3.1 Schemas

05. Social Cognition I

Define: Social Cognition

the use of cognitive methodologies (& theories) to understand people & social situations

• related to process → asks how &/or why

• related to what’s in our head → cognitive representations/schemas

• is about people (social)

Three Basic Motives Influencing Thinking About the Social World

1. the need to be accurate → activated when being inaccurate could result in undesired outcomes

2. the need to reach closure quickly → activated when thinking is effortful or unpleasant

3. the need to confirm what one already prefers to believe → activated when prior beliefs/values are brought to mind, central to sense of meaning in life/personal worth, or threatened by contradictory info

Three Facets of Memory Examined by Social Cognition

1. how we take info from the outside world & encode it (select)

2. how this interpretation of the info is stored in memory (interpret)

3. how this info is retrieved from memory & used (remember & use)

Define: Categories

mental “containers” in which people place things that are similar to each other

Define: Schema

a mental structures, stored in memory, that represent knowledge about a concept or type of stimuli

includes…

• attributes & the relationships among those attributes

• associations w other mental structures → complex schemas

Importance of Schemas

• reduce the amount of info to process (stores more important things in memory)

• reduce ambiguity (thus easier to respond to stimuli)

• guide…

  • attention & encoding → how quick we notice / what we notice / how we interpret what we notice

  • memory → guides encoding & retrieval

  • judgements → impressions influence judgements & schemas form impressions

  • behaviour

Define: Scripts

schemas about an event that specify the typical sequence of actions that take place

Define: Impressions

schemas people have about other individuals

Cultural Source of Schemas

direct contact w people, events, & ideas

indirect contact w parents, teachers, peers, books, newspapers, magazines, television, & the internet

Reinforcement of Schemas by Social Narratives

• info about people/evets is often passed from one person to another

• info is altered by schemas (individual’s own schema)

• stories are simplified (never the same story rom one person to the next)

• stereotypes bias recall/retelling

Reinforcement/Creation of Schemas by Mass Media

• movies → e.g. romantic ideals

• news → people w schemas report what & how they want to report

Define: Associative Networks

models for how pieces of information are linked together & stored in memory

links result from semantic associations (concepts w similar meaning) and experiential associations (concepts experienced together in time/space)

Define: Accessibility

the ease w which people can bring an idea into consciousness and use it in thinking

(high accessibility → inc. salience)

Define: Salience

the aspect of a schema that is active in one’s mind &, consciously or not, colours perceptions & behaviour

(decays over time)

Define: Priming

the process by which exposure to stimulus on env. increases the salience of a schema

Effect of the Strength of Association on Accessibility, Salience, & Priming

more strongly associated attributes/concepts will be more accessible, salient, & easier to prime

Define: Chronically Accessible Schemas

schemas that are easily brough to mind b/c they are personally important & used frequently

Options When Introducing Novel Info into Schemas (Piaget)

Assimilate: use an existing schemas to interpret the novel info (make new info fit)

Accommodate: change existing schema to incorporate the novel info (make schema fit)

Priming on the Perception of Stimuli

priming can effect perception

Benefits/Pros of Schema Activation

(2)

Efficient, learned perception & actions

‘prepared’ / state of preparation

Limitations/Bias of Schema Activation

(3)

insensitive to schema inconsistent info

results in: (1) confirmation bias, (2) self-fulfilling prophecy, (3) stereotype & prejudice

Define: Confirmation Bias

the tendency to view events & people in ways that fit how we want & expect them to be

Two Reasons for Confirmation Biases

1. ambiguous info is interpreted in a schema-confirming manner

2. people tend to pay more attention to schema-consistent info &/or ignore info that doesn’t fit

Define: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

the phenomenon whereby initially false expectations cause the fulfillment of those expectations

Three Step Cycle of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

1. have an expectation (schema) about another person

2. this expectation can influence actions toward that person

3. these action can cause this person to act in ways that are consistent w your expectation