social cognition

• Social Psychology

  Perceptions and behaviour and how influenced by others
• Social Cognition

  • How we process and store social information
  • How this affects our perceptions and behaviour
• Attribution

  assigning a cause to our own and others’ behaviour
• Prototypes

  cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category (average category member)
• Category

  • categorise schemas
  • no set boundary around a prototype
• Causal Attribution

  inference process, perceivers attribute an effect to one or more causes.
• Theories of Attribution

  • Naiive psychologist (Heider, 1958)
  • Attributional theory (Weiner, 1979)
  • Correspondent inference theory (Jones & Davis, 1965)
  • Covariation model (Kelley, 1967)
• Naiive scientist Heider, 1958 overview

  • Analytical, balanced, logical
  • Hypothesis testing
• Naiive scientist (Heider, 1958)

  1. form a coherent view of the world - search for motives in others behaviour
  2. gain control over the environment - search for enduring properties that cause behaviour
  3. identify internal (personal) vs external factors
• Attributional Theory (Weiner, 1979)

  Causality of Success or Failure

  Dynamic model, no start or end

  • Locus (internal / external)
  • Stability (e.g. natural ability / mood)
  • Controllability (e.g. effort / luck)

  emotion -> attributions -> emotions -> expectations -> future performance
• Attributional retraining

  • Encouraged to make more optimistic attributions 
  • Outcomes are controllable
  • Successes attributed to internal causes
• Attributional retraining example - University athletes (Parker et al., 2018)

  • Prone to difficult transition from school
  • Randomised Control Trial (RCT)  
  • Attributional training or waitlist control
  • Attributional training – better grades explained by increased perceived academic control
• Correspondent Inference Theory, Jones & Davis (1965)

  Act reflects a true characteristic of the person if:

  • freely chosen
  • produced a non-common effect
  • not socially desirable
  • hedonic relevance - importance consequences on you
  • personalism - if it is meant to have direct impact on you

  but overly focused on internal attribution
• Co-Variation Model (Kelley, 1967)

  • Multiple observations to try to identify factors that covary with behaviour
  • Whether behaviour internal or external is key
  • e.g exams
• Co-Variation Model (Kelley, 1967)

  • Consistency: co-occur with the cause? occur at the same time?
  • low –> look for different cause
  • high -> linked
  • Distinctiveness: is the behaviour exclusively linked to this cause or is it a common reaction - have you failed most of your exams regardless if you were drinking?
  • high -> external cause
  • low -> internal attribution
  • Consensus: do other people react in the same way to the cause/situation
  • High - strengthens attribution to external cause
  • Low: internal attribution
• Co-Variation Model (Kelley, 1967) + mental health

  • People with depression attribute negative events to internal, global and stable causes (Abramson et al., 1989)
  • Key aspect Psychotherapy – stop explaining events in an overly pessimistic, self-defeating way (Ebeck et al.., 1979)
• criticisms of Co-Variation Model (Kelley, 1967)

  • covariation = correlation but does not mean causation
  • is covariation really used?
• False consensus

  • Attribution Biases= systematic errors indicative of shortcuts, gut feeling, intuition
  • Ross et al., (1977): Would you walk around campus to advertise cafeteria?
  • if they said yes (also think other people would say yes) (62% also yes)
  • same with no (67% also no)
  • People with extreme views often overestimate others who have similar views, e.g., vaccines cause autism (Rabinowitz et al., 2016)
• False Consensus

  • Seek out similar others
  • Salience of own opinion
  • Self-esteem maintenance
• Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)

  • Tendency to attribute behaviour to enduring dispositions (internal rather than external)
  • Even when clear situational causes
  • Ross et al. (1977): Knowledgeable quiz master 
  • asked quizmaster to set difficult questions for the participant
  • asked participant to rate intelligence of participants + quiz master
  • rated quiz master as more intelligent despite it being their job, they will think of difficult obscure knowledge
• reasons for Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)

  • focus of attention/saliency effect
  • target most salient -> internal attribution most accessible
  • more likely to forget situational causes -> dispositional shift
• reasons for Actor-Observer Bias (Jones & Nisbett, 1972)

  extension of funadmental attribution error

  • Perceptual focus - what you focus on
  • Informational difference - more information available as the actor
• Actor-Observer Bias (Jones & Nisbett, 1972)

  Moderators

  • Positive behaviour – dispositional (internal) more likely - positivity bias?
  • Perspective taking in the other person's shoes reverses effect
• reasons for Self-Serving Bias (Olson and Ross, 1988)


  Expectations and self-esteem

  • motivational: maintenance of self-esteem
  • cognitive: intend/expect to succeed
  • attribute internal causes to expected events
• Self-Serving Bias (Olson and Ross, 1988)

  • Success = internal
  • Failure = external
  • Operates at a group level too
  • Kingdon (1976): self-serving bias in American politicians after elections
  • wins = internal reason etc.
• Heuristics (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974)

  • Cognitive shortcut
  • Rapid inferences
  • Avoid effort, resources expenditure
  • Rule of thumb, not complex mental judgment
• Types of Heuristics

  • Availability Heuristic:
  • judge frequency or probability of events by how easy it is to think of examples  (memory accessibility)
  • Representative heuristic:
  • categorise based on similarity between instance and prototypical category members
  • allocate a set of attributes
  • Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic:
  • starting point influences subsequent judgments
• • (Social) Schemas - knowledge about social concepts allows top-down processing, using existing schemas
• brief summary of models about social cognition

  • naiive scientist - rational + scientific-like in making cause-effect attributions
  • biased/intuitionist - information is limited and driven by motivations -> errors and biases
  • cognitive miser - least complex information processing, shortcuts
  • motivated tactician - scientific when required, heuristics for others
• Heider + Simmel 1944

  • humans tend to anthropomorphise even geometric shapes
  • as humans have a need to assign causes
• criticisms of Fundamental Attribution Error

  • not universal
  • not present in everyone