7125 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Cognitive Miser, Impression Formation, Social Cognition
21 Jun 2018
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Lecture 3
Social Cognition
- Social cognition
oHow we interpret, remember and use information about the social world
oNaïve scientist: rational and logical
oCognitive miser: motivated to conserve cognitive resources -> cognitive short cuts
oMotivated tactician: multiple cognitive strategies available, choose on the basis of
personal goals, motives, needs
- Impression formation
oAsch (1946) – central versus peripheral traits (configural model)
oCentral: influential in formation of impressions
oPeripheral: insignificant influence of formation of impressions
- Biases in impression formation
oPrimacy effect
Tend to pay more attention to information that we hear early on
“first impressions count”
oRecency effect
If distracted; he last thing you hear can have more impact
oPositivity and negativity
Paying attention to your expectations
Ie if expecting positivity : listen more and vice versa
oImplicit personality theories
People will have own theories about what traits go together
oPhysical appearance
Bias towards attractiveness
oStereotypes
- Schemas and categorization
oSchemas: cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept
oTypes of schemas
Person schemas
Scripts
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Self-schemas
- Categorization
oPrototypes: cognitive representation of the typical qualities of members of some
group or category
Can be helpful – but can lead us in wrong directions for things that don’t fit
the exact category description
oExemplars: specific examples/instances of category members
- Why do we categorise?
oCategorization
Frees up cognitive resources
Provides meaning
Reduces uncertainty
Allows us to predict social behaviour
- Consequences of categorization
oOnce we categorise a person, we then apply our schema
oStereotypes: widely shared and evaluative image of a social group and its members
oStereotyping
Accentuation: similarities within and differences between groups are
accentuated
More likely to pay notice to information consistent with that stereotype
- Impacts of schemas (stereotypes) on social information processing
oAttention – notice inconsistent information
oEncoding – consistent information easier to remember
oRetrieval – consistent information easier to retrieve
oTop-down processing – bias towards schemas confirmation
- Schema development and change
oSchemas generally develop based on encounters with category instances
oAs more instances are encountered, schemas become
More abstract
More complex
More organized
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find more resources at oneclass.com
More compact
More resilient
oSchemas are resistant to change
o3 models of schema change (rothbart)
Bookkeeping
Slowly changing over time with more information that provides
more evidence for change – long process
Conversion
Subtyping
Don’t really change at all – just form subtypes
- Social inference
oTop-down versus bottom-up processing
oBase rate information
Take more notice of examples than statistical information
Eg one bad lecture can make you think they are all bad
oIllusory correlation – perception of a relationship between events when none
actually exists
Tend to pay attention to unexpected and unusual information
- Heuristics
oHeuristics: cognitive shortcuts
oRepresentativeness – assign people to categories based on overall resemblance to
categories
oAvailability – likelihood of event based on how quickly instances come to mind
oAnchoring – biased towards starting value when making quantitative judgements
oFalse consensus – assume others behave or think the same way we do
- Dual Process theory (Brewer, 1988)
oHeuristic (category-based) versus systematic (individuated) processes
- Fiske and Neuberg’s (1990) continuum model
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Impression formation: asch (1946) central versus peripheral traits (configural model, central: influential in formation of impressions, peripheral: insignificant influence of formation of impressions. Tend to pay more attention to information that we hear early on. If distracted; he last thing you hear can have more impact: positivity and negativity. Ie if expecting positivity : listen more and vice versa: implicit personality theories. People will have own theories about what traits go together: physical appearance. Schemas and categorization: schemas: cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept, types of schemas. Categorization: prototypes: cognitive representation of the typical qualities of members of some group or category. Can be helpful but can lead us in wrong directions for things that don"t fit the exact category description: exemplars: specific examples/instances of category members. Consequences of categorization: once we categorise a person, we then apply our schema, stereotypes: widely shared and evaluative image of a social group and its members, stereotyping.
