Critical Thinking Research

Lecture Notes 3

SOCIAL COGNITION

The rise of Social Cognition in the 1970s marked a fundamental and sweeping change in how social psychologists studied people. Before the 1970s, social psychology was dominated by the teachings of behaviorism, which held that in order to be scientific, psychologists should only study visible behavior and not make inferences about what was happening inside the person, such as thoughts and feelings. Social psychologists began to realize, however that it is impossible to understand people without examining how they think and feel. In the 1970s, social psychologists began to focus their studies on people’s thoughts and feelings. Subsequently, a focus on social perception is both an assessment of processes that influence how people perceive others, self and situations but also what thinking is involved within these processes.

The term social cognition became widely used in the 1980s; it encompassed a broad movement to study any sort of thinking by people about people and about social relationships. Frequently, social cognition also includes what people understand about how social positions and social roles influence social relationships. Therefore, how should a teacher interact with a student or a student with a teacher vs. the interaction between a student and another student, a teacher and another teacher?

People think about other people more than any topic, and probably more than about all other topics combined. Most TV shows, news programs etc are about people’s activities. People use their brains to think about each other, implying that humans evolved to rely on each other for information and help. The human mind is designed to participate in a society (group) and this means its primary job is dealing with other people. Most humans get their necessary information (for success and survival) by interacting with other people, and so people’s brains are designed to think about other people.

One reason people think so much about people is because of the long road to social acceptance. We want to be included in social groups and relationships, but this takes a great deal of work. We need to think at great length about other people in order to be accepted by them. This is an ongoing project and process.

The emphasis on thinking about people shows that inner processes serve interpersonal functions. Nature gave us a powerful brain that can think elaborate thoughts, and this brain is used mainly for helping us relate to others-and not only for gaining social acceptance. You need to understand your enemies and rivals as much as your friends.

SOCIAL COGNITIVE SHORTCUTS

Researchers have found that often people seem lazy or careless about their thinking. Social psychologists use the tem cognitive miser to describe people’s reluctance to do much extra thinking. There is ample evidence that when people’s capacity for thinking is already preoccupied, they take even more shortcuts to reduce further the need for thought. Subsequently the principle of parsimony applies in the tendency for the individual to prefer the simplest answer.

Then again, people do think at great length about things that are interesting to them. Not thinking is actually difficult. It is generally understood that thinking can evolve either conscious thought, as in when you are aware of your thinking and automatic thought which tends to occur spontaneously without much conscious concentration or effort. Because conscious thinking requires a lot more effort than automatic thinking; people generally prefer to conserve effort by relying on automatic modes of thought when they can. Unfortunately, the automatic system is not very good at some kinds of thinking, such as logical reasoning, and mathematics. Therefore, the automatic mind develops various shortcuts , which give rough estimates or pretty good answers. Sometimes, however, people do find it necessary to employ the full power of conscious thought.

How do we know whether thought is automatic or conscious? There is no single test. At least five elements distinguish automatic from controlled processes: awareness, intention, control, effort and efficiency. When people are engaging in automatic thinking, they are not even aware that they are thinking. A good example is driving. People who have many years of driving experience don’t have to think about how to do it, they just drive. Second, automatic thinking is not guided by intention; it may just happen whether you intend it to or not. Thirdly, automatic thoughts are not subject to deliberate control, so it can be difficult or even impossible to avoid having certain thoughts that have been cued. Fourth, automatic thoughts do not involve effort, whereas conscious thinking process often involves mental exertion and can feel taxing and tiring. Lastly, automatic thoughts are highly efficient, unlike conscious thinking which is often slow and cumbersome.

SOCIAL COGNITIVE STRUCTURES OF THE MIND

Knowledge structures (memory structures) are organized packets of information that are stored in memory. These knowledge structures form when a set of related concepts is frequently brought to mind or activated. When people think about a topic, it becomes active in memory (priming). Related ideas also become activated. Over time, as related ideas are frequently activated together, the set of related ideas becomes so strongly linked that activation of one part of the set automatically activates the whole set. Once activated, these knowledge structures simply run their course, like an airplane set on autopilot. The result is automatic thinking.

Schemas are knowledge structures that represent substantial information about a topic, person or situation, its attributes and its relationships to other ideas. Schemas are developed through your experiences, and they guide the way you process information. You might have a schema for self, weddings or studying, for example. Schemas make the complex world much easier to understand. Schemas automatically help organize information about a topic by connecting ideas that are related to each other. Schemas automatically help the mind form expectancies. Hence, if you are expected to study for an exam, what does that mean to you? What do you expect the task of studying to include? What results to you anticipate from studying? When should you study? What situations involve studying?

Once in place, schemas are activated through a stimulus. You go to the doctor and the schema for going to the doctor is activated. Your expectations for the experience and for the behavior of your doctor are activated. At this point, Confirmation bias, our tendency to ignore information that is inconsistent with our schema, influences how we process incoming information. Information stays active until there is an opportunity for expression of the behaviors associated to the schema.

One event that prompts conscious thinking is a violation of our expectancies. In general, people seem to go through their daily lives with a solid idea of what is supposed to happen. When life conforms to what is expected, they generally do not find it necessary to think too much about it. However, when events do not meet expectations, people tend to stop and analyze what has occurred. Getting through daily life is much easier if you have schemas that automatically generate understanding of what to expect. Encountering something unexpected creates a need to pause and consider what might be wrong with how we understand the world.

Scripts are schemas about certain kinds of events. Scripts include many types of information such as motives, intentions, goals, situations that enable, or inhibit certain behaviors and the causal sequence of events, as well as, the specific behaviors themselves. In social psychology, scripts define situations and guide behavior in those situation. A person automatically selects a script to represent the situation and then assumes a role in the script. For example, at present you are in a school learning activity (script) where your role is student. As a student you have specific behaviors to perform (studying and doing assignments) in order to achieve a specific goal (getting an A). You will be able to identify necessary motives (need to achieve a better job) and intentions (need to avoid too much effort) within this specific school script and evaluate how well you played the role of student, as well as, evaluate whether the learning situation was good or poor based on your previous knowledge of learning situations in schools. Scripts can also include what you might wear to learn, where you might go to learn. What the environment is like where you learn. Elements of conversation that are more likely to occur when learning (words like study, review, essay, and exam). Scripts can be learned by direct experience or by observing others. Through varied experiences, schemas and scripts are automatically acquired so that they can influence how we perceive, interpret, judge and respond to events in our lives.