social cognition, social preception, attitude, attitude change, Summaries of Social Psychology

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UNIT 2:

Understanding and evaluating the social world: Social

cognition, Social perception, Attitudes, Attitude-

behaviour link; Strategies for attitude change

Concept Social evaluation is a mental process that leverages the preference toward prosocial partners (positivity bias) against the avoidance of antisocial individuals (negativity bias) in a cooperative context. The phenomenon is well-known in humans, and recently comparative investigations looked at the possible evolutionary origins. So far social evaluation has been investigated mainly in non-human and human primates and dogs, however, there are few data on the presence of negativity/positivity bias in client-cleaner reef fish interactions as well. Unfortunately, the comparative approach to social evaluation is hindered by conceptual and procedural differences in experimental studies.

Individuals of many species form temporary or permanent groups. Living closely to conspecifics has benefits such as more efficient defense against predators or hunting, however, the competition over resources may also increase among group members. It is assumed that the recognition of group mates as prosocial or antisocial is important in many gregarious species to predict the future behavior of others (Bonnie and Earley, 2007; Subiaul et al., 2008; Bräuer, 2014). Thus this skill can contribute to survival due to the avoidance of harmful individuals and can facilitate the choice of an appropriate partner to engage in successful cooperation.

General Criteria for Social Evaluation Social evaluation is defined as a mental process during which an individual -

• Assigns different values (positive, negative) to particular behavioral patterns (e.g., helping, hindering) that are performed in a social interaction (e.g., problem solving),
• Associates these behaviors with specific individuals (partnership values) and
• Shows different behaviors (e.g., avoidance or preference) toward others based on the overall value which has been associated with them.

A. Social Cognition Social cognition refers to information received from the social world which is interpreted, analysed and remembered, such that we come to think, feel and understand about the people who live around us. Social cognition studies the ways in which social information is processed by people, particularly encoding, storage, retrieval, and application to social situations. It means application of knowledge and methods of cognitive psychology and information processing theory to the field of social psychology. But the information coming in is too much so we have to learn to organize it in the form of schemas. Schemas are a set of interconnected beliefs, information and examples about social objects, events and people.

Once formed the schemas guide our thinking and behaviour. They simplify information so that we can interpret new information rapidly. There are various types of schemas dealing with persons, events and social roles Illustration We want to buy a new mobile in a buy-back offer, then we neither meticulously mathematically calculate the exact price of the old and new mobile nor we do any probability calculations to maximizing our profits. We simply have a rough estimate of the prices and accept bargains more or less around that price. We can understand few interesting things about our mind from this example. (a) One, we have frameworks developed from the past experience (often called as ‘schema’) regarding selling and buying and we propose a lower price to buy and higher price to sell than our expectations. (b) Two, the mental processes we carry out are faster, automatic and very quick. (c) Third, at the same time these mental frameworks are prone to systematic errors and biases in decisions we make.

1. Schemas: Mental Framework for Organizing and Using Social Information. Schemas are mental frameworks centering on specific theme that help us to organize social information. There are various types of schemas.

• "Self schema" is for organizing knowledge about our-self knowledge.
• Schemas for other individuals are "person schema".
• Schema for social roles are called "role schemas" and Schemas for events or situations are called "event schema" (event script). While discussing the social schema we would study three aspects of schema: 1a. Impact of schema on social cognition; 1b. Effect of priming; and 1c. Schema persistence.

1a. The Impact of Schemas on Social Cognition: Attention, Encoding, and Retrieval Schemas influence social cognition by acting upon three basic cognitive processes, i.e., attention, encoding and retrieval. They are briefed below

• Attention is cognitive process of focusing on specific information while ignoring other things.
• Encoding is storing this information in memory.
• Retrieval refers to the processes of recalling the information stored in memory and using it. Attention : Schemas work as mechanism that helps individuals to focus attention on specific aspects of environment. The stimulus that is coherent with schemas is more easily noticed than the stimulus that is not fitting with the schemas one hold (unless the information has high strength of attracting information). E.g., while watching a cricket match we quickly notice happenings on the ground as compared to the noise in the stadium.

1b.Priming : We have large number of schemas. Out of them specific schema is used for interpreting social information.

• Priming is one of the mechanisms that influence the selection of schema.
• Priming refers to the events or stimulus that increases the availability of the specific type of information in the memory or consciousness as compared to other type of information.
• Usually stronger schemas are used for processing. But priming can also have an impact on the activation of certain schemas. To Illustrate
• You had fight with your boss when you came out of the office. While walking on road, somebody bangs your vehicle, and before he says anything you get extremely angry with him.
• This is because you have schema of aggressively interpreting social information that is activated.
• Studies on the effectiveness of priming have suggested that the effect of priming last for years together.

Unpriming

• The effects of priming can decrease. This is called as unpriming.
• If the priming is expressed in thinking process or in social action (behaviour), then effect of priming decreases.
• This is unpriming. If priming is not expressed, then it does not lose its effect.

2. Heuristics: How We Reduce Our Efforts in Social Cognition …cont

• Human cognitive system can process limited amount of information at a given point of time.
• When the information is more than it could be processed, we fail to process all information. This is called as information overload.
• Information Overload is a situation when the information for processing is more than the ability of our cognitive system. We use smart tactics under conditions of information overload and manage this information.
• These tactics are known as heuristics.
• Heuristics are simple rules of thumb or mental shortcuts that help us to make complex decisions and drawing inferences in speedy and efficient way.
• They reduces our mental efforts. Tversky and Kahneman have demonstrated the use of three heuristics. They are : a. Representativeness Heuristics, b. Availability Heuristics, and c. Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics.

a. Representativeness Heuristics : Have a look at following example : Ms X is 31 yrs, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in Management in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and participated in feminist / anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which statement is more likely? a. X is a bank teller. b. X is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. Most of you would answer ‘B’, that is ‘X is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.’ In reality, ‘A’ is more likely than ‘B’. Because ‘B’ (bank tellers who are feminist activist) is a subset of set ‘A’ (bank tellers). We know that probability of subset is always less than (or at the most equal to) the probability of set. Why did we make this kind of a judgement?

b. Availability Heuristics The availability heuristic is a phenomenon in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. There are situations in which people assess the frequency of a class or the probability of an event by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind. E.g., one may assess the risk of heart attack among middle-aged people by recalling such occurrences among one's acquaintances. Availability is a useful clue for assessing frequency or probability. Kahneman and Tversy asked participants to judge whether letter ‘K’ would appear more frequently at 1st place or 3rd place in all English language words. Many answered 1st place. This simply happened because you can think of many words that begin with letter ‘K’ than that have letter ‘K’ in the third position (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974). Availability Heuristics refers to the strategy of making judgements or assess the frequency of a class or the probability of an event on the basis of how easily specific type of information can be easily brought to mind.

c. Anchoring and adjustment Is a heuristic that influences the way people intuitively assess probabilities. While assessing the probability of an event, people start with an implicitly suggested reference point (anchor) and make adjustments to it to reach their estimate. A person begins with a first approximation (anchor) and then make adjustments to that number based on additional information. To Illustrate : Kahneman and Tversky asked students to guess the percentage of African nations which are members of the United Nations. One group of students were first asked "Was it more or less than 45 %?" whereas other group of students were asked "Was it more or less than 65 %?" The first group of students guessed lower values than the second group.