Intro to Psy-108 Module 6 Lecture Notes
Social thinking, also known as social cognition, functions much like our general
cognition. However, social cognition focuses on how we evaluate and interpret social
situations and how we connect with other people, whereas general cognition assists us
in interpreting sensory information, making decisions, and solving problems. System 1
and System 2 are the two processing networks that underpin our general cognition.
Framework 1 reasoning is quick, programmed, and instinctive; System 2 thinking is
deliberate, deliberate, and slow. According to research in social psychology, we typically
rely on System 1 in social situations far more frequently than we do on System 2. When
it comes to social thinking, we frequently form impressions and make snap judgments to
quickly classify individuals. Schemas are collections of information that are easy to
recall. By sorting information into categories and establishing relationships between
those categories, they assist us in organizing our experiences, beliefs, and knowledge.
Our instantaneous impressions, beliefs, and biases about who a person might be, how
they might act, and what actions they might take are contained in schemas, which are
studied in social psychology. Our diagram for "tattoo specialists," for example, is
presumably altogether different than our pattern for "stockbrokers." Our experiences, as
well as our interactions with others and the ways in which various types of people are
depicted in the media we consume, contribute to the formation of our schemas.
Generalizations will be speculations about the qualities of a gathering, and we use them
to make suspicions about people in light of what "bunch" we see they have a place with.
Therefore, stereotypes are used to differentiate groups from individuals while schemas
are used to differentiate individuals from one another. As we'llsee later in this part,
gatherings are mean quite a bit to both social reasoning and social way of behaving.
Stereotypes have their uses; When we see someone dressed in the colors of our
college football team's biggest rival, we can immediately tell that they are in some way
different from us. However, stereotypes can be harmful as well. Criticism, cruelty, and
even violence can result from arbitrary divisions between groups. Racism and other
social prejudices can be fueled by stereotypical thinking. We use mental shortcuts
called heuristics to make decisions and judgments more quickly. Schemas and
prototypes—the images we associate with a "typical" member of a schematic category
—are connected to heuristics. These processes can be helpful, but they can also be
inaccurate, which can have negative social consequences like negative stereotypes,
racism, and prejudice. Heuristics help us decide how we'll talk to a close friend versus
how we'll talk to a colleague or boss, or how we might start a conversation with a
stranger. Fortunately, System 2's more deliberate thinking frequently triumphs over our
System 1 thinking. According to research, we can correct ourselves when we realize
that we are relying on stereotypes and representative heuristics. We can adjust our
schemas to include new information, consider alternative explanations for why a person
might be behaving a certain way, and control our responses in various social situations
by deliberately slowing down and thinking. It's possible that you won't know much about
a person until you meet them for the first time. Assuming they're totally obscure to you,
you won't have very much familiarity with their convictions, intentions, previous
encounters, or affiliations. Yet, even if you don't know the person, you can quickly form
an impression of them. In 33 milliseconds or less, you decide whether they are likable,
attractive, knowledgeable, and trustworthy. The person's face is one of the first things
we notice about them. In an effort to quickly infer a large number of personality traits,
we automatically evaluate a person's general appearance—their face's symmetry, bone
structure, and distinctive features—as well as their facial expression when we see their
face. Immediately, our minds attempt to conclude whether somebody is skillful, reliable,
agreeable, unfriendly, or some other number of descriptors. Competence and
trustworthiness are the two qualities we look for first and foremost. According to
Hehman et al., faces with frowns or scowls are generally regarded as less trustworthy
than those with warm smiles. 2015). Alexander Todorov, a psychologist from Bulgaria,
conducted additional research that demonstrated that compared to people with more
masculine faces, we tend to view those with softer, more feminine facial features as
more trustworthy. The correlation between trustworthiness and attractiveness,
intelligence, and aggressiveness is positive, while the correlation between the two is
negative. To put it another way, if someone is attractive, we automatically assume that
they are honest and polite. We don't trust them as much because we expect them to be
more aggressive if we think they are unattractive. This bias that "beautiful is good" is an
illustration of a stereotype. Prejudiced or racist stereotypes, in particular, can influence
our assessment of a person's competence or trustworthiness. Our judgment can also be
influenced by representative heuristics. Strangers who appear to be untrustworthy are
implicitly mistrustworthy to us. We look at people's gestures, body language, and
physical behaviors in addition to their facial expressions when making our initial
impressions. In one study, researchers Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal (1993)
played silent 30-second clips of professors lecturing to participants. The participants
were then asked to rate the effectiveness of each professor by the researchers. These
ratings were strongly correlated with the ratings that the instructors' actual students had
given them at the end of the semester, indicating that the instructors' body language
had a significant impact on how their students perceived them. The primacy effect has
an impact on first impressions. The power impact expresses that we're bound to recall
the principal snippet of data on a rundown — thus initial feelings are the first "snippet of
data" individuals get about us. To put it another way, the first piece of information we
receive about a person makes us more likely to remember them and make a judgment
about them. A phenomenon known as reciprocal determinism can also cause our initial
impressions to become self-fulfilling prophecies (Bandura, 1978). According to
reciprocal determinism, our perception of a person has an impact not only on how we
act toward them but also on how they act toward us. We are able to alter our judgments
and first impressions. If a coworker gives us a bad first impression, we can consciously
choose to treat them well and look for more positive information about them in
subsequent interactions. The attribution theory is a theory that explains someone's
behavior by either crediting their internal traits or external situational factors. If you pick
up on the feeling that someone distrusts or dislikes you after the first time they meet
you, you can try to react deliberately (rather than lashing out or playing into their
perceptions) and create a different self-fulfilling prophecy that might change the way
they perceive you too. The Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider first proposed attribution
theory in 1958, which states that we can explain a person's behavior in one of two ways:
Either an internal or an external attribution is made by us. Internal attributions take into
account a consistent quality or trait that we believe we observe in another person.
Fundamental attribution errors are the tendency to overestimate the influence of
people's traits on their behaviors and underestimate the influence of situational factors
on their behaviors. External attributions take into account the particulars of the situation
in which a person finds themselves. Sometimes, making internal attributions can
increase our anger or discomfort in a situation. We all have a propensity to assume that
people act the way they do because of who they are as human beings. Most of the time,
we use internal attributions. However, if we do so and do not take into account the
impact of situational factors, we may make fundamental attribution mistakes. The
fundamental attribution error is fundamental, or more precisely, it is fundamental. This is
due to the fact that doing the cognitive and emotional work of making an external
attribution (especially when we are stressed, irritable, or distracted) takes longer and is
more time-consuming than doing an internal attribution. However, we can come up with
reasonable and sympathetic external attributions if we slow down and take the time to
consider the factors that influence someone's behavior (Gilbert et al., 1988)
Psychologists frequently refer to attribution as a two-step process because of this: The
automatic internal attribution that comes to mind immediately is the first step. The
second step is to slow down, take on another person's perspective, and give an external
attribution that is more thoughtful. However, our judgments of a person can be
influenced by their consistent behavior. What we pay attention to and how we think can
be influenced by culture. According to research, people who come from more
individualistic cultures have a tendency to prefer an analytical way of thinking, focusing
on specific people or things without giving much thought to their context. However,
because their culture places a higher value on the community than on the individual,
people from more collectivist cultures tend to pay more attention to context. These ways
of thinking are also applicable to social cognition: Because they are more likely to
consider the particulars and context of a given circumstance, people who come from
collectivist cultures are generally more likely to make external attributions. This does not
imply that only individuals from individualistic cultures make fundamental attribution
errors. People from collectivist cultures, on the other hand, have learned to think more
deeply before making their final attributions, so they are just more likely to stop at the
first step of the attribution process and rely on their heuristics.
