Social Cognition

Donald C. Pennington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134604760
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

Social Cognition looks at the way in which humans interpret, analyse and remember information about the social world. Topics covered include: attribution, social schemas and social representations, prejudice and discrimination. Suitable for the AQA-A A2 and AQA-B AS level examintation, mnd students studying social cognition for the first time at undergraduate level.
Series Details
The Routledge Modular Psychology Series is a completely new approach to introductory level psychology, tailor-made for the new modular style of teaching. Each book covers a topic in more detail than any large textbook can, allowing teacher and student to select material exactly to suit any particular course or project. Especially written for those students new to higher-level study, whether at school, college or university, the books include the following designed features to help with technique:

• Practice essays with specialist commentary to show how to achieve a higher grade
• Chapter summaries and summaries of key research
• Glossary and further reading
• Progress and review exercises.
  

1

Introduction to social cognition

What is social cognition?

Historical perspective

Three principles of social cognition

Critical comment

About this book

Summary

What is social cognition?

One of the defining features that sets human beings apart from other animals is not only our ability to think, but also our ability to be aware of what we are thinking. A second feature, although shared with some other animal species, is our sociability and the central importance we place on relationships with other people. Put these two features together and you have the heart of what social cognition is about. Definitions are often useful and one that is particularly helpful characterises social cognition as:

The manner in which we interpret, analyse and remember information about the social world.

(Baron and Byrne, 1997)

This definition highlights three cognitive processes that we apply to our social world. First, information we receive about other people (and ourselves, for that matter) is interpreted; this means that information is given meaning often by both the social context and our previous experience, cultural values, etc. Rarely do we interpret another person’s behaviour in a vacuum; what we know about the person—associated stereotypes, social groups to which he or she may belong—all feed into the interpretation made. Second, social information is analysed, this means that an initial interpretation may be adjusted, changed or even rejected. For example, whilst the first impression we make of another person may be unduly influential, further acquaintance and interaction with the person may dramatically change this impression. Third, social information is stored in memory from which it may be recalled or retrieved. Recalling information from memory may require considerable effort; effort that we may not always be willing to make. The final comment to make about this definition of social cognition is that the ‘social world’ refers both to other people and ourselves. Theory and research in social cognition may equally be about other people, ourselves, and, which is most likely, about ourselves in interaction with other people.

Progress exercise

Think about someone you often hear about and read about in the national newspapers or on television. This may be Tony Blair (the Prime Minister), or Bill Gates (head of Microsoft), or another well-known figure. Write down what you can recall from memory about this person then consider this information in relation to interpretations and analyses that have been made.

Social psychologists who research into social cognition commonly investigate such questions as:

• What caused a person to behave in a particular way?

• Why does somebody laugh in one social situation and behave in an unfriendly way in another situation?

• How do we mentally represent what we know about another person or group of people?

• How does belonging to a social group affect how we behave to others who are members of the same group, and others who are not group members?

• Why do individuals and groups of people engage in discrimination and conflict with other groups of people?

• How can prejudice and conflict between people be reduced?

Social cognition and social psychology

Our definition of social cognition means that most areas covered by social psychologists may be included. However, areas which are more concerned with social factors, those external to the person, rather than internal factors (or those related to characteristics of the person) are:

• The relationship between a person’s attitudes and how he or she actually behaves.

• The development, maintenance and breakdown of relationships between people.

• Small group behaviour, including decision-making, leadership, group norms and roles.

• Social influence processes including majority and minority influence, and obedience to authority.

These areas of social psychology tend to focus on social factors which are external to the person, unlike social cognition which is concerned with internal factors and related mental processes. General text books on social psychology (for example, the further reading suggestions at the end of this chapter) do cover a much wider range of topic areas in social psychology. Other texts in the Modular Psychology series on Social Influences (Kevin Wren), Interpersonal Relationships (Diana Dwyer), and Pro- and Anti-Social Behaviour (David Clarke, forthcoming) cover some key topics in social psychology. However, it could be argued that all areas should and can be considered from the perspective of social cognition.

Social cognition and cognitive psychology

In a sense, social cognition may be considered to be a sub-area of cognitive psychology. However, cognitive psychologists do not limit themselves to mental processes solely to do with people. At the heart of cognitive psychology are interests in memory, forgetting, perception and information processing more generally (see other books in this series by Henderson, 1999; and Rookes and Willson, 1999). However, as Fiske and Taylor (1991) point out, people are not simply another object of study by cognitive psychologists. The main reasons are that people are causal agents in ways inanimate objects, or even other animals, are not; people have awareness and self-awareness; people are extremely complex not only physically but especially psychologically; and people grow psychologically and change over time.

Social cognition borrows many ideas and themes from cognitive psychology, but is unique because of the interest in combining these themes to the study of people in social settings.

Progress exercise

Identify one difference and one similarity between social cognition and cognitive psychology.

Historical perspective

Psychology, particularly in the United States of America, was dominated by the behaviourist approach between the 1920s and the 1950s. Pavlov’s classical and Skinner’s operant conditioning, with rewards and punishments, had no time for mental processes and actively discouraged their investigation. However, two psychologists in America and one in Britain laid the foundations for the social cognition approach which is so dominant in social psychology today. These three pioneers were Solomon Asch, Fritz Heider and Frederick Bartlett.

Asch, perhaps one of the most famous social psychologists, was an advocate of the Gestalt approach in psychology. The Gestalt psychologists believed that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. This put them into direct opposition to the behaviourists who claimed that all behaviour could be explained from the building blocks of stimulus-response linkages (i.e. the individual, component parts). Asch translated the Gestalt approach to social psychology by investigating how we form impressions of other people. Basically, Asch (1946) claimed that certain personality traits are ‘central’ to the impression we form, whilst others are ‘peripheral’. One central personality dimension is that of warm-cold. Being told that a person is ‘cold’ has much more influence on the impression we form than being told a person is, for example, practical.

Fritz Heider published a highly influential book in 1958 entitled The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. Heider, also an advocate of Gestalt psychology, likened human mental processes to that of a ‘naïve scientist’. That is, people attempt to predict, understand and control their social worlds by trying to understand what causes people to behave in the ways that they do. This parallels with what scientists do in physics, chemistry and biology. Heider distinguished between causes within the person (traits or personality dispositions) and causes in the situation (for example, social pressure or peer pressure to conform). This laid the foundations for the hugely important area of attribution theory in social cognition.

Frederick Bartlett was primarily interested in memory, and again influenced by the ideas of Gestalt psychology. His best-known and influential research concerned how we remember stories; he used stories such as ‘War of the Ghosts’ in which people were asked to read a short passage then write down what they could remember about it. Bartlett (1932) introduced the term schema to characterise a knowledge structure, in this case of the story, that is represented mentally. Social schemas, as we shall see in Chapter 4, are of great importance for understanding how we represent our social world. Social schemas are also important for understanding stereotyping.

These three psychologists—Asch, Heider and Bartlett—made the study of mental processes respectable in a time when behaviourism was dominant. Their work laid the foundations for modern social cognition.

Three principles of social cognition

The chapters that follow consider theory and research on attribution and attributional errors, social perception, and prejudice and discrimination. Three themes or principles will recur from time to time as you work through these chapters: people as cognitive misers; spontaneous versus deliberative thought; and the importance of selfesteem. We will briefly look at each here.

People as cognitive misers

Fundamental to cognitive psychology and social cognition is the idea that people are limited in their ability and capacity to process information. Because of this, either shortcuts to information processing may be taken or people may be unwilling to expend a lot of mental effort to think about something. Shortcuts that people commonly use represent simple rules of thumb or strategies to deal with potentially complex information. These shortcuts are efficient in terms of time and mental effort, but because they are shortcuts they may often lead to errors and biases. The cognitive miser may be characterised as trading-off accuracy and thoroughness for speed, a quick decision or judgement and use of minimal mental effort.

Everybody acts as a cognitive miser at some time or another; in practical terms you could not function if you did try to attend to and process all the information you receive about your social world. The pitfalls and dangers of the cognitive miser are, to some extent, offset by the experience and knowledge we have of our social world. Hence, social schemas may be employed to help us make a quick decision or judgement in the face of complex and large amounts of information.

Spontaneous and deliberative thought

We have just seen that cognitive misers use strategies to simplify judgements and decision-making, and one of these may be to employ social schemas. When a similar social situation occurs again and again, or when there are perceived similarities between different social situations, a person’s response may be spontaneous since it is so well-learned that it is automatic. Gilbert (1989) distinguished between spontaneous and deliberative social thought. When people use spontaneous or automatic thought, mental effort and time is kept to a minimum, and efficiency is obtained. However, ‘top of the head’ thinking may be superficial and erroneous on occasions and not always to be encouraged.

Deliberative thought is where a person takes time, makes a conscious mental effort and thinks things through more deeply before coming to a judgement or decision. Social psychologists have identified two main factors which determine whether spontaneous or deliberative thought will be used. These are motivation and ability (Fazio, 1990). If you lack motivation or are preoccupied by other tasks then spontaneous thought is most likely. If you are motivated to find out more or think about matters more fully, deliberative thought will result. Likewise with ability, if you are able and knowledgeable about a particular matter you are more likely to engage in deliberative thought. Although you may notice the tendency for experts to provide quick answers on occasions as well, this is probably because they know what they are talking about so well that they often do not need to think or deliberate before speaking.

Self-esteem

It may seem strange to mention self-esteem as a guiding principle of social cognition. However, the evaluation we make of ourselves is central to social cognition since how we think about ourselves is highly influenced by how other people talk and behave towards us. A person with high self-esteem perceives him or herself to be capable, have self-worth and is usually confident with other people. A person with low self-esteem may be the opposite, with the result that he or she may lack motivation. One consequence of this is that deliberative thought may be avoided. Also, as we shall see in Chapter 5, our social identification with social groups and the esteem in which groups are held also have consequences for our own self-esteem or self-evaluation. We will want to identify with and belong to a social group that is well-regarded and held in high esteem by others. We will also want to avoid identifying with a group held in low esteem, although this may not always be possible. Social identity the...