Social Cognition(Chapter 3)

Dr. Bradford

Hypnosis- does it work?

Hypnosis Videos

• Hypnosis Video 1• Hypnosis Video 2• Hypnosis Video 3• Hypnosis Video 4

Hypnosis

• Hypnosis was called animal magnetism by Mesmer.– Metaphors of gravitational

attraction + magnetic attraction ‘Animal magnetism’

• Sir James Braid coined the term “Hypnosis”– Metaphor of sleep.

Anton Mesmer

Hypnosis

1. What happens in hypnosis is determined by a group belief system (aka “collective cognitive imperative”)– Hypnotized subject exhibits the

phenomena he thinks the hypnotist expects, or, what he believes hypnosis is.

2. Induction always involves a narrowing of consciousness and attention, usually to the voice.

Hypnosis

3. Hypnotic trance is more like play-acting or role-taking – No actual hallucinations– “Paralogical compliance” (e.g. saying in English that you

speak no English)

4. Hypnotist as Authorization/Authority– Hypnosis works better when hypnotist is more ‘god-like’

or an authority figure– Trust is necessary (one allows oneself, or “authorizes”

ones ‘self’ to be hypnotized!– Those who are religious, and those who experienced

severe punishment as a child are more susceptible to hypnosis.

Spirit Possession

• Jaynes theory explains the persistence of spirit possession across all cultures.

• Spirit possession in Haitian voodoo was first captured on film by Maya Deren in her documentary Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti.

Charcot and Hysteria

• French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) used hypnosis to cure symptoms of hysteria.

• Hysteria: typically among women; feinting spells, anesthesia (loss of feeling in hands or legs), inability to walk. Among men, compulsions and obsessions.

Freud and Psychodynamics• Young Sigmund Freud was one of Charcot’s

students. • Under hypnosis, people could be controlled

to do things, for reasons of which they were unaware! – Today this is called post-hypnotic suggestion

• Freud proposed that, like in hypnosis, we can be guided by unconscious motives or forces all of the time! We are all always hypnotized!

• Psychodynamics: if a conscious force cannot express itself, then it must be blocked by an unconscious counter-force.

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)

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)

Honest Signals• Speed dating lasted 5 minutes. General preconception was that men

would be more indiscriminate, but they weren’t! How did men know, in just 5 minutes, when the women they were talking to would say yes also?

• Honest signal: “These are signals … that are either so costly to make or so difficult to suppress that they are reliable in signaling intention.” (2). – Example: squawking made by hungry baby birds. Makes them vulnerable

to predators, but also makes their parents return.– Male peacock; costly in terms of high metabolism, exhausting energy.

• Human honest signals:– NOT smiles, frowns, etc. Because these signals are so frequently planned,

we cannot rely on them being honest signals. We need to look for signals that are processed unconsciously or otherwise uncontrollable.

Honest Signals• Influence: measured by the extent to which one person causes the other person’s

pattern of speaking to match their own pattern. Subcortical structures involving attention.

– Example: turn taking: ‘verbal pushing’, getting ‘grilled’ by questions’, verbal cues demanding immediate response; good indicator of dominance

– unconscious: measured in millisecond– Example: influence on speaking pitch: candidate who ‘sets the tone’ of the debate, wins!

• Mimicry: reflexive copying → unconscious back and forth trading of smiles, interjections, and head nodding. Due to mirror neurons.

• Activity: more activity means more interest. Autonomic nervous system.• Consistency: when there are many different thoughts or emotions going on at the

same time in your mind, your speech and movements become jerky, unevenly accented and paced. Signal of mental focus. Greater variability, on the other hand, means more openness to influence from others. Measures integration within brain’s action sequence control system. Dancers and athletes show smoothness and consistency resulting from training.

• Laughter: ancient signal similar to mimicry. Increases bonding and reduces tension.

Human motivations

• Freud believed that humans had two basic drives or motives:1. SEX, and2. AGGRESSION

• Most researchers today believe this list is too short. Humans have 5 basic motives, which can be thought of as adaptive responses that our ancestors had to their environments and which we have inherited.

Human motivations

FIVE FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN MOTIVATIONS1. Acceptance- or not being rejected.

– We want to be accepted by those close to us, at least. This entails being nice, sharing, cooperating, etc.

2. Belonging to a group3. Influencing other people (power)4. Protection- detect others who may harm us

– Because of this we react very strongly to being mistreated

5. Mate Selection and retention, intimate relationships (sex)

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

How does Advertising Affect YOU?

• Why would companies spend over $200 Billion a year on advertising?

• Average American exposed to at least 3,000 ads every day.

SHAMWOW!

Subliminal Messages

• A subliminal stimulus is a stimulus that cannot be consciously perceived. – E.g. a word or picture flashed only 40 millisecond

(40 thousandths of 1 second)– Limin (Latin) = “Threshold.” Sub-liminal = ‘below

threshold’ of awareness. • Can the brain be influenced anyway by

stimuli that you cannot consciously perceive?

Subliminal Messages

YES!• Subliminal images can elicit distinct emotions.

– Example: Disgusting images people’s feelings of disgust.

– Example: Images of smiling or scowling faces altered people’s rating/evaluation or themselves.

– Among Catholics, when shown the Pope’s picture they evaluated themselves less favorably!

Subliminal Messages

1. Affects are Real, but not strong enough to influence feelings/attitudes about things they already have strong opinions about.

2. To affect our behavior, the stimulus must be relatively simply (e.g. one or two words, a single image)

3. Subliminal stimuli do not usually affect behavior, but they might influence those who are already inclined to do something anyway.

– Showing popcorn may influence those who are already hungry, to buy popcorn at a movie theater, but not anyone else.

Types of Thinking

Controlled

Thinking(Conscious)

Automatic

Thinking(unconsci

ous)

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

What we and others know (or don’t know) about our ‘selves’

Johari Window

Johari Window

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)

PROPAGANDA, REICH, AND BERNAYS

‘Century of the Self’ NOTES

Civilization and its Discontents

•Freud argued that Human Nature is inherently violent and aggressive, and that sublimation of these primal instincts is necessary for civilization to continue.•Sublimation occurs when primary sexual energies are repressed, and then redirected towards artistic or cultural ends.

Wilhelm Reich

•Student of Freud’s•Contrary to Freud, Reich argued that Human Nature is inherently peaceful, loving, and affectionate. Rather than repression and redirection of the primary drives (sublimation) being necessary for peaceful coexistence, Reich argued that such repression was the cause of violent and pathological tendencies in humans.

(1897-1957)

Reich’s “Discoveries”

1. Muscular and Character Armor:– our personalities reflect in part the chronic

tensions we hold in our bodies

2. Primary versus Secondary Drives– Our primary drives/desires are to reach out

towards pleasure, affection, and love. These often get chronically unsatisfied or blocked, and we develop secondary drives, like obtaining money, or becoming famous, etc.

Reich’s “Discoveries”

3. Sexual Emotional Energy and “Function of the Orgasm”– His most famous and controversial claim was that

the purpose of the sexual orgasm was the release of chronic in-built tension. The release of this muscular “armor” (tension) would concur with a psychological release of our character structure. We would become more spontaneous and caring.

Herbert Marcuse

• Psychoanalyst, Sociologist, and Philosopher; a leader of the student protest movements in the 1960s.

• His most famous book is One-Dimensional Man

• Agreed with Freud that some repression of our instincts was necessary, but argued that there existed in society surplus repression, or more repression than is technologically necessary to keep the society running.

• Freedom is repressed through a process he refers to as "repressive desublimation.”

(1898-1979)

History of Advertising

Edward Bernays●The “Father” of Public Relations● Nephew of Sigmund Freud● PR was invented as "peacetime propaganda.“ Bernays was inspired by the mass persuasion of the public during WWI.

History of Advertising

Edward Bernays • Information does not drive behavior. •Bernays helped transform advertising from a means of conveying information into an art of manipulation.

“Torches of Freedom”

●Bernays helped make smoking by women socially acceptable●Smoking was associated with power and independence ●“Torches of Freedom” suggests that to be against smoking is to be against women’s right to vote!

Consumer Culture

• Advertising helped transform America into a NEEDS culture into a DESIRE culture.

• Consumerism is necessary to avoid UNDER-CONSUMPTION: to grow the economy, more stuff has to be produced, which means that people have to buy more stuff, which can’t happen if people don’t desire more stuff!

Consumer Culture

• President Herbert Hoover’s “Happiness Machines”

• Consumerism is necessary for a healthy economy and stable political order

• People must be made happy and docile

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