Social Cognition

1. Social Cognition • How important are first impressions? • Do expectations guide behavior? • Just how well can we expect to know our partners?

2. First Impressions • We start judging people even before we meet them • Preconceptions • Stereotypes • Male/Female • Beautiful/Plain • Young/Old • Urban/Country

3. Primacy Effect – tendency for the first information we receive about others to carry special weight in our impressions of them • Initial judgments influence our interpretations of later information • “Hanna” experiment (Darley & Gross, 1983)

4. What about face-to-face interactions? • Confirmatory Bias – we are more likely to seek new information about people that confirm what we already think • Participants were asked to find out in the person they were paired with were introverted or extraverted (Snyder, 1981) • Participants asked questions to get the responses they desired (e.g. What do you dislike about loud parties?) • Participants did this even when offered $25 to be as accurate as possible • This leads people to feel overconfident in their beliefs about others

5. The Power of Perceptions • We often search for the ideal romantic relationship but ultimately end up with something less. • How do we stay satisfied?

6. Positive Illusions • One simply considers his or her partner’s faults as less significant than others might see them • This carries the risk of disillusionment • But if we acknowledge faults and merely interpret them benevolently, we may more willing to commit to the relationship (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996b) • Idealized images are associated with greater satisfaction • We may also revise our ideas of the “ideal” partner

7. Attributions • The explanations we give for why things do or do not happen • internal vs. external • global vs. specific • stable vs. unstable

8. State of the Couple’s Relationship Attributional Pattern Partner’s Behavior AttributionsMade Internal Stable Global Positive Relationship Enhancing Happy External Unstable Specific Negative External Unstable Specific Positive Distress-Maintaining Unhappy Internal Stable Global Negative

9. Actor/Observer Effects • We tend to offer different explanations for our own behavior than we do for our partner’s behavior • Fundamental attribution error – people are aware of the external causes of their own circumstances but make internal attributions about others’ behavior

10. Self-serving biases • People take credit for their successes while avoiding blame for their failures • People expect others to be self-serving but do not see themselves as such • People usually think arguments are their partner’s faults • People who cheat tend to see their own affairs as less damaging than their partner’s infidelity

11. Other Relationship Beliefs • Romanticism – the belief that love should be the most important basis for choosing a mate • Individuals who score high on romantic beliefs tend to experience more love, satisfaction, and commitment in their relationships (Sprecher & Metts, 1999) • Many of the questions seem idealistic – positive illusions?

12. Disadvantageous Beliefs • Disagreements are destructive • “Mindreading” is essential • Partners cannot change • Sex should be perfect every time • Men and women are different • Great relationships just happen • (Epstein & Eidelson, 1981)

13. Expectations • Self-fulfilling prophecies – false predictions that become true because they lead people to behave in ways that make the erroneous expectations come true

14. Dave forms an expectancy about Caroline. Caroline interprets Dave’s behavior. Dave acts. Dave interprets Caroline’s response. Caroline responds, usually in reciprocal fashion. Snyder et al. (1977), U. of Minnesota study Curtis & Miller, (1986), Liked and disliked strangers

15. Impression Management • We try to control the information others receive about us • Women will eat less on a date with an attractive man than they would with their girlfriends • Men and women will edit what they say about themselves to appear compatible with attractive members of the opposite sex • e.g. There’s Something About Mary

16. Four strategies of impression management: • ingratiation – we do favors, pay compliments, mention areas of agreement • self-promotion – we recount our accomplishments • intimidation – portraying oneself as ruthless or dangerous to get others to do our bidding • supplication – presenting oneself as inept or infirm to avoid obligations

17. Impression management in close relationships • We tend to go through less trouble to maintain favorable images for our partners over time • We know they love us, so there is less motivation to win their approval • We also just get lazy – it takes work to manage impressions and we relax among those we know well

18. How well can we expect to know our partners? • Married partners perceive each other more accurately than dating partners or friends • People who are highly motivated to understand each other perceive each other more accurately • Extraverted and more sociable partners are easier to be accurately perceived than introverted partners

19. People who are intelligent and open-minded are better judges of others • People may be inaccurate on purpose when faced with threatening information • People may try to change their partners to fit their own perceptions