Social Cognition I – Week 3 1/21/2013 12:32:00 PM
Rand et al. 2012
Study of correlation regarding generosity and selfishness
Negative Correlation
myPsychlab Course Code: aknin52349
Social Cognition: How people select, interpret, and use information to make
decisions and judgments about their social world.
“A tale of two thoughts”
Two ways:
Automatic thinking
o Effortless thinking
Controlled thinking
Automatic thinking
Thinking that happens quickly and efficiently and is:
o Non-conscious
o Unintentional
o Effortless
Similar to autocorrect…
o Fast
o Based on past experience
o Often useful, correct and efficient
o Sometimes fails awkward and incorrect (judgements,
decisions etc.)
Schemas: Mental Structures people use to organize information from the
social world around them
1. Helpful guide
Ex. Laundry schema, how to act in a restaurant etc.
2. Can shape what we see:
When situation is ambiguous, we may “fill in-the-blanks” with
information that seems to fit
Ex. Guest lecturer (Cold/Warm Professor)
o Expected warm Higher ratings
o Expected cold Poorer Ratings
o Students experienced same lesson Schema shaped their perspective and what they saw
Ex. 30 Rock
o Alec Baldwin’s character hears daughters’ first word,
“Mommy,” as “Money.”
We hold schemas for:
o different groups, people and for ourselves
Stereotypes: Schemas applied to groups;
generalizations of how members think or act
Race
Gender
Personality type
Schemas and Stereotypes
Life or death Consequences
o Study: Photos of young men holding gun or harmless object
Black/White men
As a police officer, you want to….
Decision; Shoot or not shoot?
Most errors shooting unarmed, Black men
Stereotypes quick to bias judgments
o Ex. Trayvon Martin
3. Shape What We Remember:
Memory is not a video recorder
Memory is reconstructive, remember bits to fill in blanks
Use schemas and expectations to shape memory
o Ex. Jack/Barbara; two different endings
Misremembered exact information but related
statements to the ending they heard
Jack gave Barbara roses (Romantic Ending)
4. Can influence How We Behave:
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: when our expectations about someone
influence the way we treat them, and the way we treat them leads
that person to act in the way we expected all along.
o Ex. Shy roommate
o Ex. IQ test (“Bloomers”); randomly selected
Labeled as Bloomers excelled (Self-fulfilling) Received extra attention, more opportunity,
better feedback, and greater support which led
those children to “Bloom”
5. Schema selection and durability:
Exposure to a lot of ambig
More
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