Social Cognition and Social Thinking

Social psychology studies how human thought, feeling, and behavior are influenced by others.
Within this definition, cognition—the processes through which individuals perceive, think, and act—plays a central role.
Social Cognition: A research approach established in the early 1970s applying cognitive methods to social psychology.
Assumption:
- Social information is distinctly processed from non-social information.
- Fundamental questions include how individuals think about themselves and their social environment, and what processes are involved in the selection, interpretation, learning, remembering, and usage of social information.
Cognition: Broader term encompassing both conscious thought and automatic mental processing. Acts as an internal system similar to a computer program.
Reciprocal Effects: Social cognition focuses on the effects between cognition and social contexts.

Wilhelm Wundt (1897): Pioneered empirical psychology through introspection but faced criticism for non-scientific approaches.
Behaviorism: Dominant in the early 20th century, it moved away from cognitive perspectives toward observable behaviors.
Cognitive Revolution: Interest rekindled in the 1960s, influenced by Kurt Lewin and computer models of human thought.
Cognitive Consistency: Early models emphasized the motivation to achieve consistency in cognitive frameworks.
Historical Views of the Thinker:
- Naive Scientist: Individuals as rational beings attributing causes to behaviors.
- Cognitive Miser: People tend to conserve cognitive resources and use shortcuts.
- Motivated Tactician: Cognitive strategies are employed based on situational goals and motives.

Definition: The tendency of individuals to group people based on shared characteristics into discrete categories.
Basic Categories: include Race, Gender, Age, Occupation, and Body Size.
Kinds of Social Cognition:
1. Automatic Thinking: Fast, non-conscious, unintentional, uncontrollable, and effortless.
2. Controlled Thinking: Slow, conscious, intentional, controlled, and effortful.
Perfection in Categorization:
- Out-Group Homogeneity: The cognitive tendency to perceive out-group members as highly similar to one another, neglecting individual differences.

Quick traits assignment upon initial encounters impact perception and future interactions.
Impression Formation: Influenced by central traits which shape overall perception compared to peripheral traits.
Solomon Asch’s Configural Model: Central traits (e.g., warm vs. cold) hold significant sway in shaping impressions.
Biases:
- Primacy Effect: First presented traits disproportionately shape impressions.
- Recency Effect: Late-presented information affects impressions, usually when cognitive load is high.
- Positivity/Negativity: Humans predisposed to positive impressions, but negative information is more attention-grabbing.

Studies how attribute valuations are integrated into overall impressions.
- Summation: Cumulative total of trait valuations.
- Averaging: Mean value of trait ratings.
- Weighted Averaging: Importance shifts how much influence a trait has.

Definition: Mental structures representing general knowledge about concepts or stimuli. They help navigate unfamiliar scenarios and influence what individuals notice, think about, and remember.
Types of Schemas:
- Person Schemas: Knowledge about specific individuals.
- Self-schemas: Knowledge about oneself.
- Role Schemas: Conceptualizations surrounding assigned roles (e.g., doctor, teacher).
- Event Schemas (Scripts): Expectations concerning typical sequences of actions (e.g., a restaurant visit).
Function: Facilitate top-down processing and are analogous to prototypes, representing the typical or ideal features of a category.

Stereotypes: Simplified assumptions based on group memberships; a generalized view where traits are ascribed to all group members, ignoring actual variation.
Origins of Stereotypes:
- Perceptual Accentuation: Categorization emphasizes similarities within groups and differences between groups (Tajfel).
- Cultural Learning: Societal norms dictate stereotype development.
Illusionary Correlations (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976): When statistically rare events co-occur, they capture attention, leading observers to overestimate the frequency of those co-occurrences.
Consequences of Stereotype Activation:
- Stereotypes activate quickly and automatically.
- The Police Officer's Dilemma (Correll et al., 2002, 2014): Research shows racial categorization and the presence of weapons affect reaction times and error rates in shooting decisions.
- Mortality Data (2015): Statistics on police shootings in the U.S. show racial disparities in deaths per million: Black (30), Hispanic (22), and White (12).

Implicit Association Test (IAT): A tool for exploring social psychological questions and biases.
Lexical Decision Tasks: Used to study schema activation. A prime (e.g., a Black person) can lead to quicker recognition of schema-congruent words (e.g., crime).
Dot-Probe Task: Determines attention capture. Findings show Black faces draw attention in no-goal conditions, indicating schemas are not always activated.
Activation Characteristics:
- Factors: Saliency of cues and chronic accessibility (motivation, goals, experiences).
- Costs of Being Wrong: Dependency on outcomes, accountability, and anxiety influence the depth of processing.
Priming: Activating schemas without conscious awareness. This can be limited by inhibitory cues if the individual becomes aware of the prime.

Differentiate between automatic and controlled operations in social cognition, highlighting cognitive asymmetries.
Pathways: Proliferated by Kahneman’s "Thinking, Fast and Slow," identifying System 1 (automatic) and System 2 (controlled) processing.
System 2: Linked to general intelligence and working memory capacity, affecting the application of strategic processes.

Social cognition is a complex domain utilizing cognitive paradigms to understand social information processing. It notes susceptibility to bias from both automatic and controlled thinking styles, significantly influenced by individual differences