chapter 2 this multimedia product and its contents are protected under copyright law. the following...

Chapter 2Chapter 2

This multimedia product and its contents are protected under copyright law. The following are prohibited by law:• any public performance or display, including transmission of any image over a network;• preparation of any derivative work, including the extraction, in whole or in part, of any images; • any rental, lease, or lending of the program.

Social Cognition: Thinking about the Social World

Copyright 2006, Allyn and Bacon


Social CognitionSocial Cognition

• Schemas

• Heuristics and Automatic Processing

• Potential Sources of Error in Social Cognition

• Affect and Cognition


Social CognitionSocial Cognition

• Social Cognition—how people interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world


SchemasSchemas

• Schemas—mental frameworks centering around a specific theme that help organize social information

– Schemas influence three basic processes:

• Attention (They affect what is noticed.)

• Encoding (They affect what is stored in memory.)

• Retrieval (They affect what is recovered from memory.)


SchemasSchemas

– Schemas have stronger effects on social cognition when they are strong and cognitive load is high.

– Schemas can result in distortions in how the social world is understood.

– Schemas are resistant to change.• Perseverance Effect—the tendency for beliefs and

schemas to remain unchanged even in the face of contradictory information


SchemasSchemas

– Schemas can be self-fulfilling.

• Self-fulfilling Prophecy—predictions that, in a sense, make themselves come true.

– Therefore, schemas help make sense of the social world, but they can result in inaccurate processing of information.


SchemasSchemas

• What are your thoughts?What are your thoughts?

– What are the costs and benefits of schema use?

– What is an example of how the perseverance effect can lead to serious, negative consequences?

– What is an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy?

• Have you ever been personally affected by it?

– How? What happened?


Heuristics and Automatic ProcessingHeuristics and Automatic Processing

• The complexity of the social world and the limited nature of cognitive processing can result in information overload.

• A strategy to reduce mental effort is the use of heuristics—simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid, seemingly effortless manner.



• Types of Heuristics– Representativeness—making judgments based on

the extent to which current stimuli or events resemble other stimuli or categories

• The similarity of an individual to typical members of a given group results in the judgment that the individual belongs to that group.

• Judgments based on this rule can be wrong because base rates are often ignored.



• Types of Heuristics– Availability—making judgments on the basis of how

easily specific kinds of information can be brought to mind

• Judgments based on this rule can be wrong because the likelihood of events that are dramatic, but rare, can be overestimated.

• This heuristic is related to Priming—which occurs when stimuli or events increase the availability in memory or consciousness of specific types of information held in memory.



• Types of Heuristics– Anchoring and Adjustment—the tendency to

make judgments using a number or value as a starting point to which adjustments then are made

• Judgments based on this rule can be wrong.– Anchors often are arbitrary. – Personal experiences do not serve as good anchors since they

are unique and unusual and therefore inapplicable.


Heuristics and Automatic ProcessingHeuristics and Automatic Processing• Automatic Processing—after extensive experience information

processing becomes effortless, involuntary, unintentional, and nonconscious– Automatic processing versus controlled processing (which is effortful

and conscious) offers gains in efficiency that can be offset by inaccurate processing of social information.

• An example is the automatic activation of stereotypes. • Automatic activation of schemas can lead to automatic effects on social

behavior.



• Controlled versus Automatic Processing: Two systems for evaluating social stimuli– Evidence from social neuroscience

• Different parts of the brain are activated depending on which type of social evaluation people make.

– The amygdala may be involved in automatic (simple good versus bad) judgments.

– Portions of the prefrontal cortex appear to be implicated in controlled evaluative reactions.



• What are your thoughts?What are your thoughts?

– How do the media play a role in the use of heuristics, for example the availability heuristic?

• What are examples of how the media lead people to overestimate the likelihood that certain events will occur?

– As in the case of consumers’ false beliefs that S.U.V.’s are safer vehicles, what are other examples of how the availability heuristic has affected consumer preferences?


Potential Sources of ErrorPotential Sources of Error

• Negativity Bias—people show greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive information– People are faster and more accurate at identifying

threatening facial expressions than positive facial expressions.

– Bias may be explained by evolutionary factors.• Negative information reflects features of the external

world that may threaten safety and well-being.



• Optimistic Bias—predisposition to expect things to turn out well, overall– People believe that they are more likely than others

to experience good outcomes, and less likely to experience bad outcomes.

– Overconfidence Barrier—tendency to have more confidence in the accuracy of judgments than is reasonable


Potential Sources of ErrorPotential Sources of Error– Planning Fallacy—tendency to make optimistic

predictions about how long it will take to complete a task

• It occurs because people tend to focus on the future while ignoring related past events and they overlook important potential obstacles.

– Bracing for loss—an exception to the optimistic bias • When people expect to experience something negative that has

important consequences for them, they tend to become pessimistic, anticipating a negative outcome.

• The desire to brace for a loss, may be an adaptive tendency that helps people protect themselves from bad news.



• Counterfactual Thinking—tendency to imagine other outcomes in a situation than the ones that actually occurred – Thoughts may occur automatically and require

cognitive effort to dismiss.– People who have these thoughts can experience

both benefits (hopefulness) and costs (regret). • Can either boost or depress current moods • Can mitigate the bitterness of disappointments



• Thought Suppression—efforts to prevent certain thoughts from entering consciousness– Involves two processes:

• Monitoring—automatic search for unwanted thoughts.• Operating—controlled, conscious attempt to distract oneself by

thinking about something else.• Rebound effect—occurs when someone is fatigued or

experiencing information overload; result is only monitoring process is working.

– Suppressing unwanted thoughts may actually increase them.– People high in reactance—react very negatively to perceived threats to

freedom—show stronger rebound effect.



• Magical Thinking—thinking based on irrational assumptions– Examples are thinking that one’s thoughts can

influence the physical world and thinking that things that resemble each other share basic properties.

• Failure to take account of moderating variables– People are not good at acknowledging the roles that

moderating variables (factors that may be influencing an outcome) play.



• What are your thoughts?What are your thoughts?– Consider the sources of error in social cognition.

Rank order them in terms of most likely to least likely to cause problems in one’s personal life.

• How were the ranks determined?

– How might counterfactual thinking lead to a sense of hopefulness?

– What are the disadvantages of thought suppression?


Affect and CognitionAffect and Cognition

• The Influence of Affect on Cognition– Moods affect how new stimuli are perceived. – Happy moods can increase creativity. – Happy moods can make people more susceptible

to social influence. – Information that evokes emotional reactions may

be processed differently than other kinds of information.

• Bad moods lead to more systematic thinking, while good moods lead to more heuristic thinking.



• The Influence of Affect on Cognition– Mood-dependent memory—information

remembered while in a given mood may be determined, in part, by what was learned when previously in that mood

– Mood congruence effects—people are more likely to store or remember positive information when in a positive mood and negative information when in a negative mood



• The Influence of Cognition on Affect– Two-factor theory of emotion: the perception of situations

can determine emotional reactions– Activation of schemas containing a strong affective

component can exert powerful effects on current feelings and moods.

– Thoughts can regulate emotions. • The “I never had a chance” effect

– Convincing oneself that “I never had a chance” helps regulate mood by reducing disappointment.

• Yielding to temptations can reduce negative affect.



• What are your thoughts?What are your thoughts?– What are explanations for the different effects that good

moods versus bad moods have on social cognition?• Can the type of bad mood influence the effect that it has on the

processing of social information?– Why or why not?

– What are important things to remember about the cognitive effects of being in a good mood?

– What are cognitive strategies people can use to change their moods?

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