Social Cognition. How we judge and evaluate other people “You never get a second chance to make a...
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Transcript of Social Cognition. How we judge and evaluate other people “You never get a second chance to make a...
Social Cognition
Social Cognition
• How we judge and evaluate other people
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”
Why?
Impression Formation
• Schema (Schemata is plural)– Set of beliefs or expectations based on prior
experience– Presumed to apply to all members of the category– Primacy effect• Earlier impressions are more impactful than later
knowledge
– Self-fulfilling prophecy• Expectation elicits behavior from another that confirms
the expectation
Piaget
• Cognitive development as a process– Cognitive changes– Social cognition– Social behavior– Socialization
Attribution
• Attribution Theory– Heider (1958) – Behavior attributed to internal or
external causes, not both• Laziness or traffic (not lazy + traffic)
– Kelley (1967) – we consider three types of information about behavior to determine its cause• Distinctive – behavior of the other towards third party• Consistent – behavior of the other towards you• Consensus – behavior of the other similar to others’
behavior
Attribution
• Biases of Attributions– Fundamental attribution error• Tendency to attribute the behavior of others to causes
within themselves– Schindler helped Jews escape Nazi concentration camps
because he cared (internal); Schindler believed he was simply doing what needed to be done (external)
• Efficacy– One’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish a particular task
Self-Efficacy
• Efficacy• One’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish a particular
task
• Behavior (performance) influenced greatly by perception of control over a circumstance.– “Mom” tells you success is based on hard work.
VS– “Mom” tells you success is based on luck.
Self-Efficacy
• Learned Helplessness – Seligman (1965)
Attribution • Biases of Attribution– Defensive attribution
• We are motivated to present ourselves well– Impress others– Feel good about ourselves
• Self-serving bias– Tendency to attribute personal failure to external factors and
personal success with internal factors» I failed the test because Mr. Willis is a jerk.» I aced the test and didn’t even study! (AKA I’m really
smart!)
– Just-world hypothesis• People get what they deserve
– ‘Protects’ us from those things happening to us.
Attribution
• Attributions across cultures– Most studies of attribution have been done on
Western societies– Eastern collectivist societies attribute more
personal successes and others’ failures to external factors
– Self-serving bias seems to be common to all groups
Social Identity Theory
• Tajfel & Turner (1979)• No one “personal self”, but several selves of widening circles of
group membership.• Different social contexts may trigger an individual to think, feel
and act on basis of his personal, family or national “level of self.”• Social identity is the individual’s self-concept derived from
perceived membership of social groups (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002)– individual-based perception of what defines the “us” associated with
any internalized group membership. This can be distinguished from the notion of personal identity which refers to self-knowledge that derives from the individual’s unique attributes.
Social Identity Theory• Group membership creates ingroup/ self-categorization and
enhancement in ways that favor the in-group at the expense of the out-group.
• Categorizing as group members leads them to display ingroup favoritism. – Seek positive self-esteem by separating ingroup from an outgroup
• Positive distinctiveness of ‘us’
– People’s sense of who they are is defined in terms of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. • Three main variables of ingroup favoritism
– Extent to which individuals identify with ingroup to internalize group membership as aspect of self-concept.
– Extent to which prevailing context provides ground for comparison between groups.
– Perceived relevance of comparison group, • Shaped by relative and absolute status of the ingroup.
• Individuals are likely to display favoritism when an ingroup is central to their self-definition and a given comparison is meaningful or the outcome is contestable.
Social Identity Theory
• Schoolboys were assigned to groups, which were intended as meaningless as possible.
• Assigned randomly, excluding roles of interpersonal discrimination such as history of conflict, personal animosity or interdependence.
• Assigned points to anonymous members of both their own group and the other group.
• Conclusions– even the most minimal conditions were sufficient to
encourage ingroup-favoring responses. – Participants picked a reward pair that awarded more points to
people who were identified as ingroup members. In other words, they displayed ingroup favoritism.
Stereotypes
• A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category– Most common• Sex• Race• Occupation• Physical appearance• Place of residence• Group or organization membership
Stereotypes
• Can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies• Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977)– College-aged men & women paired to have a
phone conversation• Given a snapshot of their phone-mate• Was actually a randomly selected picture (attractive or
unattractive)• Men responded more warmly to ‘attractive’ phone-
mates; coldly to ‘unattractive’ phone-mates, which altered the pleasure of the conversations for both.
Stereotypes
• Macrae & Bodenhausen (2000)– More likely to apply stereotyped schemata in
chance encounter than in structured, task-oriented situation
– Goal pursuit results in more attention to individual signals
– People consciously or unconsciously suppress stereotypes that violate social norms
Prejudice & Discrimination
• Prejudice• An intolerant, unfavorable and rigid view of a
group of people (Attitude)• Discrimination– An act or series of acts that denies opportunities
and esteem to an entire group of people (Behavior)
Prejudice
• Sources of Prejudice– Frustration-aggression theory (Allport, 1954)
• Displacement of hostility by exploited, oppressed, or disenfranchised away from proper target and toward lower social groups
– Authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al, 1950)• Rigidly conventional, rule-following individuals hostile to those
that deviate from the norms
– Cognitive misers• Too much cognitive simplification, creates over-generalizations
and stereotypes
– Racism• Members of certain racial/ ethnic groups are innately inferior
Interpersonal Attraction• Harry Harlow
Interpersonal Attraction
• The tendency to be attracted to and like someone else
• Proximity– Usually the most important factor– The closer they live/work, the more frequently they
interact– The more they interact, the more they tend to like
each other– Less to do with convenience than the security &
comfort of the familiar (Borstein, 1989)
Interpersonal Attraction
• Physical attractiveness– Generally assume attractive people are more:• Intelligent, interesting, happy, kind, sensitive, moral and
successful• Better traits = better mates = like them more
– Harvey & Pauwells (1999): We like extreme attractiveness in the abstract, we typically chose those similar to our own level of attractiveness
Physical Attractiveness
• How is it determined?– Many elements
culturally specific• Weight, tan, hair color
– More universal stereotypes• Feature Symmetry• Physical markers of
good genes
Symmetry
Symmetry
Physical Attractiveness
• What are the dangers?– Attractive people shown more attention and
valued more highly by:• Mothers (Langlois et al, 1995)• Nurses (Badr & Abdallah, 2001)• Teachers (McCall, 1997)• Employers (Hosoda, Stone & Coats, 2003)
– Gives unfair advantages and creates self-fulfilling prophecy of superior moral value
Interpersonal Attraction
• Similarity– Shared attitudes, interests, values, backgrounds,
and beliefs– Quist & Crano (2003): Voters are more likely to
vote for a candidate with whom they share similar viewpoints
– Opposites attract?• Dissimilarities are complementary traits
– Needs or skills that complete or balance each other
Interpersonal Attraction
• Exchange– People exchange various goods and resources with
each other involving both rewards and costs• We equally ‘get something out of it’
– Reward theory of attraction• We like people who make us feel rewarded and
appreciated
– Aronson (1994): gain-loss theory of attraction• Increases in rewarding behavior more attractive than
constant rewarding
Interpersonal Attraction
• Intimacy– Quality of genuine closeness and trust in another
person– Created and maintained through continuing
reciprocal pattern of trying to know the other and allowing the other to know them (Harvey & Pauwells, 1999)
– ‘Safe’ topics (weather, sports, shared activities) > personal topics (memories, hopes, failures)
– Pacing is important • Too much, too soon is unattractive