PSY100H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Pluralistic Ignorance, Realistic Conflict Theory, Social Proof
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PSY100H1 Full Course Notes
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Social psychology is based on the fact that a lot of problem solving relies on distributed cognition. Distributed cognition is the co-ordination of groups of people together so that they act in concert in order to accomplish shared goals. Many of our problems cannot be solved by individuals. Culture networked people together to tap into the power of distributed cognition. Out individual cognition is so embedded in distributed cognition that we often confuse individually possessing knowledge with having access to the power and knowledge stored in distributed cognition. This is known as the illusion of explanatory depth. In one experiment sloman asked participants if they understood how a bicycle worked. Most parti(cid:272)ipa(cid:374)ts thought the(cid:455) k(cid:374)ew, (cid:271)ut the(cid:455) (cid:272)ould(cid:374)"t draw a des(cid:272)riptio(cid:374) of how a bike worked. We continually confuse possessive knowledge with distributive cognition. So, we see that out individual cognition is bound up with distributed cognition.
