Social cognition deals with encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of information about others. It focuses on how we think about and make sense of people in our social world, and how that influences our behavior, feelings, and social interactions. Unconscious social schemas draw on past experiences and judgments to influence social cognition beyond available information. Salience and priming affect how certain social stimuli stand out and influence behavior. Person perception involves making inferences and impressions of others through interactions and appearances to form judgments and categorize people into social groups, which can influence behavior despite potential inaccuracies. Implicit personality theory assumes traits are linked, so finding one trait leads to assumptions of other linked traits that may influence social encounters.

2. WHAT IS SOCIAL COGNITION?
Social Cognition deals with
• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Processing
Basically, social cognition focuses on how we think about others and how that influences our
behaviour, feelings and social interactions.
"Thus the study of the processes involved in perceiving each other and coming to "know what
we know" about the people in our world is essentially a question not only of what behaviour
we have seen, but of our cognition as individual perceivers-our social cognition. Social
cognition, therefore, is the study of the mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to,
remembering, thinking about, and making sense of the people in our social world."
(Gordon B. Moskowitz, Social Cognition: Understanding Self and Others)

3. SOCIAL SCHEMAS
So according to social schemas whenever we think of a concept, we draw upon our schemas.
• Unconscious
• Judgements formed which go beyond current available information
• Example, teacher schema draws authoritative figure and past experiences with teachers
etc.
• This may influence social cognition, and behaviour regardless if said judgement is
important

4. SALIENCE AND PRIMING
The salience of an object, is the state of which it stands out relative to its neighbours. Or in
this case, the degree of a particular social object stands out to other relative social objects in
any situation.
Example. In a group of 10 males and 1 female, due to the higher salience of the female
member, behaviour and social interaction with the female member would be influenced.
Priming refers to the increased sensitivity to certain stimuli through prior experience. Priming
has been shown to influence social behaviour and is closely linked to person perception.

5. PERSON PERCEPTION
• Refers to the inference made by different mental processes to form an impression of a
person.
• Also draws a conclusion
• Make a judgement everyday with every person you meet through interactions, e.g how
they greet you and appearance
• Salience, is also related, the more novel/peculiar a person is, the more likely we are
drawn to that particular person

6. SOCIAL CATEGORISATION
Through person perception we have social categorisation, in this process we mentally
categorise people into groups based on our perception.
• Happens automatically and unconsciously
• Can be wrong
• Common grouping include age, gender, race and occupation
Example, You get on a train with 2 seats available, one next to an elderly lady, and one next to
a burly grim faced man. You take the seat next to the elderly lady due to your social
categorisation of her being harmless, turns out she’s good at pickpocketing and you lose your
wallet.
In this case, social categorisation just got your wallet stolen due to your misjudgement.

7. IMPLICIT PERSONALITY THEORY
• Refers to assumption that certain traits and characteristics are linked to other traits and
behaviours
• That once we find a cardinal trait, we assume that the person will have traits linked to that
cardinal trait
• A cardinal trait is the trait that dominates a person’s personality
• Example, you meet someone new who is very happy, you may assume due to this theory
that they are also, friendly and kind.
• This may influence the way we act in this social encounter