Social Psychology and Social Cognition

Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
6th edition

Chapter 3
Social Cognition:
How We Think
about the Social
World
“The greatest of all faults, I should say,
is to become conscious of none.”
–Thomas Carlyle

Social CognitionSocial 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.
Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.

Social Cognition
• 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.

2 Kinds of Social Cognition
1. Quick and automatic “without thinking,”
without consciously deliberately one’s
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

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
Rodin’s 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?

Automatic Thinking
Thinking that is nonconscious, 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.

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.

People as Everyday Theorists:
Automatic Thinking with Schemas
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.

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.

Stereotypes about
Race and Weapons
• 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 ½ second.
• People were significantly more likely to misidentify a
tool as a gun when it was preceded by a black face
than when it was preceded by a white face.

Stereotypes about
Race and Weapons
• 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 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.

Schemas as Memory Guides
• Schemas also help people fill in the blanks
when they are trying to remember things.
• We don’t 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 one’s 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.

Which Schemas Are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
Accessibility
The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the
forefront of people’s 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.

Accessibility
Something can become accessible for three
reasons:
1. Some schemas are chronically accessible
due to past experience.
This means that these schemas are constantly
active and ready to use to interpret
ambiguous situations.

Accessibility
reasons:
2. Something can become accessible because it
is related to a current goal.

Accessibility
reasons:
2. Something can become accessible because it
is related to a current goal.
3. Schemas can become temporarily accessible
because of our recent experiences.

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.
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
people’s original expectations, making the
expectations come true.

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.

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
• People’s true nature can win out in social
interaction.
• Self-fulfilling prophecies are most likely to
occur when people are distracted.
Some Limits of Self-Fulfilling
Prophecies
• People’s true nature can win out in social
interaction.
• Self-fulfilling prophecies are most likely to
occur when people are distracted.

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, it’s time for me to get married; I think I’ll
consult the Census Bureau’s lists of unmarried
adults in my town and begin my interviews
tomorrow”).

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, it’s time for me to get married; I think I’ll
consult the Census Bureau’s 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.
Mental shortcuts are efficient, however,
and usually lead to good decisions in
a reasonable amount of time.

Shortcuts
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?

Shortcuts
Judgmental Heuristics
Mental shortcuts people use to make
judgments quickly and efficiently.

• 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.
Shortcuts

Shortcuts
• 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 people’s 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
easy—I guess I’m 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 hard—I 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.”

Anchoring and Adjustment
Heuristic
Suppose you’re 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. I’ll sentence this person
to 60 years.”
What if your granddaughter just had her 5th
birthday? You
might impose a lower sentence.

Heuristic
Suppose you’re 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. I’ll sentence this person
to 60 years.”
What if your granddaughter just had her 5th
birthday? You
might impose a lower sentence.
This is, in fact,
the kind of
thinking judges
showed in a
recent study.

Heuristic
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.

People in the unconscious thought condition most
accurately identified which apartment was best.
Percent Choosing the Best
Apartment
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Imm Cons Uncons
Percent

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 Year’s 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 woman’s dog) nervous.
Neither man posed a threat, but
because they had brown skin,
they were singled out and
refused service.

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 Thinking
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 people’s 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.

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.

Thought Suppression and
Ironic Processing
Thought Suppression
The attempt to avoid thinking about
something we would prefer to forget.
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.

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.

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!

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