Unit 2 :

Social cognition , Self and Attitudes

Class Activity
Imagine that you have gone on a blind date. Not only do you worry
about the impression and signals that you are sending to the other
person, but you are also concerned with interpreting the signals
given by your date.

Questions you might ask include:

•How do you form an impression of this person?
•What meaning do you read into the other person's behavior?
•How do you attribute their actions?
 Social Perception & Social Cognition

Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make

judgments about social roles, relationships, rules, context, or the characteristics
(e.g., trustworthiness) of others. There are four main components of social
perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.

Social Cognition is the study of the mental processes involved in perceiving,

remembering, thinking about, and attending to the other people in our social
world.
A theory of mind refers to a person's ability to understand and think
about the mental states of other people. To know the fact that
others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from
one's own (Premack and Woodruf, 1978).
Theory of the Duplex Mind

The duplex mind is the theory that the human mind consists of
two independent systems – the conscious mind and the
unconscious mind – that interact and influence each other.

The conscious mind is the part of the mind that is aware of

what is happening around us and is responsible for our
conscious thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

The unconscious mind is the part of the mind that is not

aware of what is happening around us and is responsible for
our automatic thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
Two types of thinking

Automatic thinking
• “Implicit” thinking that is effortless, non conscious , involuntary,
habitual, and without awareness; roughly corresponds to “intuition.”
• Important aspect of social thought—one that can affect overt
behavior.
Controlled thinking
• Explicit” thinking that is deliberate, reflective, conscious, voluntary,
effortful
 NEED FOR COGNITION

The Need for Cognition (NfC) is a psychological construct that concerns an

individual’s tendency and enjoyment in seeking, evaluating, and integrating
multiple relevant sources of information toward making sense of their
surroundings.

It captures the extent to which individuals chronically engage in effortful reflection

in arriving at an opinion (cognizers; high NfC) or tend to form an opinion based on
cursory or superficial aspects (cogmisers; low NfC).

(Bauer & Stiner, 2020)

A Theory of Unconscious Thought
(Djiksterhuis and Nordgren, 2006)
The process involved is:

• First you devote attention to the problem by consciously thinking, reading and/or discussing
it with others.

• Second, you start to do something else and put the problem to rest for a while, a process that
is often called incubation (Wallas, 1926).

• Third, a solution pops into consciousness, sometimes rather suddenly (e.g., Andreasen,
2005; Baars, 1997; Claxton, 1997; Koestler, 1964; Poincaré, 1913).

The theory is applicable to decision making, impression formation, attitude formation and
change, problem solving, and creativity.
 Basic mental process of the human mind

– Categorization : the process by which people categorize themselves and

others into differentiated groups. Categorization simplifies perception and
cognition related to the social world by detecting inherent similarity
relationships or by imposing structure on it
– Prototype: a mental representation that serves as a cognitive reference
point for the category. The most salient features of the prototype are the
first features that come to mind when the category is mentioned

– Why is categorizing everything difficult?

• Categories we use are not isolated, but are linked to form a structure.
• Thus we build a cognitive structure consisting of persons, attributes and
relations.
 SCHEMAS

HEURISTICS
AUTOMATIC
THINKING
SCRIPTS

PRIMING
Schemas
– Well-organised structure of cognitions about some social entity such as a person,
group, role or event.

– Mental frameworks centering on a specific theme that help us to organize social

information

– Mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about the social
world around themselves or subjects that influence the information people
notice, think about and remember.

– Function of schemas
(1) Influence our capacity to RECALL information
(2) Help us PROCESS information FASTER.
(3) GUIDE our inferences and judgements about people and objects.
(4) Reduce ambiguity by helping us INTERPRET ambiguous elements in a situation.
(5) Future INTERACTION with others becomes easier ( Mayer, Rapp & Williams, 1993)
Types of schemas
1.Person schemas : Cognitive structures that describe the personalities of others and
help us develop expectations of others behaviours.
– Can be in terms of specific people or types of people.

2.Self –schemas : Cognitive structures that organise our conceptions of our own
qualities and characteristics ; the dimensions that we use to think about ourselves.

3.Group schemas : Cognitive structures that describe members of a particular social

group or social category.
– Stereotypes : Attributes that are considered to be typical of members of a
social category.
4.Role schemas : Attributes and behaviours typical of persons occupying a certain role
in a group.
– Exist for both occupational roles as well as roles played in groups.

5.Event schemas (scripts) : Schemas regarding important recurring social events.

– Determines the activities that constitute it , predetermined order or sequence for
these activities, persons participating in the event.
– Some activities/behaviours/expectations are common, mentioned frequently ,
while others are not mentioned.
Dating script (Western norms Vs. Indian norms)
Script for women Script for men
Groom and dress ------
Be nervous ------
Worry about appearance Worry about appearance
Pick up date (by man) Pick up date
----- Meet parents /roommates
Leave Leave
Confirm plans Confirm plans
Get to know date and evaluate date Get to know date and evaluate date
Talk, joke, laugh Talk, joke, laugh
Go to movies or show, Eat
Party , Eat
Take date home (by man) Take date home
Are all schemas created equally ?

• The Impact of Schemas on Social Cognition: Attention,

Encoding, Retrieval
Study (Cohen et.al. 1981)
• A laboratory experiment where 96 college students watched
a video of a woman with her husband having dinner in a
restaurant. Half of the participant were told that she was a
librarian while the other half was told she was a waitress.
After watching the video they were asked to recollect the
details about the video.
• The results showed that participants were more likely to
remember schema-consistent information and ignore
contradictory information which generally results into
formation and reinforcement of stereotypes .
2. The impact of Primed Schemas on Social Cognition
• Strong and well developed
• Primed and activated schemas

Studies by
Sparrow and
Wegner
(2006)
3. The impact of schema persistence on social cognition
• Established schemas are hard to discard

• Confirmation bias : The tendency to collate information that is

consistent with our schemas when given the opportunity to obtain new
information to test our hypothesis based on schemas.

• Making schemas come true – Self fulfilling prophecy-Pygmalion

Effect (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968)

• Schemas show a strong Perseverance effect, remaining unchanged even

in the face of contradictory information (Kunda & Oleson, 1995).
Heuristics
• Information processing short cuts that enable us to make judgements
that are quick but often in error.

• Social judgements are not always made based

– on facts and figures or
– on normative behaviour

• Kahneman & Tversky (1973) and others state that people use
information processing techniques that are “rules of thumb”
“A single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.”
Agree or disagree, why?
 Types
1. Availability- The tendency to estimate the likelihood of an event based on the ease with
which instances of it are “available” in the memory ( Schwarz et al , 1991; Course
Improvement - Caruso , 2008).
If it is one involving emotions or feelings, we tend to rely
on the “ease” rule, whereas if it is one involving facts or the task is inherently difficult, we
tend to rely more on the “amount” rule (e.g., Rothman & Hardin, 1997; Ruder & Bless, 2003).

• False Consensus Effect (a by-product)– A tendency for people to overestimate the

consensus of our own opinions ,attributes and behaviours. (Eg : Krueger and Clement, 1994
study on subjects’ views on personality tests).

– Why does this happen?

Projection bias- the tendency to assume that others share our cognitive and affective
states
Why does this happen?

• Base rate Fallacy – The finding that people are

relatively insensitive to consensus information
presented in the form of numerical base rates. In
other words social perceptions are influenced
more by vivid accounts rather than statistical facts.

– Examples : Shootings, fires, floods, terrorist

attacks.

This can lead us to develop preconceived notions

about people and perpetuate potentially harmful
stereotypes based on our initial impressions of them.
• 2. Representativeness

A tendency to assume despite odds to the contrary that someone belongs to a certain
group if he or she resembles or represents a typical member (Eg: Shah & Oppenheimer,
2009 ; Choi, Dalal, Kim-Prieto, & Park, 2003).

Judgments based on representativeness are wrong, mainly because it ignores base rate.

Representativeness heuristic is often used to establish cause and effect relationship but
culture plays a significant role (e.g., A study by choi et al. (2003) showed that Asian tend to
consider more potential causal factors when judging effects than do Americans).
3. Anchoring and adjustment

One way to make judgments under uncertainty is to anchor on information

that comes to mind and adjust until a plausible numerical estimate is

reached. The tendency for numerical estimates to

be biased by an initial starting point or ‘anchor’ and then making adjustment to it

results into judgment biases.

Anchoring and Adjustment in
Legal Decisions
Englich, Mussweiler, and Strack (2006), indicating that even court decisions The fig. indicates when experienced legal experts
learned of the sentences recommended by an
and sentences can be strongly influenced by anchoring and adjustment and irrelevant source (someone with no legal
that, moreover, this occurs even or experienced judges. training—a journalist, or even just a throw of a
dice), their own recommendations were strongly
influenced by these anchors. Harsher sentences
Why are the effects of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic were recommended when the anchors were
harsh, and more lenient sentences
so powerful? Research findings indicate that one reason is when the anchors were lenient. The same
that although we do make adjustments to anchors, these adjustments anchoring
effects were found when the source of the anchor
are often not sufficient to overcome the initial impact was
of the anchors. relevant—an experienced prosecutor. These
findings
4. Framing – The tendency to be influenced by the way an issue is presented or framed.

5.Simulation- The tendency to predict or explain an event based on how easy it is to

imagine or picturise the event mentally.

Status Quo – Objects and options that are more easily retrieved from memory may be
judged in a heuristic fashion as “good” , as better than objects and options that are
new, rarely encountered, or represent a change from the status quo. People do seem
to use heuristically the length of time a product or practice has been in existence as a
cue to its goodness (Eidelman, Pattershall and Crandall, 2010)
Potential sources of error
OPTIMISTIC BIAS
Are we truly
realistic?

OVERCONFIDENCE
BARRIER

FUTURE PLANNING FOR

PERFORMANCE
EXPECTATIONS TASKS

PLANNING
FALLACY
Potential sources of error
OPTIMISTIC BIAS: Tendency to overlook risks and expect things to turn out well.
Shepperd et al. (2008) research indicated that most people believe that they are more likely than
others to experience positive events (e.g., better job, happy married life, satisfied life in old age)
and less likely to experience negative events (being fired, getting seriously ill, or getting divorced).

OVERCONFIDENCE BARRIER: The tendency to have more confidence in the accuracy of our
own judgments than is reasonable.

Study: Vallone et al (1990) did a study on how overconfident people can be in their predictions
about themselves by asking students to indicate early in the academic year whether they would
perform a number of actions (e.g., drop a course, move on or off campus) and to indicate how
confident they were in their predictions.

Result: The students were wrong a substantial proportion of the time, and even when they were
100 percent confident in their predictions they were wrong 15 percent of the time!
Potential sources of error

OVERCONFIDENCE BARRIER: PERFORMANCE

Generally when people are least competent in a
domain are often the most likely to be overconfident
of their judgments in that domain!

Ex.: when we have to pick best health insurance plan

to meet our future needs. When we feel the essays
we write for class covering all the essential points on
the topic. Overconfidence may explain why
entrepreneurs who start a new business
Caputo and Dunning (2005) have concluded that believe that their chances of making it work
reason we may be overly confident of our judgments are much higher than is actually true (Baron
and actions in all these cases that we often are lacking & Shane, 2007)
critical information—that is, we do not know enough
to know what we have missed which results into
errors of omission.
Potential sources of error

FUTURE EXPECTATIONS:
Research by Newby-Clark and Ross (2003) indicated the optimistic bias seems to occur not
just for specific tasks or situations, but for projections of our entire future as well.

Study Findings: when participants were asked to think about the past, they recall failures,
unpleasant events, and other disappointments, whereas these unexpected possibilities were
not salient when they thought about their future. When they thought about their future
they tend to concentrate on desirable goals, personal happiness, and doing things they have
always wanted to do—such as traveling to exotic places.

Conclusion from study: Since our thinking is dominated by these positive thoughts, we make
highly optimistic predictions about the future, and tend to perceive it as indeed golden, at
least in its promise or potential for us
Potential sources of error
FUTURE EXPECTATIONS: A study by Sweeny and Shepperd (2010) to see whether still people
feel optimistic about their future if they know their present performance.

Study: Students in a psychology class were asked to estimate the grade they would receive on their
first exam and their emotional state was measured. Then, the students received their grade and
their emotions were again measured.

Result: First of all, those students who were more optimistic about the grade they would receive
reported more positive emotions, suggesting that optimism does feel good. For those optimistic
students who overestimated their exam scores, when they learned their actual score, they felt
much worse than the realists or pessimists who did not do so but after 24 hours their negative
emotions dissipated.

Conclusion: Being optimistic about our future outcomes can make us feel good, if the basis for it is
disconfirmed, we may feel bad—but fortunately only temporarily.
Potential sources of error
PLANNING FALLACY:
Our tendency to believe that we can get more done in a
given period of time than we actually can, or that a given
job will take
less time than it really will.

Ex.: In infrastructure projects (e.g., new roads, airports,

bridges, stadiums).

Reasons for Planning Fallacy:

According to (Buehler et al., 1994) when an individual has
to predict the duration of time they will take to complete a
task:

a) They enter a planning or narrative mode of thought

in which they focus on future and how they will execute
the task
The tendency to believe that the plans we construct are
b) Motivation to complete a task also plays an important
doable, that we can accomplish more than we actually can
role in planning fallacy as strong motivation is positively in a given period of time, or that nothing will interfere with
correlated to overoptimistic prediction about completion the achievement of our goals reflects the planning fallacy
of task in future. in action. Few projects are actually completed as originally
planned, or on schedule!
Potential sources of error

Reasons for Planning Fallacy:

c) When people are focused on the goal of
completing a task, rather than the steps involved in
doing so, they are likely to make overly optimistic
predictions for how much time it will take to do so.

Study by Weick and Guinote (2010)

Brief description: Two groups of participants were

taken and both the groups asked to format a
document using software that was complicated, but
before actually doing so they were asked to estimate
how long it would take them to do so.

Result: Although there was no difference in actual

performance time,those who thought of themselves
occupying a powerful position mispredicted the time
that would be needed most.
Potential sources of error

COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING:

• It involves thinking through “what if” scenarios to

imagine alternatives to the current course of
events or exploring alternative possibilities.

• Most commonly occurs when a person reflects

on a mistake or missed opportunity.

• Imagining counterfactuals for outcomes can

have positive or negative impact on our mood.

If I gave an exam and score less than what I

have expected and then “what might have
been” if I would have score better marks.
Potential sources of error

Types of Counterfactual Thinking:

Upward Counterfactuals: Comparing their current outcomes with more favorable ones than they experienced, the
result may be strong feelings of dissatisfaction or envy, especially when people do not feel capable of obtaining
better outcomes in the future (Sanna, 1997).

Ex.: Olympic athletes who win a silver medal but who can easily imagine winning a gold one experience such
reactions (Medvec, Madey, & Gilovich, 1995).

Downward Counterfactuals: Alternatively, if individuals compare their current outcomes with less favorable
ones—it might have been worse—they may experience positive feelings of satisfaction or hopefulness.

Ex.: Olympic athletes who win bronze medals, and who can easily imagine what it would be like to have not won
any medal whatsoever.

Applicability in day-to-day life:

• To mitigate the bitterness of disappointments like death of a loved one.
• Improves the job performance
Potential sources of error

MAGICAL THINKING
Magical thinking means that a person believes their
thoughts, feelings, or rituals can influence events in the
material world, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Law of similarity, which suggests that based on similarity of

two objects, we seem to believe that the properties of one
can pass to the other, it might be easy to think that sticking
a doll that looks like an enemy can cause the same kind of
harm to the real person.

TERROR MANAGEMENT
Human beings are uniquely aware of the fact that we will
certainly die, this, in turn, causes us to engage in what is
known as terror management—efforts to come to terms Would you eat the candy shown here?
with this certainty and its unsettling implications Many people would not, even though they realize that the
(Greenberg et al., 2003). shape of the candy has nothing to do with its taste. This
illustrates the law of similarity—one aspect of what social
Reminders of our own mortality strengthen supernatural psychologists term magical thinking.
beliefs.
Affect and cognition

How does a Mood

good mood dependent
help us? memory

Mood Heuristic
congruent processing
effect and
attributions
Two-factor Regulating
theory our moods
of emotion and
(Schachter, 1964)
emotions
involving
cognitive
mechanisms
Activating Affective
schemas forecasts
containing a
strong
affective
component.
 Injection Told Emotion
Group 1 Epinephrine Will increase ?
arousal

Group 2 Epinephrine Will have no ?

effect

Brief Description: An experiment was conducted in 1962 by Schachter and Singer. A group of 184 male
participants was injected with epinephrine, a hormone that produces arousal - increased heartbeat, trembling,
and rapid breathing.

Method: All participants informed that they were injected with a new drug to test their eye sight. However, one
group was informed about side-effects of injection while other group was not. Participants were then placed with
a confederate in the experiment. The confederate either acted euphoric or angry.

Result: Participants who had not been informed about the effects of the injection were more likely to feel either
happier or angrier than those who had been informed.

Conclusion: If people experienced an emotion for which they had no explanation, they would then label these
feelings using their feelings at the moment
In conclusion …

• Affect plays a fundamental role in human thought, and if we wish to

fully understand the complex ways in which we think about the social
world and our place in it, we must take this fact into careful account

• Affect and cognition are not one-way streets; they are a divided
highway, with the potential of one influencing the other.