shishirsubba21@gmail.com COGNITION PROCESS OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD AROUND US

2. shishirsubba21@gmail.com COGNITION PROCESS OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD AROUND US

3. COGNITION Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought." Cognition as a single word that means a group of mental processes which include processes like attention, sensation or awareness, perception, memory, remembering, reasoning, judgment, etc. for making decision.

4. COGNITION Social cognition is the study of how people process social information, especially its encoding, storage, retrieval, and application to social situations. In other words, it means how people make sense of themselves and others.

5. COGNITION It focuses on how people think about other people and how they think they think about others and themselves. It is higher mental processes that are engaged while social situations or dealing with social information.

6. COGNITION and Process of Understanding the World The outside world and both physical and social objects are the result of subjective construction of reality that involve both the physiological/neurological process as well as psychological processes.

7. Social Cognition Making social judgments is more difficult • Available information is incomplete, ambiguous, or downright contradictory. • The core question of social cognition research is “How people use all this information to arrive at a coherent judgment?

8. Social Cognition Do we see the world, the people, the group, accurately and form it unbiased? Is there error in social cognition” Can we logically put the information in organized way? There are logical and correct ways to put information together to make wise decision but we depart in quite predictable ways.

9. FACTS on our understanding People are not always accurate in understanding people, explain their action and predict the future behavior. Other times, there is accuracy. Like Sherlock Holmes, people, with bit of information, elaborate and construct the profile of other people. Many times they are correct and many times they are not.

10. Social Cognition • Social cognition is often marked by apparent errors and biases • People's social inferences often depart in quite predictable ways from logic and accuracy • The information that is stored in the memory, the context, the situation and the people one come to contact helps to organize and make inferences about the social object

11. Social Cognition PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFERENCE Social inference is composed of several steps Gathering information Deciding what information to use (Biases) Integrating the information Making judgment of social stimulus

12. Prior provide structure and meaning of behavior but also lead to collect inaccurate information. Using Prior expectation Social Cognition Making judgement of social stimulus or event Failing to notice biases in information and usually the mood guide the memory Deciding what information to use GATHERING INFORMATION Putting information together Automatic evaluation, use short-cuts, self-serving process

13. Prior expectation Faulty expectation: Failure to recognize how prior expectations bias the collection of information Overrule consideration of information altogether Rejecting unsupporting (prior expectation) information Using Prior expectation Social Cognition GATHERING INFORMATION Deciding what information to use Putting information together

14. Suppose: A college acquaintance of yours, a tense, serious, humorless fellow, works for the company you are considering and finds it very much to his liking. 1. GATHERING INFORMATION Prior Expectations • Everyone in the company are stiff and uptight • Selective collection of information consistent with this prior expectation • Finding prospective coworkers a little rigid or formal when meeting them • Formality with stranger is quite normal in the first meeting however one may conclude with prior expectation as stiff and rigid • Prior expectations are very helpful in interpreting the information, provide structure and meaning however sometimes it causes to draw inaccurate inferences.

15. According to Nisbett & Ross (1980): Four conditions are especially problematic • Faulty expectations: Letting false belief and expectation guide one’s collection of information will probably lead one to incorrect answers • Second condition under which prior expectations can be problematic occurs when the social perceiver fails to recognize how prior expectations bias the collection of information. • Overrule consideration of information altogether: Prior expectations can create problems when they overrule consideration of information altogether and consequently the decision. • Rejecting unsupporting (prior expectation) information: if information is inconsistent with what to believe, one will scrutinize it and collect only those that support the belief (Ditto, See pansky, Munro, Apanovitch, & Lockhart, 1998).

16. Using Prior expectation Social Cognition Small sample Statistical Versus Case History Information Impact of negative information Deciding what information to use (Bias) GATHERING INFORMATION Putting information together

17. 2. BIASES IN THE INFORMATION • Collection of information for decision is must • Judgments made on the basis of limited information can distorted judgement – selected friendly sample and evalution • (Hamill, Wilson, & Nisbett, 1980), vidiotape viewing of an interview with a prison guard. • (1) Typical prison guard, (2) Very different from most of the guard, (3) no information was provided to the sample • Half the participants saw prison guard appeared a highly compassionate, concerned individual. • other half saw a tape that portrayed him as in inhumane, macho, cruel person. • Participants asked what kinds of people become prison guards. participants' inferences about prison guards were unaffected by whether they had been told that the prison guard was typical.

18. Small sample (Bias) • Inferences based on very little information are also problematic. A small sample of information can actually produce a very biased picture (Schaller, 1992). • Collecting informaiton from 2 workers who seem pleasant enough, and working with 20 coworkers, there is the possibility that these 2 are not typical of the larger group. • Sometimes people forget that they are dealing with very little information, and they make confident inferences nonetheless (Nisbett & Kunds, 1985).

19. Statistical Versus Case History Information (Bias) • Statistic information represent population while Case study only represent a few, very specific people • Statistical information is dull while case history is colorful and it often has more influence on their judgment (Tylor & Thompson, 1982). • Statistical information is objectively more accurate. E.g, a dynamic employee may reach to high post within short period – the history (bias) can influence the impress and ignore more appropriate statistical information • One generally rely on statistical information for persuasive argument and strong conclusion • When more engaging anecdotal case history evidence is present, people often ignore relevant statistical evidence and are instead persuaded by case histories (Beckett & Par, 1995).

20. Impact of negative information • If encountered one or two negative pieces of information during data collection – from disgruntled employee one would attach some significance to this observation, more than it was worth. This is a common finding in research on judgments and decisions. • Negative information attracts more attention than does positive information (Pratto & John, 1991). Consequently, negative information is weighted more heavily than are positive aspects when judgments are made (Coovert & Reeder, 1990). • In studies like forming impressions of others to evaluating positive and negative information to reach a decision/judgment, negative information figures more prominently (Taylor, 1991).

21. Judgments of Covariation : All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy Illusory correlation members of minority groups are often seen as having attributes stereotypically associated with their group because of their membership Impact of negative information Using Prior expectation Social Cognition Deciding what information to use (Bias) GATHERING INFORMATION Putting information together

22. 3. INTEGRATING INFORMATION Process of bringing information together and combining it into a social judgement • Standards for combining information into a judgment, computers typically outperform human decision makers (Dawes, Faust, & Meehl, 1989). Humans are swayed by stereotype that influence the information they collect Judgments of Covariation Many of our beliefs involve statements about the relationship between things - "Blonds have more fun" - implies not being Blond is having less fun. Technically, such idea of association is called JoC.

23. 3. INTEGRATING INFORMATION Illusory correlation According to Klauer & Meiser (2000) several factors produce illusory correlation. • Meaning of two item is believed to go together, thus, a member of minority group is stereotypically perceived as having attributes of group.

24. Putting information together Deciding what information to use Gathering information Social Cognition Using Prior expectation Prior expectation helps to provide structure and meaning of behavior but also lead to collect inaccurate information. Information gathering will be selective and consistent with the prior expectation It leads to collect the information what you want to collect (e.g., rigid, formal coworkers) One believes what one wants to believe It hinders the collection of neutral information

25. Putting information together Deciding what information to use Gathering information Social Cognition Using Prior expectation Using mood to guide memory Drawing on prior expectations and decide what is relevant Failing to notice biases in information Letting personal goals or motives influence information choice Being swayed by case history information Finding out what you want to find out (i.e., motivated inference) Using too little information Using the wrong information Combining information erratically

26. Deciding what information to use Impact of negative information: It attracts more attention than positive information and weighted more heavily. Happy mood leads to positive inferences. Bad mood lead to short term gain but long term lose. Mood-congruency memory – remember material that fits with current mood state Negative mood make pessimistic estimate Gathering information Social Cognition People tend to be bias in selecting information despite warned before. Small sample: Based on few people’s version which does not represent the group. Statistical information represents the larger view yet emotional, in-depth information draws our attention Using Prior expectation

27. Putting information together Deciding what information to use Gathering information Social Cognition Using Prior expectation Automatic evaluation - using shortcut Self serving information –e..g, divorce rate and predictability

30. APPROACHES TO STUDY SOCIAL COGNITION

31. Social Cognition Three approaches to study social cognition Person Perception Approaches Attribution Approaches Schema Approaches

32. Major approaches to Social Cognition Approach Major question Major guiding addressed by perceiver principle used by perceiver _______________ __________________ ______________ Person Perception How traits are combined Rational to form an overall combining of impression? Trait inform.. Attribution What are the causes of Naïve behavior? Scientist model Schema How is the meaning of Cognitive behavior and traits miser or interpreted? Motivated model

33. PERSON PERCEPTION

34. Person Perception Person perception approaches consider the ways we asses and combine the traits of other persons to form overall impression

35. An approach that consider the ways we assess and combine the traits of other persons to form overall impressions.

36. This perspective assumes: “People are thoughtful and fairly rational perceiver of others, they notice others traits and put them together to make a consistent framework by which we can understand others...”

37. People assess and integrate others' traits and characteristics to form an overall impression.

38. Person PerceptionFACTS People form impressions of others quickly on the basis of minimal information and go on to impute (assign) general traits to them People pay special attention to the most salient (prominent) features of a person, rather than pay attention to everything. We notice the qualities that make a person distinctive or unusual We organize our perception by categorizing or grouping stimuli. Rather than see each person as a separate individual, we tend to see people as members of groups – the people wearing white lab coats are doctors, even though each may have features that make him or her quite different from other doctors.

39. Person Perception We tend to look at Roles: role helps to know the traits. Roles are informative, rich, and well articulated, summarize the information Physical cues: Appearance, behavior, qualities gives detail impression. Dressing shows characteristics of the person. Salience: cues that opposes with others. Figure and Ground. Traits: behavior is observe to find traits. Based on traits we develop implicit personality theory. Central traits: a trait associated with person’s many other characteristics. E.g., warm. Categorize: Social categorization e.g., gender, race, social class, influences perception and tend to make a part of some group or category.

40. Physical attractiveness, face configuration, Judge by clothing, eyeglasses, jewelry, etc. (large eyes, small nose is veiwed as powerlessness Physical appearance Person Perception: How we assess and combine the traits to form a impression of other people? Facial expression, basic emotions (happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, etc. no mask and leakage process), display rules of social interaction, body language Nonverbal Behavior PERSON PERCEPTION Cognitive data and organization of it – central trait that serve to organize the other descriptive pieces of data (Ash, 1950). Negative data is weighted more heavily than positive data Cognitive math Order effect PRIMARY EFFECT (early information has a stronger impact than later information) and RECENCY EFFECT

41. How we assess and combine the traits to form a impression of other people? NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR FIRST IMPRESSION Appearance, Physical attributes, facial expression, etc COGNITIVE MATH Central trait approach Cognitive algebra approach • ORDER EFFECTS • Primacy or Recency effect

42. FIRST IMPRESSION (use of outward appearance and behavior to draw inferences)

43. Physical appearance • Non-verbal Behavior • Body Language

44. PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

45. PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

46. NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR

47. NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR An action that displays inner feelings. People can accurately identify the facial expressions of basic emotions i.e., happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, fear (Feldman & Rime, 1991). Display is universal and can be identify them across culture. Variation of display is found to exist:

48. NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR

49. NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR Display rules greatly facilitates social interaction though various factors may reduce the accuracy of interpretation of others non-verbal behavior Despite a tendency to mask the true feeling, some indication is given called LEEKAGE. The voice, eye movement, smile, leave some marks of true feelings.

50. BODY LANGUAGE