SOC 104 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Santa Barbara City College, Social Cognition
Document Summary
The effects of graduate education on thought: continuous learning and thinking about things in daily life. Note that medicine, law and chemistry graduates, but particularly psychology graduates, all showed significant progress in their ability to reason correctly during their graduate education. Our systems and habits are used to help us judge and respond to others. This is appropriate in many cases, but in our own and other decisions our biases can also lead to prejudices. A good portion of our social cognition is unconscious or unintended, functioning without much thought or effort. On the other hand, when we have the time and the opportunity to think carefully about things we can engage in reflective, directed reasoning. Expectations that we use to evaluate others are focused on both the situational salience of the problems we determine and the cognitive usability of our own schemes and attitudes.
