Lecture 1
Social cognition
- The study of mental processes in perceiving, attending to, remembering,
thinking & feeling about, and making sense of the people in our social world
● Attention
● Interpretation
● Judgment
● Memory
Assumptions in social cognition
● Mentalism Mental representations: cognitive structures that both represent
one’s general knowledge about a given concept or stimulus domain and one’s
memory for specific experiences (WHAT)
● Cognitive process
Stimulus → Organism → Response (HOW)
● Cross-fertilization (WHENCE)
Cognitive, cognitive neuroscience
Reaction-times
● Real-world issues
Methods
−Priming (activation of concept from memory)
−Recall: long-term vs. short-term memory
−Behavioral measurements
−Reaction times
−Questionnaires
−Scenarios
Neuroscience techniques
• fMRI, EEG, (facial) EMG, TMS
• Cardiovascular activity
• Electrodermal responses
• Hormone levels (e.g., cortisol)
• Immune functioning (Measuring frequencies of immune cells)
• Genetic analyses
Approach to social cognition
1. interested in social behavior
, ● intra-individual phenomena: development of preferences, attitudes
● interactions
● intergroup relations
● role of culture dimensions in cognitive and social functioning
2. interested in the cognitive processes that underlie social behavior models, concepts,
and methods from cognitive psychology
3. People's production of representations of their social environment e.g. stereotypes
- Social reality (including others and oneself) cannot be observed directly and
requires inferences and interpretations
Emotions
- Emotion is an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the bodily state
in response to the evaluation of an external or internal event as relevant to
major concerns of the organism”
● "Feeling is for doing": Schemas that prepare the organism for certain
behaviors, particularly those with survival value (e.g. fear to avoid threat,
disgust to avoid contamination)
● Emotions are made up of a series of processes, some conscious and some
unconscious (as with other cognitive domains, such as vision or memory)
● Showing emotions to others and recognizing emotion in others are important
for social interactions
Ekman: ethnographic studies identified six basic "universal" emotional expressions
More complex emotions (e.g. jealousy, pride, embarrassment) may require the
processing of social relations (awareness of other’s attitudes to you, or the effect of
your behavior on them) that go beyond the information in the face
Emotion
● Intense, short-lasting, and specific
Mood
● Long duration and vague
Affect
● Preferences, emotions, mood
Valence
● Positive or negative character of emotional experience
,Solomon Asch competing models (1946)
1. Holistic approach - Configural model a,b, and c change in the context of each
other
we don’t see traits in isolation but in relation to each other.
The traits being integrated to form a unified impression
of the person, in which the meaning of individual traits
changes in the context of all other traits.
● An intelligent con artist seems sly
● An intelligent child seems clever
● An intelligent grandmother seems wise
2. Elemental approach - Algebraic model
Impression= a+b+c
The algebraic model has one version that uses simple
evaluative summation and another that uses summation
after the halo (overall positivity or negativity of the
impression) to adjust the evaluation of each individual
trait, all equally up or down.
Kurt Lewin: a second pioneer
Person situation field theory / psychological field theory
, Phenomenology: Reality, as perceived by the individual −Behavior (B), is a function
of the situation (E) and the person (P) B = f (P, E)
Two forces:
● Person in the situation (beliefs, capacity)
● Cognition (what will you do) and motivation (do you want to do it)
The study of social cognition focuses on perceiving, thinking, and remembering as a
function of who and where a person is.
Movements in social cognition
Social cognition
- The study of mental processes in perceiving, attending to, remembering,
thinking & feeling about, and making sense of the people in our social world
● Attention
● Interpretation
● Judgment
● Memory
Assumptions in social cognition
● Mentalism Mental representations: cognitive structures that both represent
one’s general knowledge about a given concept or stimulus domain and one’s
memory for specific experiences (WHAT)
● Cognitive process
Stimulus → Organism → Response (HOW)
● Cross-fertilization (WHENCE)
Cognitive, cognitive neuroscience
Reaction-times
● Real-world issues
Methods
−Priming (activation of concept from memory)
−Recall: long-term vs. short-term memory
−Behavioral measurements
−Reaction times
−Questionnaires
−Scenarios
Neuroscience techniques
• fMRI, EEG, (facial) EMG, TMS
• Cardiovascular activity
• Electrodermal responses
• Hormone levels (e.g., cortisol)
• Immune functioning (Measuring frequencies of immune cells)
• Genetic analyses
Approach to social cognition
1. interested in social behavior
, ● intra-individual phenomena: development of preferences, attitudes
● interactions
● intergroup relations
● role of culture dimensions in cognitive and social functioning
2. interested in the cognitive processes that underlie social behavior models, concepts,
and methods from cognitive psychology
3. People's production of representations of their social environment e.g. stereotypes
- Social reality (including others and oneself) cannot be observed directly and
requires inferences and interpretations
Emotions
- Emotion is an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the bodily state
in response to the evaluation of an external or internal event as relevant to
major concerns of the organism”
● "Feeling is for doing": Schemas that prepare the organism for certain
behaviors, particularly those with survival value (e.g. fear to avoid threat,
disgust to avoid contamination)
● Emotions are made up of a series of processes, some conscious and some
unconscious (as with other cognitive domains, such as vision or memory)
● Showing emotions to others and recognizing emotion in others are important
for social interactions
Ekman: ethnographic studies identified six basic "universal" emotional expressions
More complex emotions (e.g. jealousy, pride, embarrassment) may require the
processing of social relations (awareness of other’s attitudes to you, or the effect of
your behavior on them) that go beyond the information in the face
Emotion
● Intense, short-lasting, and specific
Mood
● Long duration and vague
Affect
● Preferences, emotions, mood
Valence
● Positive or negative character of emotional experience
,Solomon Asch competing models (1946)
1. Holistic approach - Configural model a,b, and c change in the context of each
other
we don’t see traits in isolation but in relation to each other.
The traits being integrated to form a unified impression
of the person, in which the meaning of individual traits
changes in the context of all other traits.
● An intelligent con artist seems sly
● An intelligent child seems clever
● An intelligent grandmother seems wise
2. Elemental approach - Algebraic model
Impression= a+b+c
The algebraic model has one version that uses simple
evaluative summation and another that uses summation
after the halo (overall positivity or negativity of the
impression) to adjust the evaluation of each individual
trait, all equally up or down.
Kurt Lewin: a second pioneer
Person situation field theory / psychological field theory
, Phenomenology: Reality, as perceived by the individual −Behavior (B), is a function
of the situation (E) and the person (P) B = f (P, E)
Two forces:
● Person in the situation (beliefs, capacity)
● Cognition (what will you do) and motivation (do you want to do it)
The study of social cognition focuses on perceiving, thinking, and remembering as a
function of who and where a person is.
Movements in social cognition
