation- refers to formulating
  tentative conceptions about others emotions,
  motivations and personalities by gathering and
  interpreting situational and behavioural cues.
• Impression management/or self presentation-
  refers to influencing other peoples social
  perceptions by selectively revealing personal
  information to them it includes both deliberate
  and unintentional attempts to establish, maintain
  or refine the impression others have.

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• Person perception explores the idea that we use
  peoples outward appearance and behaviour to draw
  inferences
• Physical appearance- although we are taught that
  appearance can be deceiving, we act as though we
  have never heard that advice
• Nonverbal behaviour- actions separate from speech

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Nonverbal Communication

• Social perception also involves trying to figure
  out or decode what other peoples nonverbal
  behaviour represents. We use nonverbal cues
  especially to asses someones emotional state or
  their personal motivation.
• Nonverbal cues can be in the form of facial
  expression, posture, eye contact, gestures, and
  other signals and expressive actions.

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HOW DO WE PUT THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE TOGETHER

• Solomon Asch (1964)- stated that we can form
  immediate perceptions or impressions of persons
  when we encounter them. We do not spend much
  cognitive energy or time forming this first
  impression and we tend to maintain it after we
  receive additional information.
• (Do first impressions really last????)
• Aschs ideas about impression was that the whole
  is more than the sum of its parts. In other words
  we perceive things in combination rather than
  perceive each individual part in isolation. This
  theory was referred to as Implicit Personality
  theory.

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Cognitive math- 1 1 doesnt always equal 2

• Asch formulated a hypothesis which stated that
  one particular trait, which he called a central
  trait, could be responsible for impression
  formed.
• Central traits are characteristics that serve to
  organize an impression of another person and
  provide a framework for interpreting other
  information about that person even when other
  traits are stated.

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Order effect in person perception The first
shall be the last?

• Does it matter what you hear first about a
  person?
• 1. intelligent, hardworking, impulsive, critical,
  stubborn, and envious
• 2.envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive,
  hardworking, and intelligent

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• Asch (1946) people who hear the list with the
  more positive attributes first form a more
  positive impression than those who hear it in the
  reverse order.
• In subsequent studies done two concepts were
  coined.
• Primacy effect- this occurs when early
  information has a stronger impact than later
  information.
• Recency Effect- in which later information is
  given more weight than earlier information. This
  especially occurs if there is a large time gap
  between presentation of information and whether
  we are generally attentive to incoming
  information or not. This effect occasionally
  occur.
• N.B. Please read up on Hypotheses put forward
  to explain the primacy and recency effect.

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Schema approach
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• The primary way we simplify and organize
  impressions of others is through schemas.
• Schemas are organized bodies of information
  stored in memory.
• This information assists us in understanding the
  ways the social world operates, and enables us to
  categorize and interpret new information related
  to the schema.

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Social categorization process

• This is a classification of people into groups
  based on common attributes. We tend to form
  impressions through stereotypes. These are fixed
  ways of thinking about people that puts them into
  categories.

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Value of schemas

• They influence the ways we understand and
  interpret information about the social world.
• They help determine how we remember material to
  which we have been exposed previously.
• They influence the inferences we draw regarding
  incomplete information.

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ATTRIBUTION APPROACH
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• Attribution refers to the process through which
  we seek to identify the causes of others
  behaviour, as a way to gain knowledge of their
  stable traits and dispositions.
• It is also about explaining the causes of our own
  behaviour .

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Historical background- Fritz Heider 1944, 1958

• His work The Psychology of Interpersonal
  Relations was regarded as the origin of
  attribution theory in social psychology.
• According to Heider, social perception is
  motivated by the need and desire to see the world
  in an orderly and predictable manner.
• He believed that behaviour is a joint product of
  the actors enduring traits and external forces.
  The fundamental distinction was between
  dispositional and situational causes.

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Dispositional vs. Situational

• DISPOSITIONAL- These are internal traits ,
  motives, moods, aptitude of the actor.
• Dispositional causes- reasons for behaviour that
  rests on the personality traits and
  characteristics of the individual carrying out
  the behaviour.
• SITUATIONAL- These are external characteristics
  of the situation.
• Situational causes- reasons for behaviour that
  rest on the demands and constraints of a given
  social setting.

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THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTION

• Correspondent Inference Theory CI
• Covariation Model

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Correspondent Inference Theory CI

• Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965)
  correspondents inferences are akin to internal
  attributions in Heiders framework.
• The theory covers the more general case of how we
  use a persons behaviour to make inferences about
  enduring personality traits and motivations.
  (Feldman, 2001 pg. 51)
• It examines observers notions of how closely an
  overt behaviour or action represents a specific
  underlying intention,trait or disposition. (pg.
  52).

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• According to CI theory, what determines the
  attributions we make?

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• The degree of choice the actor was perceived to
  have.
• If the actor is perceived as having no choice,
  then the act doesn't reveal his or her
  disposition.

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• 2. Whether the behaviour is expected or typical
  in the situation.
• If the behaviour is atypical or unexpected in the
  situation, then it is more likely to reveal
  something about the actors disposition.

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• 3. Whether the behaviour is socially desirable
• Social desirability is the degree to which the
  society
• encourages and values the behaviour.
• If the behaviour is socially desirable it is also
  less revealing of the actors disposition (unless
  it is unusually desirable).

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• 4. The number of unique consequences or
  noncommon effects associated with the act
• According to Jones and Davis we learn most from
• behaviours of others that lead to unique or
  noncommon
• effects.
• The theory assumes that any behaviour leads to
• a particular set of consequences.
• However, the behaviour that is most helpful in
  forming correspondent inferences are those that
  result in consequences that other, alternative
  behaviours would not have produced. (Feldman,
  2001 pg. 52)

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Covariation Model

• Kelly (1967) defines a cause as that condition
  which is present when the effect is present and
  which is absent when the effect is absent.
• This theory focuses on three sources of
  information

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• Consensus the extent to which others react to
  some stimulus or event in the same manner as the
  person under consideration.
• Do other people laugh at Oliver the comedian?
• YES- high consensus
• NO- low consensus
• Consensus is high when actions generalize across
  other actors with situation held constant.

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• Distinctiveness the extent to which an
  individual responds in a similar manner to
  different stimuli or event.
• Do you laugh at other comedians?
• YES- low distinctiveness
• No- high distinctiveness
• Distinctiveness is high when action fails to
  generalize across situations with actor held
  constant

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• Consistency the extent to which an individual
  responds to a given stimulus or situation in the
  same way on different occasions.
• Do you laugh at Oliver the comedian on other
  occasions?
• YES- high consistency
• NO- low consistency

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Link between the sources and the fundamental
distinctions

• When consensus and distinctiveness are low and
  consistency is high, we attribute behaviour to
  internal causes.
• When consensus and consistency and
  distinctiveness are all high, we attribute
  behaviour to external causes
• When consensus is low, but consistency and
  distinctiveness are high, we attribute behaviour
  to both situational and dispositional causes.

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Biases in Attribution

• The fundamental attribution error
• Self- serving bias
• The actor- observer effect

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The fundamental attribution error

• The tendency to attribute behaviour to enduring
  dispositions, such as attitudes or personality
  traits 
• This refers to the fact that whenever people are
  making attributions about an action, they tend to
  over-emphasize dispositional factors about the
  actor, and under-emphasize situational factors.
• An example is attributing a friend's recent car
  accident to the fact that the friend is a poor
  driver rather than to the fact that another car
  just happened to pull out in front of her. The
  former would be a dispositional attribution the
  latter a situational attribution.

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Self- serving bias

• It is sometimes called a "defensive attribution"
• There is a tendency to attribute our successes to
  internal or dispositional factors but to
  attribute our failures to external or situational
  factors beyond our control.
• This bias accounts for the consistent human
  tendency to take credit for success but to deny
  responsibility for failure
• Example doing well on an exam because of innate
  brilliance or studying hard versus failing an
  exam because it was unfair or tricky, Nikki
  didnt set it fair winning a game because of
  athletic prowess versus losing a game because
  "the referees were blind".

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The actor- observer effect

• The tendency to attribute our own behavior mainly
  to situational causes but the behavior of others
  mainly to internal (dispositional) causes.
• Example If you feel shy in a tutorial, you are
  more likely to attribute this to situational
  factors (the class is too big, the room is too
  open, ect.) than you do for other students (that
  how she/he is. She was born that way. Shes just
  stupid and shes always acting shy)