Social Cognition

Social Cognition

• How we judge and evaluate other people

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”

Why?

Impression Formation

• Schema (Schemata is plural)– Set of beliefs or expectations based on prior

experience– Presumed to apply to all members of the category– Primacy effect• Earlier impressions are more impactful than later

knowledge

– Self-fulfilling prophecy• Expectation elicits behavior from another that confirms

the expectation

Piaget

• Cognitive development as a process– Cognitive changes– Social cognition– Social behavior– Socialization

Attribution

• Attribution Theory– Heider (1958) – Behavior attributed to internal or

external causes, not both• Laziness or traffic (not lazy + traffic)

– Kelley (1967) – we consider three types of information about behavior to determine its cause• Distinctive – behavior of the other towards third party• Consistent – behavior of the other towards you• Consensus – behavior of the other similar to others’

behavior

Attribution

• Biases of Attributions– Fundamental attribution error• Tendency to attribute the behavior of others to causes

within themselves– Schindler helped Jews escape Nazi concentration camps

because he cared (internal); Schindler believed he was simply doing what needed to be done (external)

• Efficacy– One’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish a particular task

Self-Efficacy

• Efficacy• One’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish a particular

task

• Behavior (performance) influenced greatly by perception of control over a circumstance.– “Mom” tells you success is based on hard work.

VS– “Mom” tells you success is based on luck.

Self-Efficacy

• Learned Helplessness – Seligman (1965)

Attribution • Biases of Attribution– Defensive attribution

• We are motivated to present ourselves well– Impress others– Feel good about ourselves

• Self-serving bias– Tendency to attribute personal failure to external factors and

personal success with internal factors» I failed the test because Mr. Willis is a jerk.» I aced the test and didn’t even study! (AKA I’m really

smart!)

– Just-world hypothesis• People get what they deserve

– ‘Protects’ us from those things happening to us.

Attribution

• Attributions across cultures– Most studies of attribution have been done on

Western societies– Eastern collectivist societies attribute more

personal successes and others’ failures to external factors

– Self-serving bias seems to be common to all groups

Social Identity Theory

• Tajfel & Turner (1979)• No one “personal self”, but several selves of widening circles of

group membership.• Different social contexts may trigger an individual to think, feel

and act on basis of his personal, family or national “level of self.”• Social identity is the individual’s self-concept derived from

perceived membership of social groups (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002)– individual-based perception of what defines the “us” associated with

any internalized group membership. This can be distinguished from the notion of personal identity which refers to self-knowledge that derives from the individual’s unique attributes.

Social Identity Theory• Group membership creates ingroup/ self-categorization and

enhancement in ways that favor the in-group at the expense of the out-group.

• Categorizing as group members leads them to display ingroup favoritism. – Seek positive self-esteem by separating ingroup from an outgroup

• Positive distinctiveness of ‘us’

– People’s sense of who they are is defined in terms of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. • Three main variables of ingroup favoritism

– Extent to which individuals identify with ingroup to internalize group membership as aspect of self-concept.

– Extent to which prevailing context provides ground for comparison between groups.

– Perceived relevance of comparison group, • Shaped by relative and absolute status of the ingroup.

• Individuals are likely to display favoritism when an ingroup is central to their self-definition and a given comparison is meaningful or the outcome is contestable.

Social Identity Theory

• Schoolboys were assigned to groups, which were intended as meaningless as possible.

• Assigned randomly, excluding roles of interpersonal discrimination such as history of conflict, personal animosity or interdependence.

• Assigned points to anonymous members of both their own group and the other group.

• Conclusions– even the most minimal conditions were sufficient to

encourage ingroup-favoring responses. – Participants picked a reward pair that awarded more points to

people who were identified as ingroup members. In other words, they displayed ingroup favoritism.

Stereotypes

• A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category– Most common• Sex• Race• Occupation• Physical appearance• Place of residence• Group or organization membership

Stereotypes

• Can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies• Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977)– College-aged men & women paired to have a

phone conversation• Given a snapshot of their phone-mate• Was actually a randomly selected picture (attractive or

unattractive)• Men responded more warmly to ‘attractive’ phone-

mates; coldly to ‘unattractive’ phone-mates, which altered the pleasure of the conversations for both.

Stereotypes

• Macrae & Bodenhausen (2000)– More likely to apply stereotyped schemata in

chance encounter than in structured, task-oriented situation

– Goal pursuit results in more attention to individual signals

– People consciously or unconsciously suppress stereotypes that violate social norms

Prejudice & Discrimination

• Prejudice• An intolerant, unfavorable and rigid view of a

group of people (Attitude)• Discrimination– An act or series of acts that denies opportunities

and esteem to an entire group of people (Behavior)

Prejudice

• Sources of Prejudice– Frustration-aggression theory (Allport, 1954)

• Displacement of hostility by exploited, oppressed, or disenfranchised away from proper target and toward lower social groups

– Authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al, 1950)• Rigidly conventional, rule-following individuals hostile to those

that deviate from the norms

– Cognitive misers• Too much cognitive simplification, creates over-generalizations

and stereotypes

– Racism• Members of certain racial/ ethnic groups are innately inferior

Interpersonal Attraction• Harry Harlow

Interpersonal Attraction

• The tendency to be attracted to and like someone else

• Proximity– Usually the most important factor– The closer they live/work, the more frequently they

interact– The more they interact, the more they tend to like

each other– Less to do with convenience than the security &

comfort of the familiar (Borstein, 1989)

Interpersonal Attraction

• Physical attractiveness– Generally assume attractive people are more:• Intelligent, interesting, happy, kind, sensitive, moral and

successful• Better traits = better mates = like them more

– Harvey & Pauwells (1999): We like extreme attractiveness in the abstract, we typically chose those similar to our own level of attractiveness

Physical Attractiveness

• How is it determined?– Many elements

culturally specific• Weight, tan, hair color

– More universal stereotypes• Feature Symmetry• Physical markers of

good genes

Symmetry

Symmetry

Physical Attractiveness

• What are the dangers?– Attractive people shown more attention and

valued more highly by:• Mothers (Langlois et al, 1995)• Nurses (Badr & Abdallah, 2001)• Teachers (McCall, 1997)• Employers (Hosoda, Stone & Coats, 2003)

– Gives unfair advantages and creates self-fulfilling prophecy of superior moral value

Interpersonal Attraction

• Similarity– Shared attitudes, interests, values, backgrounds,

and beliefs– Quist & Crano (2003): Voters are more likely to

vote for a candidate with whom they share similar viewpoints

– Opposites attract?• Dissimilarities are complementary traits

– Needs or skills that complete or balance each other

Interpersonal Attraction

• Exchange– People exchange various goods and resources with

each other involving both rewards and costs• We equally ‘get something out of it’

– Reward theory of attraction• We like people who make us feel rewarded and

appreciated

– Aronson (1994): gain-loss theory of attraction• Increases in rewarding behavior more attractive than

constant rewarding

Interpersonal Attraction

• Intimacy– Quality of genuine closeness and trust in another

person– Created and maintained through continuing

reciprocal pattern of trying to know the other and allowing the other to know them (Harvey & Pauwells, 1999)

– ‘Safe’ topics (weather, sports, shared activities) > personal topics (memories, hopes, failures)

– Pacing is important • Too much, too soon is unattractive