UNIT III – SOCIAL THINKING

OVERVIEW:

This unit examines the scientific study of how we think about one another (also called
social cognition). Each lesson confronts some overriding questions: How reasonable are our
social attitudes, explanations, and beliefs? Are our impressions of ourselves and others
generally accurate? How does our social thinking form? How is it prone to bias and error, and
how might we bring it closer to reality? This module also explores the interplay between our
sense of self and our social worlds. How do our social surroundings shape our self-identities?
How does self-interest color our social judgments and motivate our social behavior? This unit
looks at the amazing and sometimes rather amusing ways we form beliefs about our social
worlds. It also alerts us to some pitfalls of social thinking and suggests how to avoid them and
think smarter. In this module, we explore the links between our thinking and our actions,
between our attitudes and our behaviors: Do our attitudes determine our behaviors, or vice
versa? Or does it work both ways?

LEARNING OUTCOMES: After successful completion of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Define and differentiate affect, behavior, and cognition as considered by social

psychologists.
2. Describe the self-concept, its influence on information processing, and its diversity
across social groups.
3. Explore how we sometimes overestimate the accuracy with which other people view us.
4. Explain how self-esteem is measured by social psychologists.
5. Describe the concept of the looking-glass self and how it affects our self-concept.
6. Examine social comparison and how people use it to define their self-concepts and
self-esteem.
7. Delineate the concept of an attitude and why it is of such interest to social psychologists.
8. Review the variables that determine attitude strength.

COURSE MATERIALS:

Lesson 2 - SOCIAL COGNITION

Social cognition is cognition that relates to social activities and that helps us
understand and predict the behavior of ourselves and others. People develop a set of social
knowledge that contains information about the self, other people, social relationships and social
groups.

How exactly do psychologists define social cognition? While there is no single definition,
there are some common factors that many experts have identified as being important.
Social Cognition involves:

● The processes involved in perceiving other people and how we come to know about
the people in the world around us.

● It involves the study of these mental processes that involved in perceiving,

remembering, thinking about, and attending to the other people in our social world.

● Psychologists are interested in why we attend to certain information about the social
world.

● It is not simply a topic within social psychology – it is an approach to studying any

subject with social psychology. Using a social-cognitive perspective, researchers can
study a wide range of topics including attitudes, person-perception, prejudice,
stereotypes, self-concept, discrimination, persuasion, decision-making among others.

Social Cognition: Thinking and Learning about Others

The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, each of which can make contact
with tens of thousands of other neurons. The distinguishing brain feature in mammals, including
humans, is the more recently evolved cerebral cortex—the part of the brain that is involved in
thinking. Humans are highly intelligent, and they use cognition in every part of their social lives.
Psychologists refer to cognition as the mental activity of processing information and using that
information in judgment.

Over time, people develop a set of social knowledge that contains information about the
self, other people, social relationships, and social groups. Two types of knowledge are
particularly important in social psychology: schemas and attitudes. A schema is a knowledge
representation that includes information about a person or group (e.g., our knowledge that Joe
is a friendly guy or that Italians are romantic). An attitude is a knowledge representation that
includes primarily our liking or disliking of a person, thing, or group (“I really like Julie”; “I dislike
my new apartment”). Once we have formed them, both schemas and attitudes allow us to judge
quickly and without much thought whether someone or something we encounter is good or bad,
helpful or hurtful, to be sought out or avoided. Thus schemas and attitudes have an important
influence on our social information processing and social behavior.

Social cognition involves the active interpretation of events. As a result, different people
may draw different conclusions about the same events. When Indira smiles at Robert, he might
think that she is romantically attracted to him, whereas she might think that she’s just being
friendly. When Mike tells a joke about Polish people, he might think it’s funny, but Wanda might
think he is being prejudiced. The 12 members of a jury who are deliberating about the outcome
in a trial have all heard the same evidence, but each juror’s own schemas and attitudes may
lead him or her to interpret the evidence differently. The fact that different people interpret the
same events differently makes life interesting, but it can sometimes lead to disagreement and
conflict. Social psychologists study how people interpret and understand their worlds and,
particularly, how they make judgments about the causes of other people’s behavior.

Social Affect: Feelings about Ourselves and Others

Affect refers to the feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives. As our day
progresses, we may find ourselves feeling happy or sad, jealous or grateful, proud or
embarrassed. Although affect can be harmful if it is unregulated or unchecked, our affective
experiences normally help us to function efficiently and in a way that increases our chances of
survival. Affect signals us that things are going all right (e.g., because we are in a good mood or
are experiencing joy or serenity) or that things are not going so well (we are in a bad mood,
anxious, upset, or angry). Affect can also lead us to engage in behaviors that are appropriate to
our perceptions of a given situation. When we are happy, we may seek out and socialize with
others; when we are angry, we may attack; when we are fearful, we may run away.

We experience affect in the form of mood and emotions. Mood refers to the positive or
negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday experiences. Most of the time, we
are in a relatively good mood, and positive mood has some positive consequences—it
encourages us to do what needs to be done and to make the most of the situations we are in
(Isen, 2003). When we are in a good mood, our thought processes open up and we are more
likely to approach others. We are more friendly and helpful to others when we are in a good
mood than when we are in a bad mood, and we may think more creatively (De Dreu, Baas, &
Nijstad, 2008). On the other hand, when we are in a bad mood, we are more likely to prefer to
remain by ourselves rather than interact with others, and our creativity suffers.

Emotions are brief, but often intense, mental and physiological feeling states. In
comparison with moods, emotions are shorter lived, stronger, and more specific forms of affect.
Emotions are caused by specific events (things that make us, for instance, jealous or angry),
and they are accompanied by high levels of arousal. Whereas we experience moods in normal,
everyday situations, we experience emotions only when things are out of the ordinary or
unusual. Emotions serve an adaptive role in helping us guide our social behaviors. Just as we
run from a snake because the snake elicits fear, we may try to make amends with other people
when we feel guilty.

Social Behavior: Interacting with Others

Because we interact with and influence each other every day, we have developed the
ability to make these interactions proceed efficiently and effectively. We cooperate with other
people to gain outcomes that we could not obtain on our own, and we exchange goods,
services, and other benefits with other people. These behaviors are essential for survival in any
society (Kameda, Takezawa, & Hastie, 2003; Kameda, Takezawa, Tindale, & Smith, 2002).

The sharing of goods, services, emotions, and other social outcomes is known as social
exchange. Social rewards (the positive outcomes that we give and receive when we interact
with others) include such benefits as attention, praise, affection, love, and financial support.
Social costs (the negative outcomes that we give and receive when we interact with others), on
the other hand, include, for instance, the frustrations that accrue when disagreements with
others develop, the guilt that results if we perceive that we have acted inappropriately, and the
effort involved in developing and maintaining harmonious interpersonal relationships.

Imagine a first-year student at college or university who is trying to decide whether or not
to join a student club. Joining the club has costs, in terms of the dues that have to be paid, the
need to make friends with each of the other club members and to attend club meetings, and so
forth. On the other hand, there are the potential benefits of group membership, including having
a group of friends with similar interests and a social network to help find activities to participate
in. To determine whether or not to join, the student has to weigh both the social and the material
costs and benefits before coming to a conclusion (Moreland & Levine, 2006).

People generally prefer to maximize their own outcomes by attempting to gain as many
social rewards as possible and by attempting to minimize their social costs. Such behavior is
consistent with the goal of protecting and enhancing the self. But although people do behave
according to the goals of self-concern, these goals are tempered by other-concern: the goals of
respecting, accepting, and cooperating with others. As a result, social exchange is generally fair
and equitable, at least in the long run. Imagine, for example, that someone asks you to do a
favor for them, and you do it. If they were only concerned about their own self-enhancement,
they might simply accept the favor without any thought of paying you back. Yet both you and
they would realize that you would most certainly expect them to be willing to do the same type
of favor for you, should you ask them at some later time.

One of the outcomes of humans living together in small groups over thousands of years
is that people have learned to cooperate by giving benefits to those who are in need, with the
expectation of a return of benefits at a future time. This mutual, and generally equitable,
exchange of benefits is known as reciprocal altruism. An individual who is temporarily sick or
injured will benefit from the help that he or she might get from others during this time. And
according to the principle of reciprocal altruism, other group members will be willing to give that
help to the needy individual because they expect that similar help will be given to them should
they need it. However, in order for reciprocal altruism to work, people have to keep track of how
benefits are exchanged, to be sure that everyone plays by the rules. If one person starts to take
benefits without paying them back, this violates the principle of reciprocity and should not be
allowed to continue for very long. In fact, research has shown that people seem to be
particularly good at detecting “cheaters”—those who do not live up to their obligations in
reciprocal altruism—and that these individuals are judged extremely negatively (Mealey, Daood,
& Krage, 1996; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).

WATCH:

Social Cognition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk0OjiwVfQk

Social Cognition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY_qtZNVYK0
What is Social Cognition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0pTf9QxYhY

READ:

Social Cognition by Yanine D. Hess and Cynthia L. Pickett. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://openpress.usask.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/social-cognition-and-attitudes/

Social Cognition. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/social-cognition/

ACTIVITIES/ASSESSMENT:

GUIDE QUESTION/s: (Group Activity)

1. How do we interpret other people’s feelings and emotions? How do we figure out what
they are thinking or feeling?
2. Think about when you last engaged in a case of reciprocal altruism and describe what
took place.