The Cognitive Perspective of Social Behavior II

Social Behavior

• Perceiver (subject)

  • The Helping Experiment was about the social behavior of the perceiver

• Target (object)

The Power of Cognitive Perspectives on Perciever’s Behavior

• Stereotype threat in women (Spencer, Steele, and Quinn, 1999)

• Male and female college students

• An objectively difficult test of mathematical ability

• If you want to test the effect of math-ability stereotype on test performance, how do you design experiments?

  • Study 1 [Indirect]: Test presented as Easy vs Hard

    • When they are told that the test is easy, both males and females do the same on the test

    • When they are told that the test is hard, the women do worse on the test

    • Is the differential effect between the two genders caused by the activation of math-stereotype?

      • No, there are other factors that can affect the results, like confidence.

  • Study 2 [Direct]” Test presented as Revealing Gender Differences or Not

    • When no told that the test related to gender differences, the results of the female and male are similar

    • When told that the test does relate to gender differences, the male do better

    • Your own perception changes the behavior outcome

  • All participants were challenged to do their very best

• The Helping Experiment (Darley and Latene, 1968)

• Stereotype Threat in Women (Spencer, Steele, and Quinn, 1999)

• Our own experiences

The Power of Cognitive Perspectives of the Perceiver on Target’s Behavior

• ex: you feel someone doesn’t like you, so you change the way you act

• The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Merton, 1947)

  • focusing on the false assumption of a situation

  • something false can become true by playing with someone’s mind

• The Seld-Sustaining Propechy (Salomon, 1981)

  • the definition of the situation leads to behavior regardless of whether the definition is true or false

  • such behavior keeps the situation as it is, intensifies its characteristics, and prevents it from changing

• Experiment 1: Pygmalion in the classroom (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968)

  • filed experiment (public elementary schools)

  • IQ pretest - Identify to the teachers random 20% as “late bloomers” (not actually late bloomers)

  • IQ retest - measure gains in IQ

  • perceivers (teacher) they wanna mess up with their mind and target (students)

• Teachers’ Overt Behavior to the “late bloomers”

  • More positive socio-emotional climate

  • Providing feedback

  • Providing more input

  • Seeking more output

• Origins of behavior in teacher’s mental states (beliefs and attitudes)

• Experiment 2: The “Noise Weapon” Experiment (Snyder and Swann, 1978)

  • Condition 1: Reaction-time game (target)

  • Condition 2": Noise-weapon game (perceiver)

  • Make a noise for the other person while they are doing the reaction time task

  • [Hostile] “I just looked at the personality questionnaire you both filled out, and I want you to know that the other person is really hostile”

  • [Nonhostile] say nothing

  • if you were the perceiver and told the other person is more hostile, there’s a higher percentage that you make white noise for them

  • They switch conditions and compete against each other

  • The target has an opportunity to retaliate

    • when the target becomes the perceiver, they retaliate more against the perceiver that had blasted them before

    • targets behavior gets shaped

    • example of self-fulfilling prophecy

• Perceivers beliefs → Perciever’s behavior → elicit → targets’ responses → confirming perceivers beliefs

Social Cognition: Two Aspects of Combining Social and Cognition

• The Cognitive Mediation/Perspective of Social Behavior

  • Instead of the Doctrine of Situationism (B. F. Skinner Behaviorism)

  • It’s the Mental Representation of Situation

  • The Cognitive Construction of Reality

• The Cognition of Social Objects

  • perception

  • memory

  • casual judgment

• The perception of social objects I = social perception I

Sensation versus Perception

• sensation

  • detecting stimulus

• perception

  • mental representation of stimulus

Where Does Knowledge Come From?

• Knowledge: Perception, Memory, Belief, etc.

• Nativist View (René Descartes)

  • Knowledge is Innate

  • Evolutionary / Genetic Heritage

• Knowledge: Perception, Memory, Belief, etc.

• Empiricist View (John Locke)

  • Knowledge Comes Through the Senses

  • Requires Experience and Learning

  • Reflections on Experiences

• which view do psychologists endorse more?

  • empiricist view especially in social psychology

  • But researchers in behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, and linguistics (Noam Chomsky) also endorse the Nativist View

• artificial intelligence can’t disprove nativist prove

  • good for empiricist view

Two Views Of Perception

• Ecological View (Eleanor J. Gibson)

  • Information “In the Light”

  • Perceptual System Evolved to Extract Information

  • No Inferences, Little or No Learning

• Constructivist View (Hermann von Helmholtz)

  • Stimulus Inherently Ambiguous

  • Supplement with knowledge and Inference

  • Beyond the Information Given

    • you use background knowldege/experiences/stereotypes

Perception of Nonsocial Objects (Object Perception)

• looking at the physical features and what they make us feel

• functional features

Perception of Social Objects (Social Perception)

• Focus on the individuals

• Personal identity: who are they?

• Physical appearance: what do they look like?

• Demographic features: which groups do they belong to? gender/demographics

• Behaviors: what are they doing?

• Mental states: what they’re feeling or thinking?

• Personality: what are they like in general?

• Relationships: what are the relationships between them?

• Social Perception Is More Complicated Than Object Perception

• Social Perception Is More Inline With the Constructivist View

• Social Perception Does NOT Necessarily Reflect the Truth

Perception of the Person (Person Perception)

• Descriptions of Other People

• (Susan Fiske & Martha Cox, 1979)

  • Participants thought about a person (friends, family, stranger)

  • Participants freely write about the person they’re thinking for 10 minutes, every minute they are asked to draw a line to know what was written during what time

  • Researchers identify the content using a coding system

    • Appearance: how they appear

    • Behavior: what they do

    • Relationship: what one does with them

    • Origin: how they got this way

    • Properties: what makes them up

    • Context: where one finds them

    • also categories focusing more on what specifically physically they look at (ex: body —> weight or height)

  • Found out that most people talk about appearance during the 10 minutes

  • what may be a problem in this research design

    • contents of the categories not the same/can take a lot more about physical appearance

    • they might not want to talk about others because they might not want the researcher to know something

    • pre-defined coding system may limit researchers to catgories that they have anticipated but miss those they do not expect

• Natural Language Processing of Descriptions of Other People

  • Topic Modeling using Large Language Models (GPT-4)

  • Text Embedding of Words and Phrases

  • Compute the Similarity between Words and Phrases

  • Group Similarity Words and Phrases into Categories

    • Address Questions of Person Perception:

      • What the different content categories are

      • How often do people use each of the categories

      • What contexts change the usage of different categories..