Social Cognition

1
Social Cognition

• Chapter 8 Shortcomings and Biases in Person
  Perception

2
Person Perception if Motivated

• Need to maintain a positive sense of self.
• May contradict accuracy needs.
• However, data on depressive realism suggests
  thats okay!!
• (1) Unrealistically positive views of the self
  (positive illusions).
• Self-serving bias attributional style where
  success is attributed internally and failure
  externally.

3
Shelters from Negative Info

• Social norms feedback is generally positive
  (this is why mentors are evil!)
• Similarity theory in attraction.
• People tend to interpret ambigous feedback
  positively.
• Ability to denigrate the source of unavoidable
  negative feedback.
• Motivated skepticism tendency to critically
  examine information we dont like but to be
  uncritical of self-affirming information.

4
Cognitive Dissonance Reduction

• Negative information about self is dissonant with
  self image. Reduce by
• Recruiting cognitions that are consistent with
  discrepancy (yes, I failed, but I tried)
• Change ones attitude so that cognitions are no
  longer discrepant (sure I failed, the task is
  impossible!).
• Affirm self through thoughts in unrelated domain.
• Trivialization, denigration, etc.

5
Defensive Pessimism vs. Self-Handicapping

• Defensive pessimism expect the worst and thus
  prepare like mad to avoid it.
• Self-handicapping create and external
  attribution for ones failure.

6
(2) Unrealistic Optimism about the future

• Partially fueled by critical skepticism.
• Danger is that we may risk health!
• Affective forecasting we seem inaccurate at
  predicting impact of events.
• Durability bias seem to believe that impact will
  last longer than it actually does.

7
Implicit Self-Esteem

• Tendency to evaluate things associated with self
  more positively than things not linked to self.
• Letters in name
• Subway game at Yankee Stadium
• People who share birthday.

8
Need for Control

• Heider asserted that we lean toward dispositional
  explanations for control reasons.
• Exaggerated perceptions of personal control
• Illusion of control (dice throwing, lottery tix)
• Self-verification theory
• Evaluate self in ways that verify existing views
  of self (a form of control).
• Just world theory scary if bad things happen to
  good people!

9
Social Identity Theory and Group Biases

• Historical antecedents include Cooleys looking
  glass self and Meads concept of the significant
  symbol.
• Social Identity Theory our self-esteem is linked
  to the social groups to which we belong.
• Group enhancement occurs through attribution
  patterns that mimic the fundamental attribution
  error
• Pettigrew labeled this the ultimate attribution
  error.

10
Ingratiation

• Interesting paradox concerning the dislike of
  ingratiation techniques considering their
  ubiquity and ties to the basic need for
  affiliation.

11
Egocentric Perception

• Metaperception, metacognition an theory of mind.
• Egocentric communication
• We forget to take others perspective and thus
  screw up communication.

12
Embracing Negative Information

• Despite our preference for positive information
  it doesnt mean we ignore negative. In fact.
• Cacioppo and Berntson suggest separate
  neurophysiological structures for positive and
  negative information.
• Negative information is more informative and
  diagnostic.
• We are risk averse unless we expect to lose
  then we go for it!

13
Accuracy

• We arent always wrong!
• The more it matters the more pragmatic accuracy
  stands a chance.
• People are accurate predictors when the persons
  being predicted are confined to important
  relationships and the qualites being judged are
  relevant to those relationships.