Download Introduction to Social Cognition

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Aim of social cognition is to understand the
social nature of being human
Area of social psychology that seeks to
understand how humans come to understand
the social world and their position in it

Social psychology – the attempt to
understand how the thoughts, feelings,
and behavior of individuals are
influenced by the actual, imagined, or
implied presence of others
› Ex. Individuals in a crowd of strangers vs. a
group of friends
› Ex. Individuals in a chat-room vs. in face-toface interaction


The label “social cognition” was developed in the
1970s
Today, social cognition is the dominant perspective
in North American social psychology
› Social: the people, groups, and events which are studied
› Cognition: the thought processes of individuals in various
social situations
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
Research and theories in social cognition come from
earlier work on perception, attribution, and attitudes
Methods and concepts largely come from cognitive
psychology
› In other words, social cognition came about when social
psychologists started using theories from cognitive
psychology to explain social phenomena

There are many definitions of social cognition and no
single-sentence definition exists that would satisfy all
researchers

Important features of social cognition
› Social cognition emerged from the information-processing
perspective in cognitive psychology
› Social cognition approach is based on the assumption that the
concepts that are important for our cognitive representations
and processes (i.e. the way we think about the world) are
important to understanding all human responses, regardless of
whether those responses are social or nonsocial in nature
 In other words, the way we think and reason about the world
determines all human behavior, whether the behavior is social or
not
› What differs between cognitive psychology and social cognitive
psychology is the phenomena being studied
Social cognition assumes that “real-world
issues” (ex. stereotypes) can be understood
in terms of basic cognitive processes
 The topic of study in social cognition is
people, and how people think about other
people

› Importantly people are not “things”
› Cognitive psychologists might investigate how
people think about things such as frogs, rocks,
cars, etc., but social cognitive psychologists
study how people think about people

Important differences between people and
things are critical to understanding the “social”
in social cognition
› People intentionally influence their environment
› People are perceived and also perceive their
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›
›
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environment
The self is a subject and an object
Social objects may change upon being the target of
cognition
The accuracy of cognitions about people is harder
to assess than cognitions about non-social objects
Social cognition involves social explanation
Social cognition is shared

People think about other people more than any other
topic
› And probably more than about all other topics combined
› Think about it, what are most TV shows about?

Some theories suggest that people think about other
people so much because it is evolutionarily beneficial
› The human brain evolved for solving problems in the physical
environment (ex. Making tools and finding shelter)
› But in reality, we actually spend relatively little time thinking
about these things and instead think about other people
› This implies that humans evolved to rely on each other for
information and help

The human mind is designed to participate in society and
this means its primary job is dealing with other people
› Ex. Birds get their food and shelter from trees in their environment,
most people get their food and shelter from other people
 Thus, it makes sense that birds probably think mostly about their
environment and predators while people mostly think about each
other

In this class we will discuss 3 main perspectives
› Social cognition: the way we think about other people
› Social identity: an analysis of identity based on group
belongingness
 People are conceptualized first as social beings, based on the
social groups to which they belong and how these group
memberships facilitate a sense of who the individual is, how they
should behave, and what they should believe
› Social representations: focuses on the individual as part of social
groups, but more emphasizes how group memberships shape an
individual’s consciousness
 Social representations refer to common-sense theories and
knowledge people have about the social world
 Explores not only what these common-sense theories are and how
they differ between social groups, but also how these shared
theories affect how individuals in social groups view the world in
similar ways
Discussion of 2 studies in social cognition
can help us understand how this approach
helps us understand real-world issues
 Macrae, Milne, and Bodenhausen (1994)
 Studies were designed to examine the
cognitive processes involved in stereotyping

› A common belief was that thinking
stereotypically frees up cognitive resources for
other tasks
› These studies attempted to investigate the
assumption that stereotypes are essentially
energy saving devices
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Task 1: Participants were asked to form an impression
of several target persons from trait terms presented
on a computer screen
Task 2: Participants also listened to an unrelated
passage played on a tape recorder which they
would be asked about at the end of the experiment
› The passage contained facts about the geography and
economy of Indonesia (subjects that participants knew
nothing about)

The target person’s name was presented on the top
half of the computer screen and a trait word on the
lower half
› 4 target persons total, each was described throughout the
experiment by 10 adjectives
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For half of the participants, the target
person was also introduced with a
category label
› Either doctor, artist, skinhead, or estate
agent
Ted is a
Doctor
Larry is a
Skinhead
OR
Ted
Larry
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For each target person, half of the ten
adjectives were stereotype consistent
and half were stereotype neutral
Ted is a
Doctor
Larry is a
Skinhead
Honest
Aggressive
Ted is a
Doctor
Larry is a
Skinhead
Passive
Observant
Ted
Honest
Ted
Passive
Larry
Aggressive
Larry
Observant
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Result 1
› Participants who were given category labels
for the target persons recalled twice as
many stereotype-consistent adjectives as
the participants who were not given the
labels
› The two groups of participants did not differ
in recall of the stereotype-neutral adjectives

This suggests that the stereotypes were
facilitating either the encoding or recall
of stereotype-consistent information
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Result 2
› Participants who were given the stereotype
label remembered more facts about
Indonesia than did those participants not
provided with the labels
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Suggests that the stereotype functioned
to free up some of the participants’
cognitive resources so they could better
attend to the second task
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Study 2: repeated the procedure of the first
experiment but presented the stereotype
labels to participants subliminally
› Done by showing the label for 30 milliseconds (ms)
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Results
› The effect of the stereotype labels was still apparent
 Importantly, even though participants had no conscious
access to the label (i.e. the didn’t know they saw it)
› Participants who were exposed to the stereotype
label remembered more of the targets’ traits and
more information about Indonesia than did
participants who were not exposed to the stereotype
label
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The results of study 2 indicate that:
› Activating the stereotype facilitated encoding and
recall of information about the target person
› And, freed up cognitive resources so that more
information about the 2nd task could be attended to
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Importantly, participants had no conscious
awareness of the stereotype label
Using these 2 experiments as examples of
research in social cognition, we can better
understand the core principles that define how
social cognition helps us understand real-world
issues
A central and defining methodology used in social
cognition is experimentation
 Often, the sorts of experiments conducted in social
cognition research rely on the controlled presentation of
stimuli to participants via a computer
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› Ex. The presentation of target names, adjectives, and stereotype
labels
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Often the stimuli are presented for a brief time so that
participants cannot be aware of the stimuli, in order to
observe the effects of those stimuli on participants’
responses
› Ex. The 30 ms presentation of the stereotype labels in experiment 2
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The effects of the stimuli are often judgments made about
other stimulus, or the time taken to make a judgment about
a stimulus
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Experimentation is a significant point of
difference as well as similarity between
the social cognition tradition and the
other 2 traditions
› Social identity: often, but not always, uses
experimentation, but a different style
› Social representation: sometimes uses
experimentation, but usually in combination
with other methods
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Perceptual-cognitivism – the view that “reality” is
directly perceived by our senses and that this input is
then worked upon by internal cognitive
computational processes in the mind
These internal computational processes produce
outputs in the form of mental representations
› These representations are stored in the mind as templates
that can be used to understand and make sense of the
world
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Therefore we must have some sort of internal
cognitive constructs
› Categories, schemas, attitudes, attributions, and
stereotypes
› All of which are thought to represent particular aspects of
our psychological reality and experience
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Mental representation is a central tenet of social cognition
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These mental representations are learned and developed over
time through our direct and indirect perception and experience
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Categories, schemas, attitudes, attributions, identity, and stereotypes are
thought of as mental structures that organize our knowledge,
evaluations, and expectations about particular social objects in the
world around us
They allow us to interact with the world without having to treat every
object individually
They help:
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Guide what we attend to and what we ignore
How we encode information and experience in memory
What we remember and what we infer
How we feel and respond in specific situations and interactions
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How we categorize a particular stimulus – how we represent it cognitively
in our mind – ultimately shapes our attitudes, attributions, and behavior
towards the object
Categorization is a critical process within social cognitive models
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Social cognitive researchers have
demonstrated unconscious operations in
several different ways
› The first comes from the logic of experimentation
 One group of participants were exposed to a loud noise
outside the laboratory and a second group was not
 The group who heard the noise behaved differently
than the group who did not
 When the group who heard the noise was asked to give
explanations for their behavior, the loud noise was never
mentioned
 Thus, the noise unconsciously affected their behavior,
because they were not aware that it had
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A second way research demonstrates unconscious
operations is through subliminal perception
› Recall the 2nd study (Macrae et al., 1994)
› Participants had to form an impressions of target persons
while also engaging in a demanding task (listening to facts
about Indonesia)
› When a category label was provided for the target
person, participants performed better on the demanding
task and recalled more stereotype-relevant information
about the target person
› Importantly, this effect occurred even when the category
label was presented for only 30 ms, which is so brief that
participants could not have been aware of its presence
› Thus the category label influenced cognitive operations
unconsciously
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A final way research employs unconscious operations is through
the concept of automaticity
›
A cognitive process or effect is considered to be automatic if it satisfies
one of several criteria
 It must not require conscious intention, attention, or effort
 It must be resistant to intentional manipulation
 It must happen beyond any awareness
Automatic processes and effects happen rapidly, and do not use
cognitive processing capacity
› If a process or effect fails to satisfy these criteria, it is said to be controlled
›
 Controlled processes are susceptible to conscious intervention, require
cognitive effort, and are able to be brought into consciousness
›
Macrae et al. (1994)
 Participants’ performance on the 2 demanding tasks was aided by the
presentation of a category label
 Whether they were aware of the label or not, its effect on subsequent
recall of information about the target person and about Indonesia was
automatic
 It did not require conscious intervention, attention, or effort
 The effects of the label on cognitive processes were beyond awareness
 The effect of the category label did not require cognitive processing
capacity
The social cognition perspective has adopted a number
of metaphors to understand how people perceive and
make sense of the world around them
 Information-processing model
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› Views the person as an information processor, like a computer
› People’s cognitive processes have been compared to the ways
in which computers receive, recognize, store and program
information
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The person as a naïve scientist
› Suggests that people attempt to make sense of the world
around them in the same way a scientist would
› People observe systematic variations in the relationships
between specific situations/conditions and consequent
behaviors (like cause and effect relationships)
› People make inferences about the nature of other people
involved in these cause and effect situations
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The person as a cognitive miser
› This view contends that thinking scientifically is very strenuous,
and that if people were to think scientifically all they time they
would be quickly overwhelmed by the sheer amount and
complexity of social stimuli to be attended to
› Rather than pay attention to all the stimuli that are constantly
bombarding them
 People ignore a lot of information
 Make quick inferences about information
 Chunk stimuli into discrete categories and then think categorically
rather than in a step-by-step fashion
 Generally take whatever cognitive shortcuts they can find to
reduce the vast amount of the information-processing tasks of
everyday life
› In this view, people are cognitively lazy, expending the minimum
amount of cognitive energy and resources to get by
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The metaphor of the cognitive miser goes a long way in describing the
nature of much of our thinking
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But, There are many occasions on which we do devote considerable energy to
thinking deeply about people and things, when we do analyze information in a
step-by-step way rather than categorically, and when we expend a lot of cognitive
effort
To accommodate this social cognition has adopted the metaphor of
the motivated tactician
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In this view, the considerable cognitive resources people possess can be used in
any situation requiring us to process information, BUT we only do so when we are
motivated to
In other words, we can be both cognitively lazy and cognitively active, and switch
between the two comfortably depending on our context-specific motivations
Ex. In the Macrae experiments, when participants were busy working on trying to
comprehend information about Indonesia, they formed impressions of target
persons by using category labels that provided other information about those
people
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They performed better on the demanding task when they had labels to use than when
there were no such labels
They also remembered more stereotype-related characteristics about the target
persons
In terms of the metaphor, participants appeared to have limited mental resources to
devote to the different tasks, and they reduced the total demand on their limited
resources by using the category labels provided about the target persons
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The social cognitive approach is a foundational approach
within social psychological theory and research
addressing how we understand the world around us and
our place in it
Social cognitive research is experimental, and focuses on
mental processes within the individual
Emphasis is placed upon the structure of knowledge into
mental schemas, which direct attention, facilitate
encoding of information into memory, and facilitate recall
of information
Schemas are activated, often unconsciously, by situated
environmental stimuli
Activation makes it more likely that other related schemas
will also become activated, and also makes the activation
of other competing schemas less likely
The question of identity is one of the most central questions
facing people throughout their lives
 It is important to distinguish between personal identity and social
identity

›
Personal identity – the qualities and characteristics we see in ourselves
that are strictly individual
 Ex. “I’m bored,” “I worry a lot,” “I speak with a southern accent,” and “I am
highly strung.”
›
Social identity – the part of an individual’s self-concept that comes from
the individual’s knowledge of his/her membership in a social group (or
groups) together with the value and emotional significance of that
membership
 Ex. “I am a psychology student,” “I am American,” and “I am in group A in
this experiment.”

Importantly, social identity is NOT just another aspect of
individual identity
And the authors of your text book believe that all identity is social, and
that the notion of a solely personal identity is fictional
› But, we’ll leave that argument to the “experts”
›
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Social identity normally refers to an individual in relation to a
social category, social position, or social status
›
Our social identities are normally attached to, and derive from, the
groups to which we belong (these are called membership groups)
But we can also identify with groups to which we do not belong
(called reference groups), and with particular individuals
 A test of social identity

Social identity is always attached to some social reference, usually a
social group
› If your feelings, thoughts, self-esteem, behavior, etc. are affected by the
actions, fortunes, etc. of a social referent, then you likely identify with the
referent
› Ex. Even though I no longer live in North Carolina, I was still excited when
the Carolina Panthers drafted Cam Newton, and have negative feelings
about their losing record for the past few seasons
›
 Thus I must still identify myself as a fan of the Panthers…

Social identity theory (SIT) is explicitly a theory
of intergroup behavior
› Intergroup behavior – interactions among people are
governed primarily by their respective group
memberships and not by any individual qualities they
may display

Intergroup behavior is different from
interindividual behavior
› Interindividual behavior – individuals interacting with
one another solely on the basis of their respective
qualities as individuals
 Just as the authors of your text book believe that no
identity is strictly personal, they similarly believe that no
behavior is strictly individual

Before SIT, the dominant theory of intergroup behavior was
realistic conflict theory (RCT)
› RCT is based on the premise that intergroup conflict is always
based upon real competition between groups over scarce
resources
› Although there is ample evidence to support this premise, there
are examples where real competition is neither a necessary nor
a sufficient cause of intergroup conflict

To investigate the unique individual effects of each of the
many possible causes of intergroup conflict researchers
create a “minimal” group in an experimental laboratory
› Minimal groups have none of the characteristics that normally
characterize what it is to be a group
 Such as real social and economic relations, interaction among
ingroup members, structural divisions within the group to create
different roles, interdependency among ingroup members etc.

The aim of the original minimal group
experiment was to create a “baseline”
experimental condition in which there
was no intergroup differentiation
› Without intergroup differentiation individuals
cannot ‘define’ themselves as being part of
a group
› Thus, the effects of each characteristic on
intergroup differentiation could be
investigated by being introduced one at a
time
To create a minimal group, experimental groups were
created in which group members were alone and
anonymous
 Subjects were 14 and 15 year old schoolboys in a state
school in Bristol, England
 Each subject estimated the number of dots which were
projected quickly on a screen in successive clusters
 After doing so, subjects were randomly placed in one of
two groups

› The “underestimators” and the “overestimators”
One experimenter pretended to “score” the subjects’ answer
sheets while a 2nd experimenter announced that there would be
another experiment
 2nd experiment
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›
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Involved rewards and penalties
Used the existing 2 groups of under and overestimators
Participants were seated in a cubicle and asked to complete a series of
“payoff” matrices in a booklet
 The booklet consisted of 18 payoff matrices
 Each matrix had 2 rows of numbers
 The participant’s job was to choose a vertical pair of numbers one from
each row to give to 2 people
Member 26 of
the
overestimators
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Member 17 of
the
underestimators
1
3
5
7
9
11
13
15
17
19
21
23
25
› Participants were told that on each matrix they were
going to give points to 2 people
 Sometimes the 2 people would be from the same group
as the participant, sometimes from the other group, and
sometimes 1 person would be from each group
› At the end of the experiment, the number of points
given by all participants to each person would be
added up, and that person would receive an
amount of money proportional to their number of
points
› To eliminate self-interest, participants never had the
opportunity to give points to themselves

What is of interest is what happens when the 2
point recipients belong to different groups

Suppose that a participant had been told he was an overestimator and
was given this matrix
Member 26 of
the
overestimators
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Member 17 of
the
underestimators
1
3
5
7
9
11
13
15
17
19
21
23
25
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He knows that one of the recipients is also an over estimator, making
overestimators the ingroup
He also knows that the other person is an underestimator, making this
the outgroup
If he follows a strategy of maximizing joint profit he would choose the
19:25 response
If he follows a strategy of maximizing ingroup profit he would also
choose the 19:25 response
He could also follow a strategy of maximum difference in payoff to the
two groups and choose the 7:1 response

For this matrix
Member 26 of
the
overestimators
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Member 17 of
1
3
5
7
9
11
13
15
17
19
21
23
25

Participants
who
were
told
they
were
overestimators
on
the
average chose the 12:11 response
underestimators

What does this mean?
› Participants did not follow a joint profit strategy, or a strategy to
maximize ingroup profit, or a strictly “fair” point allocation
strategy
› Participants seemed to resolve a conflict between a fairness
strategy and maximum ingroup profit strategy by choosing the
fairest response which also allowed the ingroup to receive more
points than the outgroup
 Even though doing so meant that the ingroup member received
fewer points than if the participant had followed a maximum joint
profit strategy
Later research shows that these results are
obtained when participants are
categorized according to preferences for
abstract paintings and even when the
categorization is made by randomly tossing
a coin
 Research has also shown that the results are
not just due to something about English
schoolboys

› These results have been obtained children from
other countries and with adults from the U.S. as
well as Switzerland
It appears that these results are a genuine intergroup
phenomenon
 But, how can these results be explained?

› Realistic conflict theory cant explain them
 There is no real competition between the groups (participants
could easily have followed a maximum joint profit strategy)
 These minimal groups lack all the characteristics normally
associated with groups
 Participants did not know each other, had no interaction among group
members, and there was no intragroup structure
 The groups are truly minimal, in a sense there are actually no groups at all
 Yet participants still acted as though the groups were real for
them
 They gave points in a way that would create positive intergroup
differentiation, some fairness between groups but still favoring their ingroup

SIT was developed largely to account for this minimal
group phenomenon

The social world is divided up into many social
categories
› Some are large: class, race, religion, ethnicity, gender
› Some are smaller and more localized: hobby groups,
minor political groups, groups created by an experimenter
in a laboratory
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For any person, some of these categories will be
membership, or ingroups and some will be outgroups
Most, but not all, social categories stand in power or
status relation to one another
Social categorization – the process of identifying an
individual as belonging to a particular social group
The simple act of categorization has
important cognitive consequences
 Accentuation effect suggests that when
stimulus objects are categorized, similarities
among members of one category are
perceived as greater than they actually
are, and differences between members of
different categories are perceived as
greater than they actually are

› In others words, intercategory differences and
intracategory similarities are accentuated
The accentuation effect has been demonstrated in the
judgment of lines as well as in the judgment of social stimuli
 One study presented subjects with 8 lines of different lengths and
asked them to estimate their length
 When the 4 shortest lines were always presented with the letter A
and the 4 longest lines were presented with the letter B

›
Subjects overestimated the difference between the A lines and the B
lines and also overestimated the similarity of the lines in each group
A
B
The accentuation effect also operates in the judgment of social
stimuli
 One set of studies asked white subjects in the U.S. to rate the
degree of “negroness” of a series of pictures of faces

Subjects imposed their own classification on to the faces so that some
were judged to be “white” and others were judged to be “black”
› Once the pictures were classified the similarities among the faces within
the category and the differences between categories were
accentuated
›
Other studies of have found similar categorization effects with
ethnicity
 Thus, the basic, and probably unavoidable, perceptual process
of categorizing the social world can lead to the formation of
stereotypes
 BUT, not all categorizations produce accentuated judgments

›
The accentuation effect only occurs when the categorizations are salient
(i.e. significant) to the person judging the stimuli and when the
categorizations are useful to the person in the judgment task

To sum up categorization
› The most elemental part of SIT is the simple and
obvious proposition that the social world is perceived
in categories which are socially constructed
› We each belong to some categories and not to
others
› In the minimal group experiments:
 The categorizations available for participants are,
literally, minimal
 Any meaning the categorizations have for participants,
who always are assigned to one or the other category,
is imposed by the participant themselves
 Despite being empty categories, the act of
categorization reliably produces systematic effects on
perception and behavior


Identity is central to SIT (obviously)
One of the most basic categorizations (perhaps the most basic)
is the distinction between self and other
›
And the more social distinction between us and them
›
Failure to enact this motive successfully is often considered
psychologically unhealthy
Development of the distinction between self and other is an
early and necessary part of socialization
 A powerful motive for this distinction is the motive to think the self
is positive, to have a positive evaluation of identity, or to have a
positive self-esteem


This motive also operates at the social level, in addition to the
individual level
There is as strong a motive to evaluate one’s social identity positively as
there is to evaluate one’s personal identity positively
› This motive for positive social identity facilitates much social behavior
› And, is expressed as a tendency to evaluate one’s ingroup memberships,
the social categories one belongs to, positively
›

A person’s social identity is made up of the vast
number of social identifications that person has with
various social categories
› Not all those identifications are primed, or activated, or
salient, at any one time
 Ex. When I am home in North Carolina with my family, my
identity as a professor isn’t usually activated, primed, or
salient
› Rather, social identity at any one time is made up of a few
identifications selected to suit the particular social context
 Ex. When I’m at home in N.C., my social identity of a
daughter, sister, and granddaughter are activated; but, in
class my social identity of a professor is activated, and
when at my house in M.I. my social identity of a pet owner
is activated
There will be more about identity later in
Chapter 6… for know it’s enough to say…
 Knowledge of social identifications on its
own is not sufficient to form an evaluation
of those identifications

› For a person to know he or she is Australian, or a
psychology student, or a parent, is not enough
for that person to evaluate those category
memberships

Evaluation of category memberships can
only be made through social comparison


In evaluating self on any dimension, an implicit
social comparison with others is necessary
Social comparison is also necessary for
evaluation of social identifications of self with
social categories
› Any particular social category membership can
facilitate a positive social identity only through social
comparison between the ingroup and some relevant
outgroup
 Ex. The value of being Australian, or psychology student,
or a parent, can only be evaluated through comparison
with other relevant social categories
 You wouldn’t evaluate yourself as a parent by comparing
yourself to Australians



How people evaluate personal and social
attributes through social comparison has been
theorized and studied since the 1950s
The theory of social comparison processes
forms the backbone of this last part of SIT and
has undergone major changes over the years
The original version of the theory was
formulated by Leon Festinger (1954)
› It was largely a theory of how people evaluate the
self and its qualities against some “objective”
criterion or other
› When such objective criteria are unavailable, people
turn to social comparison – comparison with others –
for evaluative standards
Festinger distinguished between comparison of abilities
and comparison of opinions
 He suggested that the motives driving comparisons of
each were different

› Motive for comparison of abilities: accuracy and selfimprovement
› Motive for comparison of opinions: gaining social consensus

For abilities, Festinger proposed a universal drive upward
› A person selects someone with a greater amount of the ability in
question to compare themselves to
› The principle of similarity states that, all other things being equal,
a person will select a person who is more similar to themselves to
compare themselves to, rather than someone who is more
dissimilar
› Combining the universal drive upward with the similarity principle
leads to the prediction that, when evaluating abilities, a person
selected as a comparison other will be someone who is only
slightly better than the comparer
Festinger believed that the motive behind all social comparisons
is the desire for accurate self-evaluations
 However, a wealth of research since the 1950s has shown that
Festinger’s belief is WRONG
 Rather, people appear to engage in social comparisons mostly
for reasons of self-enhancement

The proposition that people compare upwards to evaluate their self and
their abilities conflicts with much research on self-esteem
› This research suggests that people selectively attend to information
which bolsters their own self view
›
 Basically, we only pay attention to information in our environment that
backs up how we view ourselves, and tend to ignore other information
Self-evaluation and self-enhancement are usually conflicting
and competing motives; but, people usually follow a selfenhancement strategy
 This is the position taken by SIT, and is the cornerstone of SIT’s use
of social comparison

›
In other words, in the view of SIT, people compare themselves to others to
make themselves feel better

To make a social comparison between an
ingroup and outgroup two decisions must
first be resolved
› 1st the ingroup member must decide what
dimension should be compared
 This is known as the problem of dimension selection
› 2nd the ingroup member must decide which
outgroup of the many available should be
chosen as the comparison other
 This is known as the problem of referent selection

How and why these 2 problems are solved
have plagued social comparison theory for
4 decades


Regardless of how people engage in social
comparisons between ingroups and outgroups, it is
the consequences, rather than the mechanisms, of
comparisons that are most important to SIT
The consequences of social comparison are also
most important to the individual doing the
comparing
› Which can be seen in the ways people select referent
targets and dimensions
 We select according to the anticipated positive outcome
of the comparison

SIT proposes that people are motivated to achieve a
positive social identity, just as they are motivated to
achieve a positive sense of self-esteem

Most of the time, social category memberships, on
their own, can neither enhance nor degrade social
identity
› Category memberships are only of value in relation to
other categories
› Only the relative status positions of an ingroup and an
outgroup on a comparison dimension of value to the
ingroup member affect the social identity of that member

SIT proposes that there is a motive to evaluate group
memberships positively so as to enhance social
identity
› And, that this positive differentiation of ingroup from
outgroup is achieved through comparison of the ingroup
to an outgroup

An important difference between the SIT approach to
social comparison and Festinger’s approach:
› Festinger described comparison processes at an individual level
 Individuals compared to individuals, where individual
characteristics are evaluated and self-esteem and selfknowledge are affected
› SIT describes social comparison processes at a group level
 Where group memberships are evaluated and social identities are
shaped and bolstered
When making comparisons, especially when evaluating
the fairness of outcomes, people often engage in
comparisons between an ingroup and some referent
outgroup
 Group behaviors are more strongly linked to intergroup
social comparisons (comparisons between one’s ingroup
and an outgroup) than they are to interindividual
comparisons (comparisons between individuals)


Another important difference between
Festinger’s approach and SIT regards the core
function of social comparison
› In Festinger’s theory, people as social comparers, are
treated as “isolated social atoms,”
 Viewing people as unrelated to one another and free to
engage in one-directional comparisons with any other
isolated social “atom”
› SIT regards people as being embedded in a social
network and engaging in multidirectional
comparisons with related (not disconnected) others
 Also, social comparisons are made (or avoided) to
preserve social relationships
 SIT emphasizes the social processes, consequences, and
functions of social comparisons

Recall that, in minimal group experiments,
participants acted on the basis of a trivial or
even random classification by discriminating
between an ingroup and an outgroup
member
› This is a problem for realistic conflict theory (the
theory before the development of SIT)
› Participants in a minimal group experiment are
confronted with an almost empty situation
› They are assigned to one of two groups on the basis
of some trivial or random act, they are separated
from anyone other than the experimenter, and they
are asked to give points to other participants who
are identified only by a number and their group
membership

What meaning does such an empty situation
have for these participants?
› SIT proposes that the participants recognize their
group membership
› They are also motivated to enhance their social
identity
 The situation is so minimal and empty that there is only
one way to do this: Participants can only enhance their
social identity by striving to differentiate their group from
the other group and by elevating their group relative to
the other group
 Doing so puts their group in a superior position relative to
the other group, and hence, through social comparison,
their own group becomes more positive, which in turn,
and through their identification with that group,
enhances their own personal social identity
SIT does not claim to be able to generalize the findings of
experiments with minimal groups to situations of intergroup
conflict and hostility between “real” groups
 In real world groups, the history of relations between
groups as well as the economic and social positions of the
conflicting groups must be considered, at the very least
 However, the principles of SIT are claimed to support all
intergroup contexts
 Minimal groups are not the same as real groups

› Participants in minimal groups are free to enhance their social
identity by discriminating the points between ingroup and
outgroup members
 There is nothing in the experiment to stop them from doing so
› Members of real groups, with real status and power differences
between groups, are not so free to discriminate
 It is not so easy, and often not possible at all, for members of
minority groups in society to assert their group’s superiority by
inventing flattering comparison dimensions or comparison others


It is important to note that intergroup differentiation is
a complex and multifaceted phenomenon
Generally, it can occur as either ingroup favoritism or
as outgroup derogation
› But these two aspects are not necessarily tied closely to
one another
 That is, ingroup favoritism does not necessarily also entail
outgroup derogation, and vice versa


Ingroup favoritism can vary with strength of ingroup
identification, ingroup size relative to the outgroup,
and perceived group threat
Either or both ingroup favoritism and outgroup
derogation can represent prejudice
› But we’ll talk more about prejudice later in Chapter 7




SIT is based on the interpersonal-intergroup dimension
But how and why is a situation perceived by a person
to be “interpersonal” or “intergroup” or in between?
This question formed the basis for the development of
self-categorization theory (SCT)
In SCT, social identity and personal identity are not
different forms of identity
› Rather, they represent different forms of self-categorization

Self-categorization can occur on 3 broad levels:
› Superordinate level – defining self as part of humanity
› Intermediate level – defining self by particular group
memberships
› Subordinate level – defining self in individual, personal
terms

Because self-categorization is context specific, and self can be
categorized in individual or group terms, the distinction between
personal and social identity originally made in SIT is no longer
justified
›

As self-categorizations become more social, the self is said to
become depersonalized
›

Instead of being 2 distinct types of identity, personal and social identities
represent different levels of self-categorization (the personal is social and
the social is personal)
This is meant in the sense that the self-categorization is relatively less
based on personal characteristics
When the self is categorized it is also stereotyped
Stereotyping is usually thought of as applied to outgroups in which
outgroup members are perceived as having the same traits or qualities
because of their group membership
› SCT suggests that self-perception operates in the same way – the self is
judged stereotypically on the basis of self-categorizations
› Self-stereotype – to perceive identity between self and the ingroup
›

SCT is not meant to supersede SIT, it is an extension of
it
› Developing the construct of identity and the process of
categorization
› Reconceptualizing the distinction between personal and
social identity
› Providing a mechanism for predicting when and how
people will self-categorize in one way or another


SIT is primarily a motivational theory and SCT is
primarily cognitive
SCT has been applied to several different traditional
problems in social psychology, such as stereotyping,
group polarization and crowd behavior, and
leadership

Summary
› Social identity theory provides a systematic account of the
links between:
 Personal and social identity
 Interindividual and intergroup behaviors
› Focuses on the nature of social categorization, especially:
 Categorization into ingroups and outgroups
 The primacy of social identity and positive social
differentiation
 Social comparison processes as the main means for
evaluating the value of social identifications
› Self-categorization theory is a development that extends
SIT into a fuller examination of the cognitive processes
underpinning the context dependent nature of personal
and social identities


Seeks to understand individual psychological
functioning by placing the individual in his or
her social, cultural and collective environment
Views psychological experience as being
mediated and determined by the individual’s
belongingness to a group of others who share
similar views, experiences, and a common
environment and language
› Ex. Individuals in the U.S. mostly speak English and/or
Spanish, live in the same country, believe in
democracy and freedom of speech, and have
similar experiences (e.g. getting a drivers license at
age 16)



Starts with the premise that the individual is
primarily a social being whose existence and
identity are rooted in a collectivity
Therefore, this theory attempts to understand
how social processes influence the social
psychological functioning of individuals and
groups
However, social representations theory does
not view the individual and society as separate
› Rather, it sees both as influencing each other
› The individual is a product of the society and is also
able to influence the society and evoke change in it

Social representations – the ideas, thoughts,
images and knowledge which members of
a collective share
› Social representations are the stock of social
knowledge which people share in the form of
common-sense theories about the social world
› They are made of both conceptual and pictorial
elements

Social representations shape our beliefs,
attitudes, and opinions, and are the
processes by which we build social reality

Further explanation of social representations
› Concern the contents of everyday thinking and the
stock of ideas that gives coherence to our religious
beliefs, political ideas and the connections we
create as spontaneously as we breath
› They make it possible for us to classify persons and
objects, to compare and explain behaviors and to
objectify them as parts of our social setting
› While representations are often to be located in the
minds of men and women, they can just as often be
found ‘in the world,’ and can be examined
separately
Social representations range from broad ideals shared by
a nation (ex. freedom) to smaller knowledge structures
shared by subgroups (ex. specific religious beliefs)
 Through shared representations social groups establish
their identities and come to differentiate themselves from
other groups within society
 The role of representations is to conventionalize objects,
persons and events

› In other words, to locate them within a familiar context

Representations are general and informative
› They are determined by tradition and convention and impose
themselves in our thinking

Often we are unaware that social representations are
affecting our thought
› We prefer to view our thoughts as ‘common sense’

The study of social representations has
been viewed as related to the study of
common sense
› By social representations we mean a set of
concepts, statements and explanations
originating in daily life in the course of our
communications with others

What makes social representations social is how they
are created and generated
› Through social interaction and communication



They construct our understanding of the social world
and allow interaction between individuals in groups
sharing the same representation
Social representations theory views the study of social
communication and interaction as the most
important topic of study in social cognition
Representations are flexible and dynamic
› Once created, representations circulate, merge, attract
and repel each other, and give birth to new
representations, while old ones die out

Two processes are central to the generation of
representations: anchoring and objectification
› These are the processes by which unfamiliar objects,
events, or stimuli become familiar
› The purpose of all representations is to make the
unfamiliar familiar

People make sense of new things by giving
them meaning
› Representations guide the process of attributing
meaning to new things
› One of the main ways people search for meaning of
something new is to refer to familiar things


Anchoring – the classification and naming of
unfamiliar objects or social stimuli by comparing them
with the existing stock of familiar and culturally
accessible categories
When we classify something new, we compare it with
a “prototype” or model, and develop our
perspective of the new stimulus by determining its
relationship to the model or prototype
› When we compare, we either decide that something is
similar to a prototype
 Meaning we generalize certain features of the prototype
to the unfamiliar stimulus
› Or, we decide that something is different
 Meaning, we differentiate between the object and the
prototype

The process of naming something new is significant
›
›
It gives that which is being named meaning
It locates it within a society’s “identity matrix”
›
Because, by classifying or categorizing, we are, in essence, revealing our
conceptual frameworks, or “our theory of society and human nature”
Only after a stimulus has been named, given meaning, and
located in a society’s identity matrix can an object actually be
mentally represented
 Thus, representations are reflected in the way we classify and
allot categories and names to stimuli


By classifying and naming an object, we are not only able to
recognize and understand it, we are also able to evaluate it
We can evaluate the stimulus as positive or negative, normal or
abnormal
› Thus, naming a stimulus is related to a social attitude
›

Objectification – the process by which unfamiliar and
abstract notions, ideas and images are transformed
into concrete and objective common-sense realities
› Refers to the human tendency to simplify complex
information into a core or “figurative nucleus” that consists
of pictorial (iconic) and cognitive elements

When we objectify a stimulus we are transforming it
from something vague and imprecise into a concrete
concept image in our minds
› Many scientific and technological concepts undergo this
type of transformation as they become used in everyday
lay discourse
› Ex. Freud’s psychoanalytic concepts, such as “complexes”
and “neuroses” became commonly used by lay persons
to explain their own and others’ behavior

The process of objectification transforms
concepts into objective individual
entities
› So, abstract concepts such as “mind” or
“ego” are perceived by us as physical
entities
› And, “complexes” and “neuroses” are
perceived as objective conditions that afflict
people

The diffusion and popularization of scientific concepts
throughout society is occurring at a rapid rate through the
mass media

The increasing proliferation of scientific “knowledge”
throughout all sectors of society has made the lay public
“amateur” scientists, economists, psychologists, doctors, etc.
Ordinary people with little expert training discuss issues such
as the greenhouse effect, damage to the ozone layer, stressrelated ailments, familial and relationship problems, cancer
prevention diets, etc.
Most of this knowledge becomes an integral part of mass
culture and, ultimately, what will become regarded as
“common sense”



There are 3 external processes by which knowledge is
transformed into common sense or a social representation
›
Personification of knowledge: links the idea, theory, or concept to a
person or group
 Ex. Freud and psychoanalysis or Einstein and the theory of relativity; the
association of an idea with a person gives the idea a concrete existence
›
Figuration: the process by which an abstract notion is embodied or
dominated by a metaphorical image so that, again, what is conceptual
is made more accessible or concrete
 Ex. Media coverage of the first Gulf War (1990-1991) generated graphic
metaphors such as the description of hostages in Iraq as Saddam Hussein’s
“human shields”
›
Ontologizing: the process by which a verbal or conceptual construct is
given physical properties
 Ex. Concepts such as “mind” or “ego” become construed as material
phenomena

These 3 processes contribute to making highly specialized and
technical knowledge more accessible to the lay community so
that communication about this knowledge is able to occur

The original social representations theorist
Moscovici, suggests there are 2 distinct and
different types of reality
› Reified universe – the world of science
 Where scientists subject reality to experimentation
 The laws of science govern this reality in which human
thinking takes a logical and rational form
› Consensual universe – the world of common sense
 Comprised of social representations which are created,
used, and reconstituted by people to make sense of
everyday life
 Moscovici argues this reality is the one social
psychologists should be interested in: how ordinary
people create and use meaning to make sense of their
world

In distinguishing between the forms of thinking in the reified
and consensual universes, Moscovici is not suggesting that
everyday thinking (as opposed to scientific reason) is full of
distortions, biases, illusions, and misperceptions
› A central tenet of the social cognition tradition is that human
perception and cognition is ‘faulty’ or ‘inferior’ to scientific
reason
Rather, Moscovici suggests that by understanding the
underlying social representations that constitute common
sense, social psychologists will begin to understand the
social glue that derives from shared values and beliefs
 Also, scientific thought is not immune to social
representations

› Scientists also use social representations to construct their reality
and give meaning to their world


Making the distinction between thought in the reified
and consensual reality does emphasize the
importance of expert knowledge in creating
contemporary social knowledge
Increasing scientific knowledge makes the reified
universe very important in the modern world
› The scientific knowledge in the reified universe is
transformed in the consensual universe so that it is more
accessible
› The transformed version of knowledge then contributes to
the stock of common sense knowledge people use to
understand their social reality
› The reduced and simplified form of complex ideas and
theories is called a figurative nucleus made up of images
and concepts that are easier for laypersons to
comprehend

Example: cerebral hemispheric specialization
› The idea that the left and right hemispheres of the human brain
specialize in different tasks originated in neuroscience
 The left hemisphere specializes in logical, rational, and analytic
thinking
 The right hemisphere specializes in more subjective, intuitive and
emotional functions
› Through mass media and popular press most laypersons are now
aware of this cerebral dualism
 This notion has been used by the popular press to explain a wide
range of opposing cultural tendencies in human behavior (ex.
Femininity vs. masculinity, rational vs. intuitive thought, etc.)
 How many times have you heard someone say something about being
“right-brained” or “left-brained”
› The split brain view has become so widely known that it has
become part of common sense knowledge: a social
representation
A social representation is an organized,
coherent, socially shared set of knowledge
about an object or domain of objects
 This implies that there is a structure

› The set of knowledge that constitutes the
representation consists of a range of elements,
some more important than others to the whole
representation
› Abric (1976) was the first to distinguish between
the central core and the periphery of a social
representation

The central core of a representation is the most essential part of
the representation
›
Central core is defined in part by the object of the representation and by
the relationship of the group holding the representation to the object of
the representation
The core of the representation determines reactions to novel
information and keeps a representation tied to its object even
though the environment is ever-changing
 The core is also relatively stable, persisting across situational
contexts
 The core is organizational, in that other, peripheral, elements are
structured around the core
 Peripheral elements are malleable, while core elements are not

›
›
If a core element is changed, then the representation is also changed
On the other hand, a representation and its core will still remain the same
even if peripheral elements are changed

The theory of social representations does not require that
core elements must be consistent with each other
› Rather, they must be related and coherent around the object of
the representation
› This allows contradictory relationships among core elements

Inconsistent core elements are still related to one another
through themata
› Meaning that inconsistent elements often are opposites of each
other
 Antagonistic, mutually defining
› Ex. Social understandings of organ donation study
 Word associations with a variety of linguistic elements broadly
related to organ donation and transplantation were examined
 A clear structure underlying the pattern of word associations
emerged
 Two core elements were prominent in this structure: life and death
 These elements are clearly opposites and the tension between
them determines how people understand and orient to a variety
of different stimuli all related to organ donation
Social representations research places
emphasis on the content of social
knowledge rather than the underlying
cognitive processes associated with this
knowledge
 Many topics studied under the rubric of
social representations tend to be social
issues which have attracted extensive
media coverage and controversy

› Recently, this has included work on the social
representations of “risk,” organ donation and
transplantation, and biotechnology

The daily reporting in the media of rapid advances in genomics
and biotechnology has led to widespread public debate and
discussion about the social, moral, and ethical implications of
these scientific advances
›

Many of these advances are presented as being full of opportunity and
having enormous potential to enhance well-being through the alleviation
and prevention of a range of illnesses and medical conditions
For example, the recent completion of the mapping of the
human genome was reported as being one of the most
significant scientific advances in history
›
Graphic metaphors were used both by scientists and the media to
present this scientific knowledge to the public
 Ex. The search for “the essence of human life” and the decoding of the
“book of life”
Graphic religious metaphors such as the “Book of Life” and “Hand of
God” served to anchor the public’s understanding of this scientific
milestone to already existing cultural knowledge
› But at the same time, there has been increasing public concern and
resistance to some of these developments, particularly with regard to the
potential uses (and abuses) of genetic information and genetic
intervention
›



During this period of rapid scientific advances
in genomics a group of European social
psychologists has investigated the European
public’s representations of biotechnology
This consisted of a large-scale longitudinal
study designed to assess public perceptions
and understandings of biotechnology in
several European nations
Quantitative and qualitative methods were
used
› Included survey questionnaires, the qualitative
analysis of media stories and policy statements on
biotechnology, and focus group discussions with
members of the public

The Eurobarometer Survey
›
Found that in 1996 the European public displayed considerable
ambivalence towards biotechnology
 There was considerable support for biotechnological advances in
medicine, especially in the area of genetic testing
 In contrast, significantly less support for genetically modified (GM) foods,
and even less support for laboratory research on GM animals and
xenotransplants
 Xenotransplants – transplanting organs from non-human animals to humans
 Opposition was primarily associated with moral objections to this kind of
experimental research
›

The survey also found that public concern was linked to a lack of trust in
national governments and institutions to “tell the truth” about
biotechnology and to adequately regulate it
These findings contradicted claims that increased public
knowledge of biotechnology should lead to greater support
›
Rather, people with greater knowledge were found to have stronger
opinions about biotechnology, but these could be positive or negative

Qualitative Research: Beyond surveys
› Although quantitative surveys show trends in public
representations of biotechnology they only scratch the
surface
› Surveys are not designed to answer questions about the
representations that shape and underlie ambivalent
responses to questionnaire items
 In other words, although survey data can tell us that the
public finds some forms of biotechnology morally
unacceptable or ‘risky’, they do not reveal the precise
nature of these moral concerns and how they are framed
by the public
› For these reasons a series of focus group discussions in 10
of the participating countries were conducted
 To provide a richer and detailed understanding of the
public’s perceptions of biotechnology

Qualitative Research
› Although there were local variations in the issues
that emerged in the focus groups across
countries, there were also common concerns
› Overall, Europeans were ambivalent about
biotechnology:
 Although recognizing its potential benefits, it was
also represented as potentially risky and unsafe
because of its unknown trajectory and
development
 The metaphor of a ‘runaway train’ was used to
represent biotechnology as an accelerating force
that the public could not keep up with, and which
authorities struggled to adequately control

Qualitative Research:
›
Scientific progress, then, was perceived in opposing ways:
 On one hand, future advantages, but on the other hand, possible risks and
unknown adverse consequences
The idea of an ‘uncertain future’ was also found to be a pervasive theme
across the groups, despite the fact that these concerns were nonspecific and lacked detail
› These projected fears about the future tended to be related to past
mishaps such as the scare surrounding the outbreak of ‘mad cow’
disease and its human variant BSE in the UK and the nuclear accident in
Chernobyl
›
 Both of these incidents were used to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of
regulatory authorities, governments, and the scientific community to be
honest with the public about possible risks associated with biotechnology
›
Further, participants expressed mistrust of what they described as
powerful commercial interests associated with the increasing
globalization and industrialization of food production
 They argued that ordinary consumers and democratic institutions were
relatively powerless in controlling and regulating these commercial
interests

Representations of ‘Nature’
› Together, the Eurobarometer Survey and the focus groups
give us clear indication of the European public’s
ambivalent ‘attitude’ towards biotechnology
› Importantly, the qualitative focus groups identified the
underlying representations that give rise to this attitude
› The opposition and fear surrounding biotechnology were
shaped by underlying representations of ‘Nature’ and
‘Life’ the public used in their arguments
 One pervasive argument represented Nature and Life as
spiritual forces that should be respected at all costs
 This argument was sometimes anchored to religious beliefs
(ex. Expressions such as “playing God” or ‘tampering with
God’s creation’ were recurring moral warnings about the
uses and abuses of biotechnology)

Representations of ‘Nature’
› Thus, some arguments against biotechnology viewed
it as being against Nature
› This view was used for arguing against some
applications of biotechnology, in particular the
cloning of humans and animals (however, cloning
specific cells for medical purposes was deemed
acceptable)
› The use of genetic screening for ‘designer babies’ or
for identifying possible “defective” life was also
strongly rejected
 Therefore, concerns about eugenics were also part of
the focus groups
 These fears were also anchored in historical events, such
as Hitler’s Aryan project in Europe

Representations of ‘Nature’
› Another opposition to biotechnological
foods contrasted GM foods with other foods
which were described as ‘natural’, ‘organic’,
or ‘healthy’
› Specific preparation and consumption of
certain foods was viewed as significant
markers of culture and identity
› Commercialization and industrialization of
food production were seen as a threat to
culture and identity




This research, then, suggests that representations of
biotechnology are grounded in culturally shared
meaning-making practices
Importantly, both secular and religious
representations of ‘Nature’ and ‘Life’ are central in
shaping the public’s views of biotechnology
Further, the public’s fears were grounded in past
experiences in which scientific advances had been
harmful
It is not surprising then that the public is so ambivalent
about scientific advances in genomics and
biotechnology
Social representations refer to the ideas, thoughts, images, and
knowledge structures which members of a society share
 These consensual structures are socially created through
communication and interaction between and among people
 Representations anchor social objects, persons and events
within a familiar categorical context
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They give the unfamiliar meaning
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The core nucleus is stored in memory and accessed during
communication and interaction among individuals
Representations are reduced or objectified into both cognitive
and pictorial elements which together form a core nucleus
Many of our social representations come from the world of
science, which are communicated to us through the mass
media
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Then elaborated upon by ordinary people to help make sense of
everyday life
Broadly, “social cognition” refers to
theory and research aimed at describing
and explaining how we, as human
beings, experience and understand
ourselves in the social world
 There are foundational theoretical
orientations:

› Social cognitive, social identity, and social
representations psychological approaches