Social Cognition

what’s social cognition

• How people think and make judgements when trying to understand and interact with the social world

• Making sense of social contexts

• Social + Cognitive psychology

  • Social psychological theory and content + cognitive psychology methods

Why do people blame victims study

• hypothesis: belief in a just world

• setup: all participants watched another “participant” (confederate “victim”) receive electric shocks in a learning task (10 mins)

• IV: compensation; continued suffering

  • partipants chose how confederate would be treated when they got the answer wrong

• DV: rate innocent victim on how likeable they are

• results: partipants who chose for the confederate to continue suffering rated them less likeable and less desirable for friendship

• bottom line: evidence that people denigrate and distance themselves from active victims (those who will continue to suffer)

  • implies people are trying to maintain just world beliefs (those who continue to suffer deserve it)

belief in a just world

• the need to perceive the world as a fair and just place

• we believe that people’s good and bad actions are fairly rewarded

• those who are rewarded are good people, while those punished are bad people

• when exposed to a victim who is suffering, we rationalize it, blame them, and believe they must have deserved it

just-world beliefs threatened by innocent victims study

• Setup: watch news clip of assault victim

• IV: ½ of partipants were told offender was punished; other ½ was told the offender was unpunished

• DV: Reaction times to identify colours (Stroop task) using justice-related and – unrelated words

• Theory: if offender goes unpunished, justice motive should still be active

• Results: partipants who were told the offender was unpunished scored better on the stroop task

• Bottom line: these results serve as social cognitive evidence of justice motive (System 1)

making predictions

• People can predict sexual orientation (rapidly) from faces better than chance (i.e., gay men, lesbians)

  • E.g., via gender inversion clues – more feminine man = more gay

• Can also predict socioeconomic status after seven spoken words (e.g., and, from, imagine, thought)

  • E.g., via class-related dialect or speech cues

• Bottom line: There is some validity to some snap judgements, BUT they’re typically not highly accurate and they fail to provide us with important individuating information (also problematic)

Confirmation bias

tendency to test an idea about the world by seeking information that confirms it

confirmation bias study

• Question: Can confirmation bias also be motivated?

• IV: type of participant - pro death penalty; opp death penalty

• Setup: Exposed to 2 “studies”

  • 1: Found that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime (exposed to pros)

  • 2: Found that the death penalty ISN’T a deterrent to crime (exposed to opps)

• DV:

  • Study evaluation

    • Partipants thought supporting study was ”better conducted”

    • Opposing study was “less convincing” and was critiqued more

  • Support for death penalty

    • Mixed evidence didn’t lead to more balanced opinions

    • Participants became more enthusiastic pro/opponents

• Take home: the effect of exposure to mixed information and the operation of motivated confirmation bias

Schemas

• mental templates that intuitively guide our perception and organization of social information

• influence what information we notice, think about, and remember

• help fill in gaps in knowledge

• affect interpretation of ambiguous situations

• several types: situations, people, roles, etc.

• can be more or less accessible depending on the situation

Priming

• Any experience or procedure that brings a particular schema or concept to mind (i.e., make it at least temporarily accessible)

• 2 types: supraliminal and subliminal

supraliminal priming

• Within conscious awareness

• Not aware of being primed, but exists if you look closely

subliminal priming

• Below conscious awareness

• Usually presented as a quick flash

priming study

• Question: Can priming affect behaviour?

• IV: Adjective primed (rude, polite, neutral)

• DV: Likelihood of interrupting experimenter (10 min max)

• Setup: Participants presented with 30 scrambled sentences with some sentences including primed words

  • Participant is then ignored when attempting to get the experimenter’s attention

• Hypothesis: Likelihood of interrupting would vary by prime (most likely with rude prime, least likely with polite prime)

• Results: Those who were primed with rude adjectives were more likely to interrupt than those who were primed with polite and neutral adjectives

• Powerful effect of priming on behaviour without any awareness

schemas applied

Sometimes the application of schemas can be consequential (e.g., when applied to people, can lead to stereotypes)

schemas applied study

• Question: What happens when people apply stereotypes to disambiguate potentially threatening people?

• IV: Ethnicity - white & black; Threat - armed & unarmed

• Setup: Participants played a video game where they chose to shoot or not shoot a target.

• DV: Speed of decision to shoot/not shoot

• More likely to shoot black unarmed people than white unarmed people

What causes shooter bias (schemas applied)

• System 1 processes (stereotype activation)

• Size of the shooter bias not predicted by endorsement of racist attitudes

• Both African Americans and White Americans demonstrate shooter bias

• Police officers are faster and more accurate, but same effect exists

• Police officers are faster and more accurate, but same effect exists (implicit biases)