this slide is for those students who are studying psychology as optional ( general ) or compulsory.

1. SOCIAL COGNITION
By: amrina abid

2. Definition:
Social cognition is the way in which we intercept, analyze, remember
and use information about the social world. Social cognition, like
general cognition, uses schemas to help people form judgments and
conclusions about the world.
Social perception: It refers to the process by which we form
impression of other people’s traits and personalities.

3. Schema:
• It is well organized structure of cognitions about some social entity.
“ set of cognitions are involved”
• Schemas unable us to organize and remember facts to make inference.
• It collects old information and forms new information.
• Through schema activation, judgments are formed that go beyond the
information actually available; in social schemas, the same holds true.

4. Types of schema
• Person schema: It is a cognitive structure that describe the personality
They enable us to develop expectation about other’s behavior. They can apply
on two type individuals introvert and extrovert. e.g: teacher and student.
• Event schema: It is known as scripts, they are the schemas regarding
important recurring social events. e.g: job interview, wedding.
• Role schema: It indicates which behavior is typical of a person holding
particular role in a group. e.g: occupational roles, leader of team.

5. Types of schema
• Self schema: self schema is that structure that organizes our conception of
own qualities and characteristics. A self schema is consist of dimension that
you want to think about yourself.
• Group schema: It is also known as stereotype or group stereotype. Group
schemas are the schemas regarding the members of social group and social
category. It indicates the behavior and attitude of that social behavior.

6. Attribution:
• Attribution is a process through which we identify the causes of other’s
behavior and so gain knowledge of their stable traits and dispositions.
• It is important in social cognition helps to detect the reason of behavior.

7. Types of attribution
• Internal(dispositional): In this attribution people infer that person’s
behavior is due to internal factors such as traits abilities, feelings, beliefs and
personality. For example: marios’s car broke down on the way and he
believes that it is due to my ignorance this is internal attribution.
• External: In this attribution people infer that person’s behavior is due to
external factors such as environmental situation, accidental situation. For
example: Mario’s car broke down on the way and he believes that broke
down is happened because car is old.

8. Types of attribution:
• Stable attribution: when people make stable attribution they infer that this
behavior is due to unchanging factors. For example: lee gets grade D in his
paper if he attributes that he has always bad luck. He is making stable
attribution.
• Unstable attribution: when people make unstable attribution they infer that
this event or behavior is due unstable temporary factors. For example: lee
gets grade D in his paper and attributes that he did not have much time this
week. He is making unstable attribution.

9. Conclusion
Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of
information about members of the same species; from a human perspective, it
is simply the ability to think about and understand others. it is simply the ability
to think about and understand others.