Lecture 1: Introduction / Automaticity
Learning Goals
➔ The main characteristics of social cognition
➔ The basic models of social cognition
➔ The defining aspects of automaticity
➔ The different forms of automaticity
The main characteristics of social cognition (H1)
Social Cognition = How people make sense of people (including themselves). It focuses on how
ordinary people think and feel about people – and on how they think they think and feel about
people.
Double appeal social cognition =
1. Entertaining part of studying how people think about others is its appeal your intuitions.
2. Fine-grained part (fijnkorrelig deel) forces you to be accurate and precise.
➔ Phenomenology = To describe systematically how ordinary people say they experience their
world.
If people are right → researchers can use these insights to build formal theories.
If people are wrong → researchers can learn about how people think.
➔ Naïve psychology = Peoples everyday theories about each other.
An Example of Socio Cognitive Research
Virtual environment with a bus shelter
Participant’s task
- Walk up to person and remember word and number combination
Avatars with white Dutch and Moroccan facial features
The distance that participants kept from the avatar. They stayed closer to the Dutch and had
less stress. In comparison with the Moroccan avatar.
Approaches to studying the social thinker:
1. Two different ideas about how people form impressions of others:
Configural model = Hypothesizes that people form a unifed overall impression of other
people; the unifying forces shape individual elements to bring them in line with the overall
impression.
Algebraic model = Takes each individual trait, evaluates it in isolation, and combines the
evaluations into a summary evaluation. When you meet someone new, you simply combine
together all the person’s pros (e.g. intelligence) and cons (e.g. coldness) to form your
impression.
2. Two broad intellectual approaches to the study of social cognition:
Elemental approach = Breaks scientific problems down into pieces and analyzes the pieces in
separate detail before combining them.
Holistic approach = Analyzes the pieces in context of other pieces and focuses on the entire
configuration of relationships among them.
1
, → A song can be perceived as a series of individual notes (elemental) or as a melody that
emerges from the relationships among the notes (holistic).
Typical of Contemporary Cognitive Social Psychology
➔ Experimental lab research on social behaviour
(Began with introspection (respondenten kijken dan naar hunzelf) as a legitimate method for
gaining insight into thinking and with cognition as a legitimate focus for theory.)
➔ Cognitive and physiological measurements
➔ Individual, unconscious, schema driven behaviour
→ Driven by stereotype, students of Dutch descent keep more distance from Moroccans
(than from those of Dutch descent) and have higher skin conductance (stress)
Behaviourism vs. Social Cognition
Behaviorist = Alleen openlijke, meetbare handelingen zijn voldoende geldige objecten voor
empirisch onderzoek.
Voorbeeld = Pavlov
Behaviourism vs. Social cognition:
Behavioristen kijken enkel naar hetgene dat observeerbaar is. Dus de stimulus en de respons die
daaruit voortkomt. In het socio-cognitieve perspectief wordt er ook gekeken naar wat er tussen de
stimulus en de respons plaatsvindt, namelijk de information processing (het idee dat mentale
operaties opgedeeld kunnen worden in verschillende stadia) en de mentale representaties
(cognitions).
Voorbeeld 1:
A behaviorist might approach the topic racial and ethnic discrimination by noting that some children
are punished for playing with children of certain other ethnic groups and rewarded for playing with
children of the family’s own ethnic group.
- Stimulus = The other ethnic group
- Respons = not playing together
→ A behaviorist would not consider the possible role of steorotyping (cognition).
2
,Voorbeeld 2:
A. Behaviorist approach
Stimulus → Response
Red-cross logo Add change to bucket
B. Social cogntion approach
Stimulus → Person → Response
Interpretation of donation Reasoning repons/cons Intention to donate
opportunity (maybe faulty)
Social psychology has always been cognitive in at least three ways=
1. Social behavior is more usefully understood as a function of people’s perceptions of their
world rather than as a function of objective descriptions of their stimulus environment.
2. Social psychologists view the end result of social perception and interaction in heavily
cognitive terms.
Voorbeeld: What do you think about it? How would you label your feeling?
3. The person in between the presumed cause and the result is viewed as a thinking organism;
this view contrasts with regarding the person as an emotional organism or a mindless
automaton.
Social Cognition
• Characteristics
Themes in social cognition research=
– Mentalism = The belief in cognitive representations
Cognitive structures that both represent one’s general knowledge about a given concept or
stimulus domain and one’s memory for specific experiences.
Voorbeeld: A new friend is athletic but not a star.
– Information processing process = How cognitive elements form, operate and change over
time. Cognitive mechanisms (e.g. attention, memory, inference (gevolgtrekking).
– Cross fertilization (kruisbesmetting) = Cognitive psychology, neuroscience. Informatie uit
andere vakgebieden wordt gebruikt.
– Relevant ‘real world’ phenomena
Research in social cognition gives us informative about social problems e.g. mental and
fysical health.
Social Cognition: People are not Things (p. 19)
• People as objects... (as compared to e.g., chairs)
➔ Intentionally influence their environment
➔ “Look back”
As you are busy forming impressions of them, they are doing the same to you.
➔ Often imply “the self”
Because the target is judging you, because the target may provide you with information
about yourself, and because the target is more similar to you than any object could be.
➔ Change, are complex
➔ Have crucial unobservable traits → mensen zijn moeilijker te observeren.
3
, ➔ De accuraatheid van theorieën over mensen is lastiger te controleren dan van dingen
➔ Accuracy of perception is often hard to determine
Mensen zijn complexer dan dingen door hun gevoelens, intenties, etc.
➔ Seek explanation/trigger a “search for meaning”
Mensen vragen om een manier om verklaard te worden en willen ook andere verklaren.
Differences in cultures
- Independent and autonomous → Westerners
- Interdependent and harmonious → East Asians.
The basic models of social cognition (H1)
Besides the varied roles of cognition, motivation has played different roles in the view of the social
thinker. We can identify five general views of the thinker in social psychology =
1. Consistency seeker
The thinker as ‘consistency seeker’
- Consistency in behaviour, attitudes, self image
Objective inconsistency is not important. Subjective inconsistency among various cognitions or
among feelings and cognitions is central.
Upon perceiving inconsistency, the person is presumed to feel uncomfortable (a negative drive state)
and to be motivated to reduce the inconsistency. Reducing the aversive drive state is a pleasant
relief, rewarding itself → drive reduction model.
Voorbeeld: The sundae-consuming dieter will not be free from anxiety until he manufactures some
excuse.
Consistency theories posit that people change their attitudes and beliefs for motivational reasons
because of unmet needs for consistency.
- This provides meaning, certainty
- Cognitive dissonance theory
Voorbeeld experiment=
2. Cognitive miser (cognitieve wrek)
•The thinker as ‘cognitive miser’
–Avoids cognitive effort.
People adopt strategies that simplify complex problems: the strategies may not be correct or
produce correct answers, but they emphasize efficiency.
4
Learning Goals
➔ The main characteristics of social cognition
➔ The basic models of social cognition
➔ The defining aspects of automaticity
➔ The different forms of automaticity
The main characteristics of social cognition (H1)
Social Cognition = How people make sense of people (including themselves). It focuses on how
ordinary people think and feel about people – and on how they think they think and feel about
people.
Double appeal social cognition =
1. Entertaining part of studying how people think about others is its appeal your intuitions.
2. Fine-grained part (fijnkorrelig deel) forces you to be accurate and precise.
➔ Phenomenology = To describe systematically how ordinary people say they experience their
world.
If people are right → researchers can use these insights to build formal theories.
If people are wrong → researchers can learn about how people think.
➔ Naïve psychology = Peoples everyday theories about each other.
An Example of Socio Cognitive Research
Virtual environment with a bus shelter
Participant’s task
- Walk up to person and remember word and number combination
Avatars with white Dutch and Moroccan facial features
The distance that participants kept from the avatar. They stayed closer to the Dutch and had
less stress. In comparison with the Moroccan avatar.
Approaches to studying the social thinker:
1. Two different ideas about how people form impressions of others:
Configural model = Hypothesizes that people form a unifed overall impression of other
people; the unifying forces shape individual elements to bring them in line with the overall
impression.
Algebraic model = Takes each individual trait, evaluates it in isolation, and combines the
evaluations into a summary evaluation. When you meet someone new, you simply combine
together all the person’s pros (e.g. intelligence) and cons (e.g. coldness) to form your
impression.
2. Two broad intellectual approaches to the study of social cognition:
Elemental approach = Breaks scientific problems down into pieces and analyzes the pieces in
separate detail before combining them.
Holistic approach = Analyzes the pieces in context of other pieces and focuses on the entire
configuration of relationships among them.
1
, → A song can be perceived as a series of individual notes (elemental) or as a melody that
emerges from the relationships among the notes (holistic).
Typical of Contemporary Cognitive Social Psychology
➔ Experimental lab research on social behaviour
(Began with introspection (respondenten kijken dan naar hunzelf) as a legitimate method for
gaining insight into thinking and with cognition as a legitimate focus for theory.)
➔ Cognitive and physiological measurements
➔ Individual, unconscious, schema driven behaviour
→ Driven by stereotype, students of Dutch descent keep more distance from Moroccans
(than from those of Dutch descent) and have higher skin conductance (stress)
Behaviourism vs. Social Cognition
Behaviorist = Alleen openlijke, meetbare handelingen zijn voldoende geldige objecten voor
empirisch onderzoek.
Voorbeeld = Pavlov
Behaviourism vs. Social cognition:
Behavioristen kijken enkel naar hetgene dat observeerbaar is. Dus de stimulus en de respons die
daaruit voortkomt. In het socio-cognitieve perspectief wordt er ook gekeken naar wat er tussen de
stimulus en de respons plaatsvindt, namelijk de information processing (het idee dat mentale
operaties opgedeeld kunnen worden in verschillende stadia) en de mentale representaties
(cognitions).
Voorbeeld 1:
A behaviorist might approach the topic racial and ethnic discrimination by noting that some children
are punished for playing with children of certain other ethnic groups and rewarded for playing with
children of the family’s own ethnic group.
- Stimulus = The other ethnic group
- Respons = not playing together
→ A behaviorist would not consider the possible role of steorotyping (cognition).
2
,Voorbeeld 2:
A. Behaviorist approach
Stimulus → Response
Red-cross logo Add change to bucket
B. Social cogntion approach
Stimulus → Person → Response
Interpretation of donation Reasoning repons/cons Intention to donate
opportunity (maybe faulty)
Social psychology has always been cognitive in at least three ways=
1. Social behavior is more usefully understood as a function of people’s perceptions of their
world rather than as a function of objective descriptions of their stimulus environment.
2. Social psychologists view the end result of social perception and interaction in heavily
cognitive terms.
Voorbeeld: What do you think about it? How would you label your feeling?
3. The person in between the presumed cause and the result is viewed as a thinking organism;
this view contrasts with regarding the person as an emotional organism or a mindless
automaton.
Social Cognition
• Characteristics
Themes in social cognition research=
– Mentalism = The belief in cognitive representations
Cognitive structures that both represent one’s general knowledge about a given concept or
stimulus domain and one’s memory for specific experiences.
Voorbeeld: A new friend is athletic but not a star.
– Information processing process = How cognitive elements form, operate and change over
time. Cognitive mechanisms (e.g. attention, memory, inference (gevolgtrekking).
– Cross fertilization (kruisbesmetting) = Cognitive psychology, neuroscience. Informatie uit
andere vakgebieden wordt gebruikt.
– Relevant ‘real world’ phenomena
Research in social cognition gives us informative about social problems e.g. mental and
fysical health.
Social Cognition: People are not Things (p. 19)
• People as objects... (as compared to e.g., chairs)
➔ Intentionally influence their environment
➔ “Look back”
As you are busy forming impressions of them, they are doing the same to you.
➔ Often imply “the self”
Because the target is judging you, because the target may provide you with information
about yourself, and because the target is more similar to you than any object could be.
➔ Change, are complex
➔ Have crucial unobservable traits → mensen zijn moeilijker te observeren.
3
, ➔ De accuraatheid van theorieën over mensen is lastiger te controleren dan van dingen
➔ Accuracy of perception is often hard to determine
Mensen zijn complexer dan dingen door hun gevoelens, intenties, etc.
➔ Seek explanation/trigger a “search for meaning”
Mensen vragen om een manier om verklaard te worden en willen ook andere verklaren.
Differences in cultures
- Independent and autonomous → Westerners
- Interdependent and harmonious → East Asians.
The basic models of social cognition (H1)
Besides the varied roles of cognition, motivation has played different roles in the view of the social
thinker. We can identify five general views of the thinker in social psychology =
1. Consistency seeker
The thinker as ‘consistency seeker’
- Consistency in behaviour, attitudes, self image
Objective inconsistency is not important. Subjective inconsistency among various cognitions or
among feelings and cognitions is central.
Upon perceiving inconsistency, the person is presumed to feel uncomfortable (a negative drive state)
and to be motivated to reduce the inconsistency. Reducing the aversive drive state is a pleasant
relief, rewarding itself → drive reduction model.
Voorbeeld: The sundae-consuming dieter will not be free from anxiety until he manufactures some
excuse.
Consistency theories posit that people change their attitudes and beliefs for motivational reasons
because of unmet needs for consistency.
- This provides meaning, certainty
- Cognitive dissonance theory
Voorbeeld experiment=
2. Cognitive miser (cognitieve wrek)
•The thinker as ‘cognitive miser’
–Avoids cognitive effort.
People adopt strategies that simplify complex problems: the strategies may not be correct or
produce correct answers, but they emphasize efficiency.
4
