Social Cognition(Chapter 3)

Dr. Bradford

Types of Thinking

ControlledThinking

AutomaticThinki

ng

Vocabulary

• Schema- mental structures that organize our knowledge about the social world (p. 49)

• Accessibility- the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments…

• Priming- the process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept

Johari Window

How well do we know ourselves?

• Why do we not seem to know ourselves very well in many circumstances?

• Answer: a large portion of the human mind is “unconscious.”

• There are two views on the nature of the ‘unconscious’- the old, Freudian view, and a newer version from cognitive science, I will refer to as ‘the cognitive unconscious.’

The ‘Freudian’ Unconscious

• Sigmund Freud was one of the earliest and most influential proponents of the idea of an ‘unconscious.’

• Freudian unconscious = all the bad memories and experiences, mostly from childhood, we have successfully repressed and forgotten because it is a source of psychic pain!

• Repressed memories, however, resurface as mental or psychic disorders!

(1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud

• Freuds “Discoveries”1. Linked Childhood to adult behaviors

2. Libido and infantile “sexuality”: infants reach towards pleasure and away from pain

3. Repression causes pathologies (e.g. neurosis)

4. Morality derived from repressive childhood upbringing

– Freud argued that ‘repression’ was a necessary evil, the price to be paid for progress (‘civilization’).

(1856-1939)

The ‘Cognitive Unconscious’

• Cognitive Unconscious: (aka Non-Freudian unconscious) = mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings, or behavior.

• Unlike the Freudian view, which says that the unconscious exists because of repression, the contemporary view holds that the unconscious exists simply because it is more efficient for the brain to delegate many mental tasks (*including many high-level, ‘intelligent’ processes!) to non-conscious components or ‘modules’

The ‘Cognitive Unconscious’

• Cognitive Unconscious: (aka Non-Freudian unconscious) = mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings, or behavior.

Freudian Theory of Unconscious Theory of Cognitive Unconscious

Exists because the conscious mind represses anxiety-provoking thoughts

Exists because:1. Consciousness has a limited capacity2. Many unconscious processes evolved

before consciousness.

What is the Unconscious?

• Much of what we would like to see is unseeable! We have no direct access to it.

• What does it do?1. Learning: pattern detector2. Attention and Selection: filter and search

engine3. Interpretation: Translator4. Feeling and Emotion: Evaluator5. Goal-setting

The Inference LadderUnconscious processes (steps 1-3)1. Observable data: non-conscious mind manages all of

this through perception process2. Select data: we produce lasting, memorable patterns.

Reality is a flow, full of variation. Our mind leaves out lots of bits because it doesn’t fit into our patterns or schemas. Our mind simply makes stuff up! Plausability.

3. Our mind makes inferences of assumptions on what the current moment is like, based on what we remember/know from the past. We are creating something that isn’t there! It isn’t real! We aren’t in the present.

The Inference Ladder

Conscious processes (steps 4-6)4. Draw conclusions about what is happening (external situation), on the basis of our invented internal reality.

– This always involves a response to surges of emotional energy as well

5. Adopt Beliefs about the world.6. Take action (e.g. talk,

communicate)

Inference Ladder

• Beliefs pre-construct data that we perceive in the first place! “When I see it, I’ll believe it!” is not usually true: We have to believe it before we can see it!”

• Lesson? – People have different selection rules based on

their inheritance and early experience. We can’t know other people select data, because they probably don’t know either!

PEOPLE WILL KNOW WHAT THEY THINK ONLY WHEN THEY SEE WHAT THEY SAY

Information Flow in Sensory Systems and Conscious Perception

Sensory SystemTotal Bandwidth (Bits/second)

Conscious Bandwidth (Bits per second)

Eyes 10,000,000 40

Ears 100,000 30

Skin 1,000,000 5

Taste 1,000 1

Smell 100,000 1

Cf. The User Illusion by Norretranders

Is Consciousness in Charge?Evidence from Cognitive Science

• Studies conducted by the German neurophysiologist Hans H. Korhuber and his assistant Luder Deecke, in the mid 1960's discovered readiness potential: a change in the electrical potential of the brain, indicated by EEG readings, that presaged simple actions such as moving one's hand or foot.

• They asked patients to spontaneously decide to move their fingers. The results showed that, a full second before they consciously chose to do so, their brains indicated they were preparing for the act. Importantly, the change in the readiness potential that preceded the spontaneous act

occurred a full second before conscious awareness of the decision.

Wundt's complexity clock.

Is Consciousness in Charge? Evidence from Cognitive Science

• Subjective relocation in time (aka backward temporal referral)– Benjamin Libet’s study in 1979:

stimulated sensory cortex of the brain that controls sensation in the left hand, while simultaneously stimulating the right hand directly on the skin.

– Even when stimulating the skin up to 0.4 seconds after stimulating the brain, patients always experienced the stimulation to their skin first.

Is Consciousness in Charge? Evidence from Cognitive Science

We become conscious of the stimulation at least a half second after the stimulation, (even though our bodies register the stimulation non-consciously), but the conscious experience is projected back in time so that we are not aware of any time lapse! In other words, what we experience is never in real time. There is a half second delay between what we sense and what we become conscious of sensing, but we are not aware of this, because we always attribute our becoming aware to an earlier point in time, before we actually became aware!

Is Consciousness in Charge? Evidence from Cognitive Science

Implications: 1. “Reality is a hypothesis, or simulation” - British experimental psychologist Richard Gregory (in Norretranders, User Illusion).

2. Veto function of consciousness: “Consciousness cannot initiate action, but it can decide that it should not be carried out" ( Libet: 243). In other words, consciousness can only function as a veto. It does not decide itself to carry out actions! Hence, consciousness is about doubt, uncertainty, and hesitation, which was necessary for people to defy the gods…