Lectures Social Cognition
By Lizzy Scheltus
, Lecture 1 – Introduction, history & concepts
Introduction
Social cognition refers to trying to make sense of our social environment. This
means we can ask what determines what we think and feel of our social
environment. How do we form impressions about others? How does interacting
with them make us feel? And how does interacting with them changes our
behavior?
In constructing social reality, you need to consult information from the 1)
situation, the 2) person involved, but also the 3) cognitive processes. So, there
are three facets:
1. Situation: what’s going on and who is involved? For example, you want to
keep distance in in a supermarket and it’s hard to tell how much the
distance is.
2. Person: who processes the information? Who is this person? For example,
you are risk-averse and want to keep distance because you are a scared
person.
3. Cognitive processes: how does thinking and feeling work? For example,
we live in a pandemic and you have to think about how necessary it is to
go to the supermarket. You also have to calculate how much money you
have to buy bread.
= social reality.
Social cognition: the research side
Social cognition is a combination of:
1. Phenomenology: systematic description of how people say they
experience themselves, their social environment and themselves in their
social environments. We have lay theories, everyday psychology and
mental models.
2. Cognitive psychology: studying differences and modes of thinking,
learning and memorizing. We have models of information processing and
models of information retention. It’s about how people process
information.
Taken together, social cognition studies have research questions as “how is
social information encoded, stored, and retrieved from memory?”, “how is social
knowledge structured and represented?” or “how are social judgement and
decisions made?”.
How is social cognition research applied? Social cognition is widely used in real
life. Think about marketing (i.e. promoting products and services; how is social
reality understood to help people pick products), public policy (i.e. organizing
society), management (i.e. high productivity), public relations (i.e. communicate
effectively), journalism (i.e. communicate effectively), NGOs (i.e. mobilize
supporters and administer services effectively) and life (i.e. understand yourself).
Theories surrounding the basis of social cognition
In the early days, people thoughts of humans as rational decision makers (the
homo economics). They are rational, always maximizing their utility, are objective
(free from emotions) and logical (free from cognitive processing errors or biases).
This theory is based on the expected utility theory (Neumann & Morgenstern,
1947) and you can compare it to the idea of a lay scientist (Fiske & Taylor,
1991).
1
,But is our behavior always rational? We can take a look at why people die. 50% of
the deaths in the USA are the result of bad personal decisions such as smoking,
lacking exercise, criminally or risky sexual behavior. Even though we know some
things are bad, we still do it.
We are not rational: Asch experiment
Another example in which we see we are not rational is the Asch experiment
about conformity. Which line (A, B or C) is closest in length to the reference
picture? There was a group without social pressure vs. experimental condition. In
the first two trials, all gave the correct answer. In the third trial everyone gave
the same wrong answer. In the remaining 15 trials: all actors give the same
wrong answer and all actors give the same wrong answer. In the experimental
condition people adapting behavior or attitude to the group, which we call
conformity.
Some participants never gave the rights answer, there were some people who
something followed the other people and there were people who never followed
the example of the confederates.
There is more than conformity. They also found:
- Normative social influence: using others as a reference for what should
be done. Some participants said they didn’t want to look silly or be
rejected by the rest of the group.
- Informational social influence: using others as a source of information.
Some participants said they thought the others must have had better
eyesight or be better informed.
- Distortion of perception: some participants said the others were correct
and their answer was correct.
The upcoming of behaviorism
Because cognitions cannot be observed (well), behaviorism became popular. J.
Watson came up with methodological behaviorism in which they reduced
behavior to stimulus-responses and reinforcement learning.
But are cognitions even the cause of behavior? B. Skinner came up with radical
behaviorism. According to this, there is no evidence on the causal direction of
cognition-behavior link (i.e. there is a bi-directional link) and cognitions could be
post-hoc rationalizations of behavior.
Then there came a cognitive revolution. Cognition became interesting again
because they were interested in meaning-making. There was “an all-out effort to
establish meaning as the central concept of psychology and meaning-making”.
They overcome methodological problems by:
- Experimental manipulations of the environment
- Observe changes in behavior
- Infer mental states
Cognitive dissonance theory
2
, One example of bringing meaning into the cognitive revolution is the cognitive
dissonance study (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Participants were asked to
participant in a super boring task. After this, they were in the 1) control group, 2)
tell the next participant it’s an interesting experiment and receive 1 dollar or 3)
tell the next participant it’s an interesting experiment and receive 20 dollars.
After this, there was an interview. Results: In the 1-dollar condition, people were
positive about the enjoyableness of the test and about participating in a similar
experiment.
Why do we see this pattern of result? Individuals have an individual self-
concept, we like to think of ourselves as specific people (i.e. honest person).
Sometimes, situation-specific behavior does not match this self-concept (i.e.
lied in the experiment). There is a conflict which we call cognitive dissonance.
If you get paid a lot of money, you can resolve the cognitive dissonance and say,
“I did it for the money”. If you only get 1 dollar and you lied, you must have liked
the experiment because it’s not so much money. You change the cognitions to
reconcile the behavior to the self-concept and get rid of the cognitive dissonance.
Short-cut ways of thinking
There might be short-cut ways of thinking.
1. Consistency maximization: we try to achieve coherence between
conflicting beliefs and attitudes. For example, the cognitive dissonance
theory.
2. Bounded rationality: people operate quasi-rationally within the bounds
of limited cognitive capacities. For example, the bounded rationality theory
and “cognitive misers”.
3. Strategic sophistication: flexibility adapt strategies to changing
situational demands. For example, “motivated tactician” (= we adapt how
we think and apply cognitive resources) and strategic sophistication in
economics.
These short-cut ways of thinking sometimes work, but they are clearly
systematic. The way that they operate is through a route which we can study.
3
By Lizzy Scheltus
, Lecture 1 – Introduction, history & concepts
Introduction
Social cognition refers to trying to make sense of our social environment. This
means we can ask what determines what we think and feel of our social
environment. How do we form impressions about others? How does interacting
with them make us feel? And how does interacting with them changes our
behavior?
In constructing social reality, you need to consult information from the 1)
situation, the 2) person involved, but also the 3) cognitive processes. So, there
are three facets:
1. Situation: what’s going on and who is involved? For example, you want to
keep distance in in a supermarket and it’s hard to tell how much the
distance is.
2. Person: who processes the information? Who is this person? For example,
you are risk-averse and want to keep distance because you are a scared
person.
3. Cognitive processes: how does thinking and feeling work? For example,
we live in a pandemic and you have to think about how necessary it is to
go to the supermarket. You also have to calculate how much money you
have to buy bread.
= social reality.
Social cognition: the research side
Social cognition is a combination of:
1. Phenomenology: systematic description of how people say they
experience themselves, their social environment and themselves in their
social environments. We have lay theories, everyday psychology and
mental models.
2. Cognitive psychology: studying differences and modes of thinking,
learning and memorizing. We have models of information processing and
models of information retention. It’s about how people process
information.
Taken together, social cognition studies have research questions as “how is
social information encoded, stored, and retrieved from memory?”, “how is social
knowledge structured and represented?” or “how are social judgement and
decisions made?”.
How is social cognition research applied? Social cognition is widely used in real
life. Think about marketing (i.e. promoting products and services; how is social
reality understood to help people pick products), public policy (i.e. organizing
society), management (i.e. high productivity), public relations (i.e. communicate
effectively), journalism (i.e. communicate effectively), NGOs (i.e. mobilize
supporters and administer services effectively) and life (i.e. understand yourself).
Theories surrounding the basis of social cognition
In the early days, people thoughts of humans as rational decision makers (the
homo economics). They are rational, always maximizing their utility, are objective
(free from emotions) and logical (free from cognitive processing errors or biases).
This theory is based on the expected utility theory (Neumann & Morgenstern,
1947) and you can compare it to the idea of a lay scientist (Fiske & Taylor,
1991).
1
,But is our behavior always rational? We can take a look at why people die. 50% of
the deaths in the USA are the result of bad personal decisions such as smoking,
lacking exercise, criminally or risky sexual behavior. Even though we know some
things are bad, we still do it.
We are not rational: Asch experiment
Another example in which we see we are not rational is the Asch experiment
about conformity. Which line (A, B or C) is closest in length to the reference
picture? There was a group without social pressure vs. experimental condition. In
the first two trials, all gave the correct answer. In the third trial everyone gave
the same wrong answer. In the remaining 15 trials: all actors give the same
wrong answer and all actors give the same wrong answer. In the experimental
condition people adapting behavior or attitude to the group, which we call
conformity.
Some participants never gave the rights answer, there were some people who
something followed the other people and there were people who never followed
the example of the confederates.
There is more than conformity. They also found:
- Normative social influence: using others as a reference for what should
be done. Some participants said they didn’t want to look silly or be
rejected by the rest of the group.
- Informational social influence: using others as a source of information.
Some participants said they thought the others must have had better
eyesight or be better informed.
- Distortion of perception: some participants said the others were correct
and their answer was correct.
The upcoming of behaviorism
Because cognitions cannot be observed (well), behaviorism became popular. J.
Watson came up with methodological behaviorism in which they reduced
behavior to stimulus-responses and reinforcement learning.
But are cognitions even the cause of behavior? B. Skinner came up with radical
behaviorism. According to this, there is no evidence on the causal direction of
cognition-behavior link (i.e. there is a bi-directional link) and cognitions could be
post-hoc rationalizations of behavior.
Then there came a cognitive revolution. Cognition became interesting again
because they were interested in meaning-making. There was “an all-out effort to
establish meaning as the central concept of psychology and meaning-making”.
They overcome methodological problems by:
- Experimental manipulations of the environment
- Observe changes in behavior
- Infer mental states
Cognitive dissonance theory
2
, One example of bringing meaning into the cognitive revolution is the cognitive
dissonance study (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Participants were asked to
participant in a super boring task. After this, they were in the 1) control group, 2)
tell the next participant it’s an interesting experiment and receive 1 dollar or 3)
tell the next participant it’s an interesting experiment and receive 20 dollars.
After this, there was an interview. Results: In the 1-dollar condition, people were
positive about the enjoyableness of the test and about participating in a similar
experiment.
Why do we see this pattern of result? Individuals have an individual self-
concept, we like to think of ourselves as specific people (i.e. honest person).
Sometimes, situation-specific behavior does not match this self-concept (i.e.
lied in the experiment). There is a conflict which we call cognitive dissonance.
If you get paid a lot of money, you can resolve the cognitive dissonance and say,
“I did it for the money”. If you only get 1 dollar and you lied, you must have liked
the experiment because it’s not so much money. You change the cognitions to
reconcile the behavior to the self-concept and get rid of the cognitive dissonance.
Short-cut ways of thinking
There might be short-cut ways of thinking.
1. Consistency maximization: we try to achieve coherence between
conflicting beliefs and attitudes. For example, the cognitive dissonance
theory.
2. Bounded rationality: people operate quasi-rationally within the bounds
of limited cognitive capacities. For example, the bounded rationality theory
and “cognitive misers”.
3. Strategic sophistication: flexibility adapt strategies to changing
situational demands. For example, “motivated tactician” (= we adapt how
we think and apply cognitive resources) and strategic sophistication in
economics.
These short-cut ways of thinking sometimes work, but they are clearly
systematic. The way that they operate is through a route which we can study.
3
