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INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 12
Social Cognition and
Emotion
At the end of this Chapter you
should be able to:

Learn the importance of perceiving and
understanding others

Learn the importance of perceiving and
understanding ourselves

Understand the Attitudes

Learn about Emotion
Perceiving and understanding
others
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Social Cognition: How we perceive and think
about ourselves and each other; how we
process and make meaning about our
encounters

One focus: why did someone else act as
they did? We make attributions about
others’ actions – and about our own
Attribution
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Kelly: early social psychologist
– According to Kelly… we specifically look for
ways that events co-vary: “cause and effect”
– Or: Causal attributions
2 types of attributions
– Situational attributions and Dispositional
attributions
Attributional styles also vary by culture
– E.g., individualistic and collectivistic
Fundamental Attribution Error

In an individualistic culture, the most common
error made is the fundamental attribution
error; a bias to explain others’ behavior by
attributing it to their disposition, our own to our
situation

In collectivistic cultures: focus on group actions /
contextual cues to explain behavior
Actor-observer difference: Observer who watched from
behind Actor A believed that B controlled the conversation,
and the observer who watched from behind Actor B
thought the reverse. The observer who watched from
midway between the two believed that both were equally
influential.
Person Perception and Cognitive
Schemas
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Cognitive schemas: shortcuts when limited
information is available
Schemas: operate when trying to explain why
people behave the way they do
Implicit theories of personality: our schemas for
- How we remember other people
– How we perceive them
– How we interpret what they have done
Stereotypes
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One type of schematic thinking
– Stereotypes often are used when we think
about identified groups of people: e.g.,
Greeks, women, old people, etc.
Origins of stereotypes: explicitly and
implicitly communicated to us by others
Used more often when we have little or no
exposure in daily life to that group
Effects of stereotypes:
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Self-fulfilling prophecies
– We often pick up on others’ expectations for
us (dictated by a stereotype) and behave in
that way
Stereotype threat
– When a stereotype about us is made salient,
in a “performance” situation, we often feel
under threat – which holds performance down
– Poor performance then may confirm
stereotype
Combating prejudice

“Robbers cave” experiment (Sherif, 1966):
– When groups compete, prejudice and hostility
grow
– When groups collaborate/cooperate to
achieve an important task, prejudice and
hostility decrease
– To achieve this:
 Status must be held equal for all members
 Contact must be sustained for a long time
Perceiving and understanding
ourselves

Social psychology: also concerned with how
we perceive ourselves
– We are “actors” in the drama of the social
world
– We seek to understand our own behavior
as well
Attitudes
Attitude: belief, feeling, predisposition
to act in a certain way
 Cover a wide range of topics about
which we may feel quite strongly:
nuclear power, abortion, bilingual
education, etc.

Attitude Formation

Occur as a result of…
– Classical conditioning
 Advertising for expensive car always
accompanied by beautiful
surroundings/people
– Operant conditioning
 If a reward given for behavior, attitude for
that behavior will change
– Observational learning
Attitude Change: Being Persuaded
by Others

Central route to persuasion: we attend to the
message, the message-bearer, and make
decisions accordingly

Peripheral route to persuasion: context in
which information is given is capable of
determining our attitude
Attitude Change: Being Persuaded by
Ourselves: Cognitive Dissonance
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Festinger & Carlsmith (1959): Under different
conditions of reward, people justify behavior with
different explanations
“Insufficient justification”: the notion that we try
to justify our own behavior; if we cannot justify
it, we experience dissonance between beliefs
and actions
We try to resolve that “cognitive dissonance”
through the process of bringing attitudes in line
with our behavior
Emotion
Emotions encompass: changes in
behavior, changes in subjective
experience, and changes in physiology
– Emotions: briefer and more targeted than
moods
Theories of emotion: developed for over a
century
Common sense notions: we feel an emotion
and then take action: feel fear, then run!
–
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James-Lange Theory of Emotion
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Posited the reverse:
– Emotional experiences cause emotional
behavior
– See a bear, run, “feel” our behavior as fear
only after we run
– Support: facial feedback theory
 The configuration in which we hold our
facial muscles influences the emotion
we then claim as our experience
James Lang theory: We see a dangerous object
(attacking bear); this triggers a bodily response
(running, pounding heart), and the awareness of
this response is emotion (fear).
Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion
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Critique of James-Lange: our bodily
experiences happen too slowly to be the
source of our emotions
Cannon-Bard: physiological and experiential
responses occur simultaneously
Both are triggered by changes in brain-state
Cannon-Bard theory: A stimulus (such as a bear)
triggers changes in the brain, and this brain
activity then causes changes in both physiology
and experience
Functions of Emotion
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Help set up the body for reaction to
threat/danger: “fight or flight” reaction and
the accompanying emotion of fear
Help recover from stress
Aid in marking important memories
Signal social intent/connection
Emotion Regulation

Two primary forms:
– Cognitive reappraisal: decrease emotional
response by re-interpretation of stimuli
– Suppression: Decrease in emotional
reaction by decreasing strength of facial
expression or denying other behavior
appropriate to that emotion (e.g., refusing
to frown or cry when sad)