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What are the learning objectives of this lecture?
understanding key approaches and concepts in cognition
analyse perceptions and behaviours
apply theoretical knowledge to real-world situations
What is cognition?
Cognition sees people as '“information processors” with inputs and outputs.
mental processes are involved in acquiring, storing, retrieving, manipulating knowledge and information
e.g., memory; perception; problem solving; reasoning
Outline social cognition
Social cognition is how mental processes (for understanding the social world) influence our behaviour in the world, and with others.
e.g., our attitudes; beliefs; understandings; mental representations; prejudices; stereotyping
Social cognition assumes our interactions with others change in relation to how we process information; dependent on each other.
Social cognition explains that we are?
Cognitive misers: adopting cognitive ‘short cuts’; preserving ‘cognitive economy’ (e.g., schemas and stereotyping)
What are some alternatives and criticisms of social cognition
Social constructionism:
not information processing, but information manipulation
relativistic position: not looking for ‘truths’
Cognitive approach assumes stuff ‘is’, and we try to make sense of it, whereas Social constructionist approach assume we try and make stuff ‘is’
Meaning is negotiated through interaction and interpretation
Discuss some examples of social cognitions
mental representations
categorisation
attributions
heuristics
attitudes
schemas
memory
What is categorisation?
A way of simplifying perceptions, grouping objects/people based on similar characteristics as a cognitive short-cut to improve cognitive economy.
It is a rule based approach (every category represented by a set of features), although rules are sometimes hard to define and can be disagreed upon
prototypical and exemplar approaches to categorisation
What is a ‘fuzzy set’?
A set of rules with permeable boundaries; criteria does not need to be met entirely to satisfy the group.
Discuss the prototypical and exemplar approaches in categorisation.
prototypical: members share something in common (identicality is not necessary); categories are considered fuzzy sets around a prototype - can be extreme (e.g., environmentalism)
exemplar: quintessential category members (the most representative object in the group) or associative networks (connections with stronger/weaker links to other attributes).
What are schemas, and how are these related to categorisation?
Schemas are cognitive structures, they differ from prototypes (in terms of organisation), as they are highly organised and specify features and relationships of objects.
categorisation invokes schemas (list of traits/features of a category), usually driven by salience, relevance, personal importance, personal experience.
Once activated, what do schemas influence?
Our behaviours, how we process information, how we make attributions, inferences, and judgements.
They also guide how we encode (attend; interpret), remember, and respond (judgement and interaction) to stimuli.
What are some examples of schemas?
self-schema: what you think about yourself
role schema: schema about the role you are thinking about
scripts: schemas about events; series of instructions of how to behave in any circumstance (e.g., restaurant etiquette)
person schema: like self-schemas but for someone else
Define self-schemas
Self-schemas are a collection of beliefs, expectations, and understandings about ourselves.
who we are, what we value, what kinds of things we do, and do not do
Schemas (and self-schemas) are linked to?
Schemas can be linked to behavioural intentions and the outcomes of this behaviour (especially our self-schemas)
self-schemas are a collection of beliefs, expectations, and understandings about ourselves
Discuss research into stereotypes and their influence on schemas.
Mather et al. (1999): stereotypes were relied on to improve source monitoring accuracy
Mather et al. (1999): study found that younger people are less reliant on schemas
What are the 3 dimensions of the entrepreneurship alterness schema?
scanning and search: persistent and unconventional in investigating new ideas.
association and connection: creative information processing allows extensions in logic, consideration of possibilities, and unique connections.
evaluation: is new information absorbed in a way that is relevant to the individuals own interests.
Pidduck et al. (2020)
Discuss Pidduck et al. (2020)’s entrepreneurship research supports the role of culture:
Participants completed a cross-sectional online survey, tested relationship between breadth of cross-cultural experience and entrepreneurship alertness schema.
novel cultural stimuli encourages the schema to develop.
Why are we seen as ‘cognitive misers’
Social perception is a cognitively demanding problem-solving task, and we are cognitively lazy (misers).
We use heuristics to improve our decision making and interpersonal perception
What are some types of heuristics:
availability heuristic: judging the frequency of event based on number of instances brought to the ‘mind’ of that event.
representativeness heuristic: whether person is an example of a particular stored schema (e.g., stereotype)
anchoring and adjustment: using information about initial standards or schemas
What is causal attribution?
Identifying one or more factors as being responsible for bringing about an outcome. Some see us as ‘Naïve Scientists’ (using common sense)
inferring causes from observable behaviour or other information in order to predict and control our environment.
Discuss the two types of attributions we can make:
dispositional (internal; stable): personality characteristics, beliefs.
situational (external; changeable): weather, other people.
Discuss Kelley (1967; 1973)’s covariation model
The most influential model (treated as dominant approach), people use ‘covariation principle’ to decided whether to make an internal or external attribution, through 3 key questions:
distinctiveness: does this person behaviour like this in other situations
consistency: is this a regular behaviour in this situation
consensus: do other people behaviour in this way regularly
How does the covariation model disseminate between situational attributions and dispositional attributions?
situational attributions: rely on high consistency with high consensus or high distinctiveness.
dispositional attributions: rely on high consistency with low distinctiveness
What are some criticisms of Kelley’s covariation model?
availability of information: lab vs real life; multiple observations are needed and there is a tendency to under use consensus information; false consensus bias (everyone is like us, and everyone agrees with us)
people are poor at assessing covariation: complex cognitive task
covariation is not causation
Discuss different types of attributional biases?
Fundamental Attribution Error (correspondence bias); salience of action, like to believe we have control, WEIRD phenomenon
may be an error, rather than a bias
Actor-observer effect: tendency to make different attributions for others than ourselves (dispositional for others, situational for ourselves)
Self-serving bias: goal our exacerbating our pros and removing personal blame for our cons (dispositional for successes, situational for failures)
Ethnocentrism: ultimate attribution error; cognitive reasons being schema activation without much care.
How is perspective taking used to rude transgressor effects?
In Adams and Inesi (2016)’s research taking the victims perspective of which task they were forcibly assigned to reduced effects?
What are some critiques of attributional biases as an explanation of stereotyping:
these are not biases, errors, or even attributions:
attributional statements are discursive resources: discursive critique meaning that attribution is just a justification
these intend to justify/rationalise ways of being:
these are not necessarily intended to be consistent or accurate:
What are public perceptions?
Measures of public feelings that don’t necessarily correspond to reality.
What is the public deficit model, and discuss Evans and Durant (1995)’s support of it:
The public deficit model discusses the relationships between perceptions and knowledge, alongside upstream engagement (risk perception)
Evans and Durant (1995): examined empirically public understanding of science and public support for research, they found moderate correlations between knowledge and attitudes
Responses were dictated by how useful, or moral an area of research was; high correlations for useful research, none for non-useful, and negative correlations for morally contentious research.
Discuss the link between knowledge and support for an issue
It is not often / usual that knowledge is linked with support of an issue, those in favour and those against value different domains of knowledge, leading to biases.
social trust (or lack thereof) outweighs importance of knowledge; the scientific process can be questioned.
Discuss methods to improve public perceptions
upstream engagement: get the public involved in projects, before research begins
data feeds into policy and industry decisions: products and policies are more likely to succeed with data backing them
engagement and empowerment: public dialogue to keep public involved in decision making: improving activity engagement
How are experts’ risk perception different from public risk perception? (discuss the factors)
Expert risks are usually based on straight annual mortalities (a which is highest approach) whereas public risk perception includes other factors:
natural vs man-made: more acceptable if natural
controllability: more acceptable if controllable
voluntariness: risks with are voluntary are more acceptable
familiarity: more acceptable if a familiar thing
Risk perception is organised into three dimensions, what are these?
dread = uncontrollable, severe consequences, involuntary
unknown = unobservable, unfamiliar, delayed effects
people affected = number, type, and specific instances of people affected
With reference to the 3 dimensions of risk perception, what has research discussed?
dread risk is correlated with overall perceived risk
risks that are both unknown and dreaded have high ‘signal potential’
the idea that a risk occurring would have further impacts beyond the immediate shocks/effects
Discuss the correlations between risks and benefits:
Risks and benefits of a task are usually distinct, and therefore when correlated they are often negative.
sometimes if the risks and benefits are related it often leads to a positive correlation
What is the affect heuristic, and how is that related to risk vs reward?
affect heuristic = judgements of risk and benefit theorised to stem from an overall affective feeling about the behaviour.
Discuss some ways to write to a lay audience:
Do not use jargon, discuss processes in the simplest terms, use simple examples, do not assume prior knowledge, and do not use colloquialisms.
Discuss what psychological distance is broken down into:
uncertainty: level of confidence, so to speak
social distance: it is happening to people that i like
geographic distance: how far, or close something feels
temporal distance: how close in time
What is construal level theory?
It is a theory which uses the psychological distance of situations, to explain our thought patterns of an event.
a low level construal occurs in something psychologically close and leads to concrete thoughts of how?
a high level construal occurs in something psychologically distance, and leads to abstract thoughts of why?
How do we process psychological distance?
evolution: development of human capacity for abstract mental representation
commonality: the way the psychological distance is conversed
considering distance: leads to neural substrate activation in processes like thinking about the future (temporal distance).
How does psychological distance influence Word Stroop Task performance?
In Bar-Anan et al. (2007), words were manipulated for different types of psychological distance (e.g., low or high uncertainty)
there were differences in the incongruent performance, suggesting an impact of psychological difference.
What is the core concept of psychological distance?
temporal, spatial (geographic), social distance, and uncertainty are related; if one is activated, all are activated automatically.
task performance is changed by task-irrelevant words.
manipulating one aspect of distance can influence other aspects of distance.
Discuss how psychological distance applies to Climate Change: (Spence et al., 2012)
Geographical distance: actually seen as affecting both local and distance areas
Social distance: perceived the disproportionate effects on developing countries
Temporal distance: primarily seen as happening now
Uncertainty: around CC, originally called global warming but changed after people misperceived the extent of effects.
With reference to climate change, what did lower psychological distance correlate with?
Spence et al. (2012):
lower psychological distance related to greater concerns about climate change
lower psychological distance and higher concerns related to greater intentions to reduce energy use
What are the implications of changes in psychological distance on climate change?
Events, like climate change considered at distance will be considered more abstract and dissected into fewer groups which might potential miss effected people out.
High level construals from psychological distance allow us to be more confident about the future, whilst nef
What are the differences between desirability concerns and feasibility concerns?
desirability concerns: high-level construal, valued more with distance (such as in the future)
feasibility concerns: low-level construal, relevant in psychologically close events.
Note 
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