Social Cognition Chapter 3

Social Cognition  The ways we think about ourselves and the social world.  Social Thinking is Brilliant and Sophisticated, but flawed.  We have blind spots.  Related terms: social intelligence, emotional intelligence, interpersonal intelligence

Nuances of behavior  Computers may excel at Jeopardy and Chess, but not poker.  They have no referent for intentions, wishes and desires.  In short, the social information we deal with is imprecise and variable.

Automatic social thinking  Low-effort, effortless  Non-conscious-involuntary  Unintentional  (Remember the job interview on the Zimbardo video.)

schemas  Schemas are mental structures that organize our knowledge about the social world (events, roles, etc.)  Why do we have them?  They help us organize.  They fill in knowledge gaps.

Which schema will you use?  The one that is most accessible.  The one that has been primed.  You can be set up.

Self-fulfilling prophecy  Making our schemas come true by the way that we treat people.  Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)  Real gains in IQ scores  How did the teachers do this?  More personal attention and warmer emotional climate  Encouragement and support  Challenge – bloomers got more difficult material  More opportunity to respond in class  Did the teachers do this on purpose? No.

Why do we take shortcuts?  To deal with massive amounts of information  Because it often leads to good decisions

What if you don’t have a schema  Use judgmental heuristics (rules of thumb)  Useful, but can be inadequate or misapplied  Availability heuristic  Representativeness heuristic

Controlled thinking  Conscious, voluntary, effortful, intentional  Do we have free will?  Counterfactual reasoning  Overconfidence barrier