Social Cognition - Theories/studies

Cognitive Algebra (Anderson, 1978)

• Impression are evaluative

• People assign fixed Values to traits that simply raise or lower the average evaluation

• These values are integrated to form an overall evaluation

• We make sense of traits as they interact with each other - we connect traits together and fill in the structural gaps ourselves (what we already know about the world from what we have learned and what we can therefore infer) to form an understanding

Ashe’s configurational model (1946)

• Suggests that people do not form impressions in a gradual matter unlike Anderson suggests

• People make holistic (whole) judgments of another person

• Meaning of traits depends on context or on different traits.

• Some perceptional features have more influences than others eg. central traits such as warm/cold.

• Primacy effect - information that is first presented is remembered or weighted more strongly than information that comes later. This is because the first waves of information have anchored the person in their evaluations about a person from those initial first impressions. This makes initional first impressions more favourable.

Universal dimensions of social cognition (Fiske et al,. 2007; Cuddy et al,. 2008)

• Stereotype content model - human social evaluation across cultures consistently maps onto two fundamental dimensions: warmth (intensions: friendly, trustworthy etc) and competence (capability: intelligence, skill etc.)

• Evolutionary primacy - Suggests that warmth judgments occur significantly faster than competence judgments. Shows that evaluating intent takes priority over evaluating ability when forming inital impressions.

Willis & Todorov (2006)

• Looked into the accuracy of person perception

• Found a strong correspondence. After 100ms, judgments of features such as attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness. competence and aggressiveness correlated highly with judgments made when participants had unlimited viewing time.

• However this is not evidence that this study is objectively accurate - the study measured the speed and consistency of first impressions, rather than whether those impressions accurately reflected a person's actual character.

• Concludes that rapid facial impressions are highly reliable (ppts produce consistent results)

 Naumann, Vazire, Rentfrow, & Gosling (2009

• Are impressions accurate to the person?

• Found weak correlations between observers judgments and self or peer-reported personality. People can judge facial trustworthiness with some accuracy, this effect is modest and varies depending on the trait being judged.

• eg. judgements are more accurate for traits such as aggressiveness and sexual unfaithfulness in comparison to honesty or agreeableness.

• Concludes that although rapid facial impressions are highly reliable (Willis and Todorov (2006)), these impressions are only modesty valid.

Kelly (1950)

• Extended onto Ashs’s work

• Conducted a study whereby a group of students were split into two groups before meeting a brand new lecturer. First half received notes that described the teacher as very warm and the other half received notes that described the teacher as very cold.

• Students in the cold condition rated the teacher as being more self centred, unpopular, irritable etc compared to the warm condition. These students also engaged in less discussion.

• ‘Cold’ and ‘Warm’ function as central traits that essentially reshape the meaning of other characteristics in a persons description.

• Found that impressions don’t just shape judgments, they also shape behaviour.

• Kelly’s work demonstrates:

• - Top down processing - preconceptions influence perception

• - Schema activation - expectations form a mental framework that guides interpretation.

• - self fulfilling prophecy - expectations shape not only

  perception but also engagement and interaction.

Bartlett (1932)

• A study where the concept of schemas originated from

• Suggested that memory depends on context, purpose and culture.

• Involved a native American folk tale whereby ppts had to read the story and reproduce it from memory. The tale included unfamiliar elements to British ppts eg. ghosts, canoes, magic, unfamiliar/unusual narrative logic.

• Results found that British ppts changed unfamiliar details into more familiar details which fitted in with their already existing schemas and understanding of the world.

• Bartlett concluded that memory is a reconstructive process and that schemas can influence and distort our memories.

(Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady (1999)

• Conducted ‘The Asian Woman experiment’

• Ppts were reminded of their Asian identity before a maths test - ppts performed better due to the positive stereotype that Asian people are good at maths. Demonstrates performance facilitation.

• Ppts were reminded of their gender identity - led to ppts performing worse on the maths rest due to the negative stereotype that women are poor at maths. Demonstrates performance inhibition.

• This demonstrates stereotype threat which is when a person worries about confirming a negative stereotype which can negatively effect their performance.

Tversky & Kahneman (1974)

• Defined two types of heuristic

• Representivness heuristic - Objects are assigned to categories that share similar attributes. Eg. You meet someone who enjoys reading. You assume they might be a librarian because 'reading' fits in your schema of what a librarian is like, however they might have a completely different Job. We judge based on similarity, not on evidence.

• Availability heuristic - Importance and frequency of events is guided by the ease with which it comes to mind. (how easily they come to the mind.) eg. You watch the news about a plane crash and begin thinking flying is really dangerous: plane crashes are easy to remember, and you therefore overestimate how often they happen when I reality, plane crashes are rare.

Gricean pragmatics

• Suggests a different perspective on the conjunction error.

• Everyday language: We assume that extra information is included for a reason.

• Implied meaning: When people hear “bank teller and feminist,” they may think this description is more relevant and informative about Linda.

• Context: Linda's description makes the feminist option seem more believable and appropriate.