Chapter 3

Social Cognition: How We Think about the

Social World
Social Cognition
How people think about themselves and the social world, or more
specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social
information to make judgments and decisions.

The study of social cognition is a central topic in social psychology.

The assumption is that people are generally trying to form accurate
impressions of the world and do so much of the time.
Because of the nature of social thinking, however, people
sometimes form erroneous impressions.

Police officers did not pause and think about what might be in Amadou
Diallos pocket; when they saw him reach for something, they opened fire.
They acted without thinkingthat is, without consciously deliberating
about what they saw and whether their assumptions were correct.
Two Kinds of Social Cognition
1. Quick and automatic without thinking, without consciously
deliberating ones own thoughts, perceptions, assumptions.
2. Controlled thinking that is effortful and deliberate, pausing to think
about self and environment, carefully selecting the right course of
action.
Quite often the automatic and controlled modes of social cognition work
very well together. Think of the automatic pilot that flies modern
airplanes, monitoring hundreds of complex systems and adjusting
instantly to changes in atmospheric conditions. The autopilot does just
fine most of the time, though occasionally it is important for the human
pilot to take over and fly the plane manually. Humans, too, have
automatic pilots that monitor their environments, draw conclusions, and
direct their behaviors. But we can also override this automatic type of
thinking and analyze a situation slowly and deliberately. We will begin by
examining the nature of automatic thinking.
On Automatic Pilot: Low-Effort Thinking
People often size up a new situation very quickly: they figure out
who is there, what is happening, and what might happen next.
Often these quick conclusions are correct.
You can tell the difference between a college classroom and a frat
party without having to think about it.
Imagine a different approach: Every time you encounter a new
situation you stop and think about it slowly and deliberately, like
Rodins statue The Thinker.

Imagine driving down the road and stopping repeatedly to analyze

every twist and turn.
Imagine meeting new person and excuse yourself for 15 minutes to
analyze what you learned from them.
Sounds exhausting, right?
Instead, we form impressions of people quickly and effortlessly and
navigate new roads without much conscious analysis of what we are
doing.
We do these things by engaging in an automatic analysis of our
environments, based on our past experiences and knowledge of the
world.

Automatic Thinking
Thinking that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.
We form impressions of people quickly and effortlessly and navigate
new roads without much conscious analysis of what we are doing.
We engage in an automatic analysis of our environments, based on
past experiences and knowledge of the world.
Although different kinds of automatic thinking meet these criteria to
varying degrees, for our purposes, we can define automaticity as thinking
that satisfies all or most of these criteria.
People as Everyday Theorists: Automatic Thinking with Schemas
Schemas
Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social
world around themes or subjects and that influence the information
people notice, think about, and remember.
The term schema encompasses our knowledge about many things:
Other people
Ourselves
Social roles (e.g., what a librarian or engineer is like)
Specific events (e.g., what usually happens when people eat a meal
in a restaurant)
In each case, our schemas contain our basic knowledge and impressions
that we use to organize what we know about the social world and interpret
new situations.
For example, our schema about the members of the Animal House
fraternity might be that theyre loud, obnoxious partygoers with a
propensity for projectile vomiting.
Stereotypes about Race and Weapons
When applied to members of a social group such as a fraternity or
gender or race, schemas are commonly referred to as stereotypes.

Stereotypes can be applied rapidly and automatically when we

encounter other people.
Payne and colleagues rapidly showed college students pairs of
pictures.
Participants were told to pay attention to press one key if certain
pictures showed a tool and another key if it was a gun, in only
second.

Another study involved awarding video game players points for

shooting characters holding weapons but subtracted points for
shooting characters holding tools.
Results showed they made the most errors, shooting an unarmed
person, when a black person was not holding a gun.
When the men in the picture were white, participants made about
the same number of errors whether the men were armed or
unarmed.
The authors argue that knowledge of a cultural stereotype can
influence people in insidious ways, even if the people are not
themselves prejudiced.

The Function of Schemas: Why Do We Have Them?

Schemas are typically very useful for helping us organize and make sense
of the world and to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.
Schemas are particularly important when we encounter information that
can be interpreted in a number of ways, because they help us reduce
ambiguity.

Students told that a speaker is warm will interpret his lecture more
favorably even though people who were told he is a cold person do not
receive his lecture as favorably, even though both groups hear the same
lecture.
What if everything you encountered was inexplicable, confusing, and
unlike anything else youve ever known? This is what happens to people
who suffer from a neurological disorder called Korsakovs syndrome.
People with this disorder lose the ability to form new memories and must
approach every situation as if they were encountering it for the first time,
even if they have actually experienced it many times before.
Schemas as Memory Guides
Schemas also help people fill in the blanks when they are trying to
remember things.
We dont remember exactly as if our minds were cameras.
Instead, we remember some information that was there (particularly
information our schemas lead us to pay attention to), and we
remember other information that was never there but that we have
unknowingly added.
Examples:
Ask people what is the most famous line of dialogue in the classic
movie Casablanca, and they will probably say, Play it again, Sam.
Ask them what is the most famous line from the original Star Trek
TV series, and they will probably say, Beam me up, Scotty.
Here is a piece of trivia that might surprise you: Both of these lines
are reconstructions. The characters never said them.
Memory reconstructions tend to be consistent with ones schemas.
People who read a story about a marriage proposal can later insert
incorrect details that had not been in the story (e.g., future plans,
roses) but were consistent with a marriage proposal schema.
The fact that people filled in the blanks in their memory with
schema-consistent details suggests that schemas become stronger
and more resistant to change over time.

In a study on this, participants read a story that ended either with a

man proposing to a woman or the man raping her.
In a memory test two weeks later, those who read the proposal
version often misremembered details that were consistent with a
proposal schema, such as Jack wanted Barbara to meet his
parents and Jack gave Barbara a dozen roses. Neither of these
details had been in the story, but people in the proposal condition
tended to think they were.
Similarly, people who read the rape version were likely to
misremember details that were consistent with a rape schema, such
as Jack liked to drink and Jack was unpopular with women.

Which Schemas Are Applied? Accessibility and Priming

Accessibility
The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of peoples
minds and are therefore likely to be used when we are making judgments
about the social world.
Priming
The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a
schema, trait, or concept.

Something can become accessible for three reasons:

1. Some schemas are chronically accessible due to past
experience.
a. This means that these schemas are constantly active and
ready to use to interpret ambiguous situations.
b. For example, if there is a history of alcoholism in your family,
traits describing an alcoholic are likely to be chronically
accessible to you, increasing the likelihood that these traits
will come to mind when you are thinking about the behavior of
the man on the bus. If someone you know suffers from mental
illness, however, then thoughts about how the mentally ill
behave are more likely to be more accessible than thoughts
about alcoholics, leading you to interpret the mans behavior
very differently.
2. Something can become accessible because it is related to a
current goal.
a. The concept of mental illness might not be chronically
accessible to you, but if you are studying for a test in your
abnormal psychology class, and need to learn about different
kinds of mental disorders, then this concept might be
temporarily accessible.
b. As a consequence, you might be more likely to notice the
man on the bus and interpret his behavior as a sign of a
mental disorderat least until your test is over and you no
longer have the goal to learn about mental illnesses.
3. Schemas can become temporarily accessible because of our recent
experiences.
a. This means that a particular schema or trait is not always
accessible but happens to be primed by something people
have been thinking or doing before encountering an event.

Which Schemas Are Applied? Priming

Suppose you read about a man named Donald whose actions are
ambiguous, interpretable in either a positive or negative manner.
People who previously memorize words like adventurous tend to
form positive impressions of him.
People primed with words like reckless and stubborn form negative
impressions.

Priming is a good example of automatic thinking because it occurs quickly,

unintentionally, and unconsciously.
The Persistence of Schemas After They Are Discredited
Even though a judge may instruct the jurors to disregard
inadmissible evidence, because of the way schemas work, the
jurors beliefs can persist even after the evidence for them proves to
be false.
Schemas can take on a life of their own, even after the evidence for
them has been completely discredited.
Making Our Schemas Come True: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The case whereby people 1) have an expectation about what another
person is like, which 2) influences how they act toward that person, which
3) causes that person to behave consistently with peoples original
expectations, making the expectations come true.
Self-fulfilling prophecies can have some serious consequences:
In U.S. elementary schools, girls outperform boys on standardized
tests of reading, writing, social studies, and math. By the middle
school years, however, girls start to fall behind, and by high school,
boys do better than girls on many kinds of standardized tests.
On the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), used by many colleges to
select students, males outscore females on the math and verbal
sections.
Many teachers, even if they are women themselves, believe that
males are brighter and more likely to succeed academically than
females.
Parents hold similar beliefs about the talents of their children, and
so do adolescents about their own talents.

Teachers led to believe particular students will bloom:

1) Create a warmer emotional climate for those students, giving them
more personal attention, encouragement, and support,
2) Give bloomers more challenging material,
3) Give bloomers more and better feedback,
4) Give bloomers more opportunities to respond in class and give
them longer to respond.

Some Limits of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Peoples true nature can win out in social interaction.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are most likely to occur when people are
distracted.
Which Schemas Are Applied? Priming
Priming is a good example of automatic thinking because it occurs quickly,
unintentionally, and unconsciously.
Cultural Determinants of Schemas
An important source of our schemas is the culture in which we grow up.
In fact, schemas are an important way cultures exert their influence: by
instilling mental structures that influence how we understand and
interpret the world.
Mental Strategies and Shortcuts
When deciding which job to accept, what car to buy, or whom to
marry, we usually do not conduct a thorough search of every option
(OK, its time for me to get married; I think Ill consult the Census
Bureaus lists of unmarried adults in my town and begin my
interviews tomorrow).
Mental shortcuts are efficient, however, and usually lead to good
decisions in a reasonable amount of time.
What shortcuts do people use?
One way is to use schemas to understand new situations.

When making specific kinds of judgments and decisions, however,

we do not always have a ready-made schema to apply.
At other times, there are too many schemas that could apply, and it
is not clear which one to use. What do we do?

Judgmental Heuristics
Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently.
The word heuristic comes from the Greek word meaning discover.
Heuristics do not guarantee that people will make accurate
inferences about the world.

Sometimes heuristics are inadequate for the job at hand or are

misapplied, leading to faulty judgments.
As we discuss the mental strategies that sometimes lead to errors,
however, keep in mind that people use heuristics for a reason: Most
of the time, they are highly functional and serve us well.
How Easily Does It Come to Mind? The Availability Heuristic
Availability Heuristic
A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with
which they can bring something to mind.
The trouble with the availability heuristic is that sometimes what is easiest
to remember is not typical of the overall picture, leading to faulty
conclusions.
Example: When physicians are diagnosing diseases, it might seem
straightforward for them to observe peoples symptoms and figure
out what disease, if any, they have.
Sometimes, though, symptoms might be a sign of several different
disorders.
Do doctors use the availability heuristic, whereby they are more
likely to consider diagnoses that come to mind easily?
Several studies of medical diagnoses suggest that the answer is yes.
Do people use the availability heuristic to make judgments about
themselves?
To find out, researchers had people remember examples of their
own past assertive behaviors.
People asked to think of six examples rated themselves as relatively
assertive because it was easy to think of this many examples (Hey,
this is easyI guess Im a pretty assertive person).
People asked to think of twelve examples rated themselves as
relatively unassertive because it was difficult to think of this many
examples (Hmm, this is hardI must not be a very assertive
person).

How Similar Is A to B? The Representativeness Heuristic

Representativeness Heuristic
A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how
similar it is to a typical case.
Base Rate Information
Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the
population.
Taking Things at Face Value
Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
A mental shortcut whereby people use a number or value as a starting
point and then adjust insufficiently from this anchor.
Suppose youre a judge sentencing a felon after your friend had his
75th birthday.
Without realizing why the number 75 came to your mind, you might
think, 75 is too high. Ill sentence this person to 60 years.
What if your granddaughter just had her 5 th birthday? You might
impose a lower sentence.
This is, in fact, the kind of thinking judges showed in a recent study.
The study also found that judges gave higher sentences when they
read that a first-year computer science student recommended a
long sentence than when the computer science student
recommended a short sentence, even though virtually all of the
judges said that the computer science students recommendation
had no bearing on their decision.

Many other studies have found that completely arbitrary starting

values influence peoples judgments.
The problem with this is that completely arbitrary values can
influence judgments.
Tversky and Kahneman (1974), spun a wheel of fortune and asked
people to consider whether the number that came up was higher or
lower than the percentage of African nations in the United Nations.

People gave a higher estimate when the wheel of fortune stopped

on a high number than when it stopped on a low number.

The Power of Unconscious Thinking

Part of the definition of automatic thinking is that it occurs
unconsciously.
Although unconscious processes can sometimes lead to tragic
errors, unconscious thinking is frequently critical to navigating our
way through the world.
Have you ever been chatting with someone at a party and suddenly
realized that someone across the room had mentioned your name?
The only way this could happen is if, while you were engrossed in
conversation,
you
were
unconsciously
monitoring
other
conversations to see if something important came up (such as your
name).
This so-called "cocktail party" effect has been demonstrated
under controlled experimental conditions.
There is even evidence that our unconscious minds can do better at some
tasks than our conscious minds do.
Suppose you were shopping for an apartment and after looking at
several places, you narrowed your choice to four possibilities.
Each one has pros and cons, making it difficult to decide which
apartment to rent. How should you go about making up your mind?
Given the importance of this decision, most of us would spend a lot
of time thinking about it, consciously analyzing the alternatives to
determine what our best option is.
Dijksterhuis (2004) gave people a lot of information about four apartments
in a short amount of time.
1. Immediate choice condition: He asked people to choose the
apartment they thought was the best right way.
2. Conscious thought condition: He had people in this condition think
carefully about the apartments for three minutes and then choose
the best one.
3. Unconscious thought condition: He gave people a distracting task
for three minutes so that they could not think about the apartments
consciously, with the assumption that they would continue to think
about the apartments unconsciously.

Because people in this condition could not consciously think about

the apartments, something else must have happened that produced
the best choice.
Subsequent research found that when people were distracted they
were still working on the task unconsciously, organizing the
information in a way that made the best choice more apparent to
them (Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2005).

Controlled Social Cognition: High-Effort Thinking

Racial profiling has received much attention since the events of
September 11, 2001.
Because the terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center
were of Middle Eastern descent, some people feel anyone a similar
background should receive special scrutiny when flying on commercial
airlines.
On the New Years Eve after the attacks, U.S. citizens Michael Dasrath and
Edgardo Cureg, having passed extensive security checks, were removed
from a plane when passengers complained that their presence made them
(and one womans dog) nervous. Neither man posed a threat, but because
they had brown skin, they were singled out and refused service. Both
have sued the airline.

Racial prejudice can result from either automatic thinking or conscious,

deliberative thinking.
Controlled Thinking
Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful.
Mentally Undoing the Past
Counterfactual Reasoning
Mentally changing some aspect of the past in imagining what might have
been.
If only I had answered that one question differently, I would have
passed the test.
Counterfactual thoughts can have a big influence on our emotional
reactions to events.
The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome, the stronger the
emotional reaction to it.
One group of researchers, for example, interviewed people who had
suffered the loss of a spouse or child.
The more people imagined ways in which the tragedy could have
been averted, by mentally undoing the circumstances preceding it,
the more distress they reported.
Silver medal winners (2nd place) often express greater dissatisfaction
that bronze medal winners (3rd place).
Silver medal winners may imagine ways events could have gone
differently to allow them to reach first place.
Counterfactual thinking can be useful, however, if it focuses
peoples attention on ways that they can cope better in the future.
It is not so good if counterfactual thinking results in rumination,
whereby people repetitively focus on negative things in their lives.
Rumination has been found to contribute to depression.
Thought Suppression and Ironic Processing
Thought Suppression
The attempt to avoid thinking about something we would prefer to forget.
The automatic aspect, the monitoring process, searches for
evidence that the unwanted thought is about to intrude on
consciousness.
Then the operating process, comes into play. This is the effortful,
conscious attempt to distract oneself by finding something else to
think about.
If a parent whose job is to distract the children from eating fast food
falls down on the job, for example, the kids will become even more
aware that fast food joints are in the vicinity because they will keep
hearing the other parent point them out.
The irony is that when people are trying hardest not to think about
something if tired or preoccupied (under cognitive load), these
thoughts are especially likely to spill out unchecked.

In one study, medical school students wrote about a personal topic

once a day for three days. After each writing episode, some
participants were asked to suppress all thoughts about what they
had just written for five minutes. Compared to people who did not
suppress their thoughts, people in the suppress condition showed a
significant decrease in immune system functioning.

Potential Sources of Error

Negativity Bias
People show greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive
information.
People are faster and more accurate at identifying threatening facial
expressions than positive facial expressions.
Bias may be explained by evolutionary factors.
o Negative information reflects features of the external world
that may threaten safety and well-being.

Optimistic Bias
Predisposition to expect things to turn out well, overall.
People believe that they are more likely than others to experience
good outcomes, and less likely to experience bad outcomes.
Planning Fallacy
Tendency to make optimistic predictions about how long it will take to
complete a task.
It occurs because people tend to focus on the future while ignoring
related past events and they overlook important potential obstacles.
Bracing for Loss
An exception to the optimistic bias
When people expect to experience something negative that has
important consequences for them, they tend to become pessimistic,
anticipating a negative outcome.
The desire to brace for a loss, may be an adaptive tendency that
helps people protect themselves from bad news.

Magical Thinking
Thinking based on irrational assumptions.
Examples are thinking that ones thoughts can influence the
physical world and thinking that things that resemble each other
share basic properties.
o Failure to take account of moderating variables
People are not good at acknowledging the roles that
moderating variables (factors that may be influencing
an outcome) play.
Improving Human Thinking
Overconfidence Barrier
The fact that people usually have too much confidence in the accuracy of
their judgments.
Ways this might improve:
When asked to consider the point of view opposite to their own,
people can realize there were other ways to construe the world than
their own way, and consequently make fewer judgment errors.
Teaching people basic statistical and methodological principles
about how to reason correctly may help them apply these principles
in their everyday lives.
So if you were dreading taking a college statistics course, take
heart: It might not only satisfy a requirement for your major but
improve your reasoning as well!
The

Influence of Affect on Cognition

Moods affect how new stimuli are perceived.
Happy moods can increase creativity.
Happy moods can make people more susceptible to social influence.
Information that evokes emotional reactions may be processed
differently than other kinds of information.
o Bad moods lead to more systematic thinking, while good
moods lead to more heuristic thinking.

Mood-Dependent Memory
Information remembered while in a given mood may be determined, in
part, by what was learned when previously in that mood.
Mood Congruence Effects
People are more likely to store or remember positive information when in
a positive mood and negative information when in a negative mood.

The Influence of Cognition on Affect

Two-factor theory of emotion: the perception of situations can
determine emotional reactions
Activation of schemas containing a strong affective component can
exert powerful effects on current feelings and moods.
Thoughts can regulate emotions.
o The I never had a chance effect
Convincing oneself that I never had a chance helps
regulate mood by reducing disappointment.
o Yielding to temptations can reduce negative affect.