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Social Cognition
AP Psychology
Social Psychology
• The scientific study of how people’s
thoughts and feelings influence their
behavior toward others, and how the
behavior of others influences people’s own
thoughts
• Social Cognition – mental processes
associated with the ways people perceive
and react to other individuals and groups
Social Influences on the Self
• Self-concept – the
beliefs we hold about
who we are and what
characteristics we
have
• Self-esteem – the
evaluations we make
about how worthy we
are as human beings
Social Comparison
Leon Festinger – people make two types of comparisons:
Temporal Comparison
Social Comparison
Considering your present
condition in relation to
how you were in the past
Evaluating yourself in
comparison to others using others as a
basis for evaluating
your attributes
Social Comparison
• Reference Groups – categories of people to which you see yourself
as belonging and to which you compare yourself
– Downward social comparison – strategy of choosing someone as
the target of comparison to oneself who is not as good on some
dimension of importance
– Upward social comparison – comparing yourself to people who do
much better
• Relative deprivation – the belief that no matter how much you are
getting, it is less than you deserve
Social Identity
• Our beliefs about the groups to which we belong, and
thus is a part of our self-concept
– A group identity helps people to feel part of a larger
whole (may foster an “us versus them” mentality)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ_qXmxdgGM
Self-Schemas
• Mental representations of people’s beliefs
and views about themselves
– Unified self-schemas – regard their attributes
as stable across every situation and role
– Differentiated self-schemas – regard their
attributes as changing in different roles or
situations
Social Perception
• The processes through
which people interpret
information about others,
form impressions of them,
and draw conclusions
about the reasons for
their behavior
• Schemas – a coherent,
organized set of beliefs
and expectations – we
use schemas we already
have to perceive and
interpret new information
Impressions
• First Impressions – quickly formed,
difficult to change, long-lasting
influence
• People are confident about
their judgment
• Easier to remember
• Behavior is often consistent
with impression
• Forming Impressions – schemas
create a tendency to infer a great
deal about a person on the basis of
limited information
• Lasting Impressions – difficult to
change, long-lasting influence
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Without our awareness, schemas cause us to subtly lead people to
behave in line with our expectations
4 steps:
1.
Adopting an attitude concerning a person
2.
Behave as though your attitude is correct
3.
Others react to your attitude
4.
Your prophecy comes true, not because you were right, but
because your behavior/attitude caused the prophecy to come true
Attribution
• The process people go through to explain
causes of behavior
• People tend to attribute behavior in a
particular situation either to primarily
internal (characteristics of a person) or
primarily external (situational) cases
Sources of Attributions
Harold Kelley’s 3 Elements:
1. Consensus – the degree to which other people’s
behavior is similar to that of the actor. Ex: if it is similar,
it has high consensus. If it is dissimilar, it has low
consensus
2. Consistency – the degree to which the behavior occurs
repeatedly in a situation. Ex: if it always occurs, it has
high consistency. If it occurs intermittently, it has low
consistency
3. Distinctiveness – the extent to which similar stimuli
draw the same behaviors from the actor. Ex: if it is
highly predictable, then it has low distinctiveness. If it
is not predictable, it has high distinctiveness.
An internal attribution is most likely when there is low
consensus, high consistency, and low distinctiveness.
External attributions are made in response to other
information patterns.
Attributions
Biases in Attribution
• Fundamental Attribution
Error: a tendency to overattribute others’ behaviors
to internal factors, such as
personality traits
• Actor-observer bias –
tendency to attribute others’
behavior to internal causes
but attribute your own
behavior to external causes
• Self-serving bias –
tendency to take credit for
success (internal) but to
blame failure on external
causes
Attitudes
• The tendency to think, feel, or act
positively or negatively towards objects in
our environment
• 3 Components:
– Cognitive – set of beliefs about attributes of
the attitude object
– Affective – feeling about the object
(emotional) – a like or dislike
– Behavioral – involves a way of acting toward
the object
3 Components of Attitude
Forming Attitudes
• Modeling – children learn from their parents
what one should believe and feel about certain
objects
• Classical Conditioning – people are more
likely to form a positive attitude toward an object
when it is paired with stimuli that elicit good
feelings
• Mere-exposure effect – attitudes toward an
object tend to become more positive as people
are exposed to that object more often
Changing Attitudes
• According to the Elaboration Likelihood
Model, there are two routes to attitude
change:
• Peripheral route – attitude changes respond to
peripheral persuasion cues, rather than to central
content (appearance, confidence, etc…)
• Central route – attitude changes respond to the
message and validity of its claims. People
rationally analyze the content of the persuasive
message
Changing Attitudes
Changing Attitudes
• Cognitive Dissonance – people want their
thoughts and beliefs to be consistent with
one another. When their cognitions are
inconsistent, people become anxious and
are motivated to make them consistent
• Self-perception theory – people are not
sure about their attitude so they look back
to their behavior and then infer what their
attitudes must have been
Cognitive Dissonance
Prejudice and Stereotypes
• Prejudice – positive or negative attitude toward an
individual based on his or her membership in some
group
• Stereotypes – Perceptions, beliefs, and expectations a
person has about members of some group – schemas
about the entire groups of people
Theories of Prejudice
• Roots of Prejudice
– Social inequalities – the “haves” vs. the “have nots”
• Blame-the-victim dynamic – if the circumstances of poverty
breed a high crime rate, someone can use the high crime
rate to justify discrimination against those living in poverty
– Us vs. Them – Ingroup vs. Outgroup (ingroup bias)
– Scapegoat Theory – finding someone to blame when
things go wrong can provide a target for one’s anger
(9/11)
– Other-race effect (other-race bias) – to those in one
ethnic group, members of another group often seem
more alike than they really are in appearance,
personality, and attitude
Just World Phenomenon
• Good is rewarded and evil is punished
• Hindsight bias (she should have known
better….)