Aronson 6e ch3_cognition

Social Psychology

Elliot AronsonUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

Timothy D. WilsonUniversity of Virginia

Robin M. AkertWellesley College

slides by Travis LangleyHenderson State University

6th edition

Chapter 3Social Cognition:How We Think

about the Social World

“The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to become conscious of none.”

–Thomas Carlyle

Social CognitionSocial CognitionHow people think about themselves and the

social world, or more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.

Social Cognition• The study of social cognition is a central

topic in social psychology.• The assumption is that people are

generally trying to form accurate impressions of the world and do so much of the time.

• Because of the nature of social thinking, however, people sometimes form erroneous impressions.

2 Kinds of Social Cognition1. Quick and automatic “without thinking,”

without consciously deliberately one’s own thoughts, perceptions, assumptions.

2. Controlled thinking that is effortful and deliberate, pausing to think about self and environment, carefully selecting the right course of action.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

ON AUTOMATIC PILOT: LOW-EFFORT THINKING

• People often size up a new situation very quickly: they figure out who is there, what is happening, and what might happen next.

• Often these quick conclusions are correct.

• You can tell the difference between a college classroom and a frat party without having to think about it.


• Imagine a different approach: Every time you encounter a new situation you stop and think about it slowly and deliberately, like Rodin’s statue The Thinker .

• Imagine driving down the road and stopping repeatedly to analyze every twist and turn.

• Imagine meeting new person and excuse yourself for 15 minutes to analyze what you learned from them.

• Sounds exhausting, right?


Automatic ThinkingThinking that is nonconscious, unintentional,

involuntary, and effortless.

We form impressions of people quickly and effortlessly and navigate new roads without much conscious analysis of what we are doing.

We engage in an automatic analysis of our environments, based on past experiences and knowledge of the world.


People as Everyday Theorists: Automatic Thinking with Schemas

SchemasMental structures people use to organize

their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.

People as Everyday Theorists: Automatic Thinking with Schemas

The term schema encompasses our knowledge about many things:

• Other people,• Ourselves,• Social roles (e.g., what a librarian or engineer is

like),• Specific events (e.g., what usually happens when

people eat a meal in a restaurant).

In each case, our schemas contain our basic knowledge and impressions that we use to organize what we know about the social world and interpret new situations.

Stereotypes about Race and Weapons

• When applied to members of a social group such as a fraternity or gender or race, schemas are commonly referred to as stereotypes.

• Stereotypes can be applied rapidly and automatically when we encounter other people.


• Payne and colleagues rapidly showed college students pairs of pictures.

• Participants were told to pay attention to press one key if certain pictures showed a tool and another key if it was a gun, in only ½ second.

• People were significantly more likely to misidentify a tool as a gun when it was preceded by a black face than when it was preceded by a white face.



• Another study involved awarding video game players points for shooting characters holding weapons but subtracted points for shooting characters holding tools.

• Results showed they made the most errors, shooting an unarmed person, when a black person was not holding a gun.

• When the men in the picture were white, participants made about the same number of errors whether the men were armed or unarmed.


The Function of Schemas:Why Do We Have Them?

Schemas are typically very useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.

Schemas are particularly important when we encounter information that can be interpreted in a number of ways, because they help us reduce ambiguity.

Students told that a speaker is warm will interpret his lecture more favorably even though people who were told he is a cold person do not receive his lecture as favorably, even though both groups hear the same lecture.

Schemas as Memory Guides

• Schemas also help people fill in the blanks when they are trying to remember things.

• We don’t remember exactly as if our minds were cameras.

• Instead, we remember some information that was there (particularly information our schemas lead us to pay attention to), and we remember other information that was never there but that we have unknowingly added.

Schemas as Memory GuidesExamples:• Ask people what is the most famous line of

dialogue in the classic movie Casablanca, and they will probably say, “Play it again, Sam.”

• Ask them what is the most famous line from the original Star Trek TV series, and they will probably say, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

• Here is a piece of trivia that might surprise you: Both of these lines are reconstructions. The characters never said them.

Schemas as Memory GuidesMemory reconstructions tend to be consistent

with one’s schemas.• People who read a story about a marriage

proposal can later insert incorrect details that had not been in the story (e.g., future plans, roses) but were consistent with a marriage proposal schema.

• The fact that people filled in the blanks in their memory with schema-consistent details suggests that schemas become stronger and more resistant to change over time.

Which Schemas Are Applied? Accessibility and Priming

Accessibil i tyThe extent to which schemas and concepts are at the

forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when we are making judgments about the social world.

PrimingThe process by which recent experiences increase

the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.

Which Schemas Are Applied? Accessibility

Something can become accessible for three reasons:

1. Some schemas are chronically accessible due to past experience.

This means that these schemas are constantly active and ready to use to interpret ambiguous situations.




2. Something can become accessible because it is related to a current goal.




2. Something can become accessible because it is related to a current goal.

3. Schemas can become temporarily accessible because of our recent experiences.

Which Schemas Are Applied?Priming

Suppose you read about a man named Donald whose actions are ambiguous, interpretable in either a positive or negative manner.

• People who previously memorize words like adventurous tend to form positive impressions of him.

• People primed with words like reckless and stubborn form negative impressions.

Priming is a good example of automatic thinking because it occurs quickly, unintentionally, and unconsciously.


The Persistence of Schemas After They Are Discredited

• Even though a judge may instruct the jurors to disregard inadmissible evidence, because of the way schemas work, the jurors’ beliefs can persist even after the evidence for them proves to be false.

• Schemas can take on a life of their own, even after the evidence for them has been completely discredited.

Making Our Schemas Come True: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Self-Fulf i l l ing ProphecyThe case whereby people(1) Have an expectation about what another person

is like, which (2) influences how they act toward that person,

which (3) causes that person to behave consistently with

people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true.


Teachers led to believe particular students wil l bloom:

(1) Create a warmer emotional climate for those students, giving them more personal attention, encouragement, and support,

(2) Give “bloomers” more challenging material,(3) Give “bloomers” more and better feedback,(4) Give “bloomers” more opportunities to respond in

class and give them longer to respond.


Teachers led to believe particular students wil l bloom:

(1) create a warmer emotional climate for those students, giving them more personal attention, encouragement, and support

(2) give “bloomers” more challenging material(3) give “bloomers” more and better feedback(4) give “bloomers” more opportunities to respond in

class and give them longer to respond.

Some Limits of Self-Fulf i l l ing Prophecies

• People’s true nature can win out in social interaction.

• Self-fulfilling prophecies are most likely to occur when people are distracted.

Some Limits of Self-Fulf i l l ing Prophecies

• People’s true nature can win out in social interaction.

• Self-fulfilling prophecies are most likely to occur when people are distracted.

Which Schemas Are Applied?Priming


Cultural Determinants of Schemas

An important source of our schemas is the culture in which we grow up.

In fact, schemas are an important way cultures exert their influence: by instilling mental structures that influence how we understand and interpret the world.

Mental Strategies and Shortcuts

• When deciding which job to accept, what car to buy, or whom to marry, we usually do not conduct a thorough search of every option (“OK, it’s time for me to get married; I think I’ll consult the Census Bureau’s lists of unmarried adults in my town and begin my interviews tomorrow”).



• When deciding which job to accept, what car to buy, or whom to marry, we usually do not conduct a thorough search of every option (“OK, it’s time for me to get married; I think I’ll consult the Census Bureau’s lists of unmarried adults in my town and begin my interviews tomorrow”).

Mental shortcuts are efficient, however, and usually lead to good decisions in a reasonable amount of time.

Mental shortcuts are efficient, however, and usually lead to good decisions in a reasonable amount of time.



What shortcuts do people use? • One way is to use schemas to understand new

situations. • When making specific kinds of judgments and

decisions, however, we do not always have a ready-made schema to apply.

• At other times, there are too many schemas that could apply, and it is not clear which one to use. What do we do?


Judgmental HeuristicsMental shortcuts people use to make

judgments quickly and efficiently.



judgments quickly and efficiently.• Heuristics do not guarantee that people will make accurate inferences about the world. • Sometimes heuristics are inadequate for the job at hand or are misapplied, leading to faulty judgments.




judgments quickly and efficiently.


• Heuristics do not guarantee that people will make accurate inferences about the world. • Sometimes heuristics are inadequate for the job at hand or are misapplied, leading to faulty judgments.

As we discuss the mental strategies that sometimes lead to errors, however, keep in mind that people use heuristics for a reason: Most of the time, they are highly functional and serve us well.

How Easily Does It Come to Mind? The Availability Heuristic

Availabil i ty HeuristicA mental rule of thumb whereby people

base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind.

The trouble with the availability heuristic is that sometimes what is easiest to remember is not typical of the overall picture, leading to faulty conclusions.


• Example: When physicians are diagnosing diseases, it might seem straightforward for them to observe people’s symptoms and figure out what disease, if any, they have.

• Sometimes, though, symptoms might be a sign of several different disorders.

• Do doctors use the availability heuristic, whereby they are more likely to consider diagnoses that come to mind easily?

• Several studies of medical diagnoses suggest that the answer is yes.



Do people use the availability heuristic to make judgments about themselves?

• To find out, researchers had people remember examples of their own past assertive behaviors.

• People asked to think of six examples rated themselves as relatively assertive because it was easy to think of this many examples (“Hey, this is easy—I guess I’m a pretty assertive person”).

• People asked to think of twelve examples rated themselves as relatively unassertive because it was difficult to think of this many examples (“Hmm, this is hard—I must not be a very assertive person”).

How Similar Is A to B? The Representativeness Heuristic

Representativeness HeuristicA mental shortcut whereby people

classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case.

Base Rate InformationInformation about the frequency of

members of different categories in the population.

Taking Things at Face Value

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

“A mental shortcut whereby people use a number or value as a starting point and then adjust insufficiently from this anchor.”




Suppose you’re a judge sentencing a felon after your friend had his 75th birthday.

Without realizing why the number 75 came to your mind, you might think, “75 is too high. I’ll sentence this person to 60 years.”

What if your granddaughter just had her 5th birthday? You might impose a lower sentence.




Suppose you’re a judge sentencing a felon after your friend had his 75th birthday.

Without realizing why the number 75 came to your mind, you might think, “75 is too high. I’ll sentence this person to 60 years.”

What if your granddaughter just had her 5th birthday? You might impose a lower sentence.

This is, in fact, the kind of thinking judges showed in a recent study.



The problem with this is that completely arbitrary values can influence judgments.

Tversky and Kahneman (1974), spun a wheel of fortune and asked people to consider whether the number that came up was higher or lower than the percentage of African nations in the United Nations. People gave a higher estimate when the wheel of fortune stopped on a high number than when it stopped on a low number.


The Power of Unconscious Thinking

• Part of the definition of automatic thinking is that it occurs unconsciously.

• Although unconscious processes can sometimes lead to tragic errors, unconscious thinking is frequently critical to navigating our way through the world.



• Have you ever been chatting with someone at a party and suddenly realized that someone across the room had mentioned your name?

• The only way this could happen is if, while you were engrossed in conversation, you were unconsciously monitoring other conversations to see if something important came up (such as your name).

• This so-called "cocktail party" effect has been demonstrated under controlled experimental conditions.



There is even evidence that our unconscious minds can do better at some tasks than our conscious minds do.

• Suppose you were shopping for an apartment and after looking at several places you narrowed your choice to four possibilities.

• Each one has pros and cons, making it difficult to decide which apartment to rent. How should you go about making up your mind?

• Given the importance of this decision, most of us would spend a lot of time thinking about it, consciously analyzing the alternatives to determine what our best option is.



Dijksterhuis (2004) gave people a lot of information about four apartments in a short amount of time.

1. Immediate choice condition: He asked people to choose the apartment they thought was the best right way.

2. Conscious thought condition: He had people in this condition think carefully about the apartments for three minutes and then choose the best one.

3. Unconscious thought condition: He gave people a distracting task for three minutes so that they could not think about the apartments consciously, with the assumption that they would continue to think about the apartments unconsciously.



People in the unconscious thought condition most accurately identified which apartment was best.

Percent Choosing the Best Apartment

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CONTROLLED SOCIAL COGNITION: HIGH-EFFORT THINKING

Racial profiling has received much attention since the events of September 11, 2001. Because the terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center were of Middle Eastern descent, some people feel anyone a similar background should receive special scrutiny when flying on commercial airlines.



On the New Year’s Eve after the attacks, U.S. citizens Michael Dasrath and Edgardo Cureg, having passed extensive security checks, were removed from a plane when passengers complained that their presence made them (and one woman’s dog) nervous.

Neither man posed a threat, but because they had brown skin, they were singled out and refused service.



Racial prejudice can result from either automatic thinking or conscious, deliberative thinking.

Controlled ThinkingThinking that is conscious,

intentional, voluntary, and effortful.

Mentally Undoing the PastCounterfactual ThinkingMentally changing some aspect of the past in

imagining what might have been.“If only I had answered that one question differently,

I would have passed the test.” Counterfactual thoughts can have a big influence

on our emotional reactions to events. The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome, the

stronger the emotional reaction to it.

Mentally Undoing the PastCounterfactual ThinkingOne group of researchers, for example,

interviewed people who had suffered the loss of a spouse or child.

The more people imagined ways in which the tragedy could have been averted, by mentally undoing the circumstances preceding it, the more distress they reported.

Mentally Undoing the PastCounterfactual ThinkingSilver medal winners (2nd place) often express

greater dissatisfaction that bronze medal winners (3rd place).

Silver medal winners may imagine ways events could have gone differently to allow them to reach first place.


Mentally Undoing the PastCounterfactual Thinking• Counterfactual thinking can be useful, however,

if it focuses people’s attention on ways that they can cope better in the future.

• It is not so good if counterfactual thinking results in rumination, whereby people repetitively focus on negative things in their lives.


Thought Suppression and Ironic Processing

Thought SuppressionThe attempt to avoid thinking about

something we would prefer to forget.

• The automatic aspect, the monitoring process, searches for evidence that the unwanted thought is about to intrude on consciousness.

• Then the operating process, comes into play. This is the effortful, conscious attempt to distract oneself by finding something else to think about.

Thought Suppression and Ironic Processing

Thought SuppressionThe attempt to avoid thinking about

something we would prefer to forget.

The irony is that when people are trying hardest not to think about something if tired or preoccupied (under cognitive load), these thoughts are especially likely to spill out unchecked.

Improving Human ThinkingOverconfidence BarrierThe fact that people usually have too much

confidence in the accuracy of their judgments.

Ways this might improve:• When asked to consider the point of view opposite to their own,

people can realize there were other ways to construe the world than their own way, and consequently make fewer judgment errors.

• Teaching people basic statistical and methodological principles about how to reason correctly may help them apply these principles in their everyday lives.

Improving Human ThinkingOverconfidence BarrierThe fact that people usually have too much

confidence in the accuracy of their judgments.

Ways this might improve:• When asked to consider the point of view opposite to their own,

people can realize there were other ways to construe the world than their own way, and consequently make fewer judgment errors.

• Teaching people basic statistical and methodological principles about how to reason correctly may help them apply these principles in their everyday lives.

So if you were dreading taking a college statistics course, take heart: It might not only satisfy a requirement for your major but improve your reasoning as well!

Social Psychology

Elliot AronsonUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

Timothy D. WilsonUniversity of Virginia

Robin M. AkertWellesley College

slides by Travis LangleyHenderson State University

6th edition

Aronson 6e ch3_cognition

Education

Transcript of Aronson 6e ch3_cognition