Social Cognition: Thinking About the Social World

1. 3 Social Cognition: Thinking About the Social World

2. How Do Schemas Guide the Way You Think about the World Around You? • Schemas • Cognitive frameworks • Automatically created • Guide us to understanding the world • Can exist for people, places, events, or other stimuli

3. How Do Schemas Guide the Way You Think about the World Around You? (continued) • Schemas are formed on the basis of experience • Prime – to activate a schema through a stimulus • The way a schema is primed affects our attention and processing • Stereotypes are an example of a schema

4. Cognitive Development Theories • Jean Piaget • Cognitive Development Theory • Lev Vygotsky • Sociocultural Theory

5. Jean Piaget and the Role of Schemas Cognitive Development • Jean Piaget used five key concepts to explain how cognitive development occurs: • Schema • Assimilation • Accommodation • Equilibrium • Equilibration

6. Jean Piaget and the Role of Schemas Cognitive Development • Schema • A cognitive structure that is used to used to identify and process information • It operates like a mental index file where each index card represents a different category (or schema) of information • Once acquired, individual schemas (or categories) can be accessed for future reference.

7. Jean Piaget and the Role of Schemas Cognitive Development • Assimilation • The cognitive process that occurs when a child uses an existing schema to classify a new stimulus (or piece of information) • This process influences the growth of an individual schema but it does not change the change the schema

8. First Schema for Tree

9. New Stimulus for a tree

10. Schema for Cat

11. New Stimulus for Cat

12. Schema for Caterpillar

13. New Stimulus for Caterpillar

14. Jean Piaget and the Role of Schemas Cognitive Development • Accommodation • The process allows a child to modify an existing schema to accommodate a new stimulus (or piece of information) • If modification does not work, the child will create a new schema

15. Jean Piaget and the Role of Schemas Cognitive Development • Equilibrium • Piaget used this term to describe the rapid mental process that occurs when assimilation and accommodation work together to create increasingly more adequate schemas for the understanding of the world • This mental process suggests a steady and comfortable state

16. Jean Piaget and the Role of Schemas Cognitive Development • Equilibration • On occasion, the nature of the new stimulus (or information) does not submit to the equilibrium process and disequilibrium occurs • This uncomfortable state forces the child to make their cognitive structure more adequate • Once this is done, the child shifts back to assimilation; it is this process that Piaget calls equilibration

17. How Do Schemas Guide the Way You Think about the World Around You? (continued) • The trouble with schemas • The confirmation bias • Information that supports a schema is attended to • Information that contradicts a schema may be filtered out

18. Stereotyping • A stereotype assumes that all members of a group share some common feature • Perseverance effect • Once a schema is formed, it is hard to change • It may be difficult for people to "let go" of these types of schemas

19. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy • Predictions that cause themselves to come true • When a person "becomes" the stereotype that is held about them • Selective filtering • Paying attention to sensory information that affirms a stereotype • Filtering out sensory information that negates a stereotype

20. Automatic Versus Controlled Processing • Automatic processing • Unconscious • Effortless and on-the-fly • Controlled processing • Takes careful thought and effort

21. Automatic Versus Controlled Processing (continued) • What parts of the brain are involved? • Automatic processing • The limbic system – emotional processing • The amygdale – emotional learning and fear conditioning

22. Automatic Versus Controlled Processing

23. Automatic Versus Controlled Processing (continued) • What parts of the brain are involved? • Controlled processing • The prefrontal cortex • Involved in higher-order thinking and evaluation • May be involved in automatic processing as well

24. Automatic Versus Controlled Processing

25. Automatic Versus Controlled Processing (continued) • Automatic processing helps us deal with the enormous amount of information in our world • Sometimes we are "forced" into controlled processing • When a situation does not match our schemas • When we need to think with extra care and logic

26. How Effective are Mental Shortcuts? • Heuristics • Simple rules that reduce mental effort • Mental shortcuts • Allow us to make decisions or judgments quickly

27. The Availability Heuristic • Our assessment of how likely an occurrence is based on how easily an example of that event can be recalled • Tversky and Kahneman (1973) • Which are there more of – words starting with N or words that have N as the third letter? • Is your answer based on the examples you can immediately call to mind? • Which is safer? Travelling by plane or by car?

28. Death and the Availability Heuristic

29. The Representativeness Heuristic • Our assessment of how likely an occurrence is based on how much it resembles our expectation for a model of that event • Tversky and Kahneman (1974) • "Deciding the probability that object A belongs in category Bﾉ based on how closely A seems to represent B."

30. The Representativeness Heuristic • The base rate fallacy • An error caused by drawing a conclusion using the representativeness heuristic without considering the base rate

31. The Availability and Representativeness Heuristics

32. The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic • We use a number as a starting point on which to anchor our judgment • Have you ever bought a car? • What did you expect to spend? • Was the sticker price above or below your estimate? • Did your final purchase price change based on these data?

33. The Framing Heuristic • Decision-making based on the framework in which a situation or item is presented • Have you ever bought ground beef? Which would be more tempting? • "92% fat-free" • "92% lean" • "Contains 8% fat"

34. What are other Sources of Bias in Social Cognition? • The illusion of control • The perception that uncontrollable events are somehow controllable • Do you have a "lucky shirt" that you wear to help your favorite football team win each Sunday? • The negativity bias • Attending to and remembering only negative information, thus impacting future evaluations

35. The Optimistic Bias • Believing that bad things happen to other people and that you are more likely to experience positive events in life • How often do you think about being unemployed someday?

36. The Optimistic Bias (continued) • Do you think you will be in a car accident this weekend? Let’s hope not! • The overconfidence barrier • The belief that our own judgment or control is better or greater than it truly is

37. Counterfactual Thinking • Imagining different outcomes for an event that has already occurred • Is usually associated with bad (or negative) events • Can be used to improve or worsen your mood

38. Counterfactual Thinking (continued) • Upward counterfactuals • “If only I had bet on the winning horse!" • "If only I’d cooked the turkey at 350 instead of 400 degrees!" • "I would have won if I’d bought the OTHER scratch-off lottery ticket!"

39. Counterfactual Thinking (continued) • Downward counterfactuals • "I got a C on the test, but at least it’s not a D!" • "He won’t go out with me but at least he didn’t embarrass me in front of my friends." • "My team lost, but at least it was a close game and not a blowout!"

40. Marketing and Counterfactual Thinking • How do advertisements (television, billboards, magazines, radio) influence our decisions?

41. The Effect of Mood on Cognition • The mood-congruence effects • We remember positive details of an event if we were in a good mood • We remember negative details of an event if we were in a bad mood • Mood dependent memory • Our mood at the time of learning is a retrieval cue for remembering that information • If you are calm and happy when you study, how should you be when you take an exam?

42. The Effect of Mood on Cognition (continued) • Moods, particularly good ones, can cause us to over-rely on heuristics • This can lead to more decision-making errors!