1. Social Cognition
How we think about others and how those thoughts influence us
Attitudes and Attitude Formation
Impression Formation
Attribution
Cognitive Dissonance

2. Schemas Our concept of something
Example: children have schemas about what a dog is. At first they think a dog is all furry animals with tails.

3. Social schema
Organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people.
Examples: Tell me about
Nerds
Jocks
Firefighters
Librarians

4. Person Perception First impressions are powerful
Social Categorization- quickly assign a person to a group
Tend to notice behaviors in others that already fit our preconceived notions.
Notice the Asians who get straight As.
Notice the White guy who can’t dance.

5. Implicit Personality Theory
Assume certain things are related. Varies by culture
Rich people are happy
Attractive people are nicer
Quiet people are shy
Athletic people aren’t intellectual

6. Stereotypes Type of schema
A specific characteristic we assume somebody has because of their social schema.
Oh, you are from South Carolina. You must
hate Northerners and have Confederate
flags all over your house!

7. Confirmation Bias Focus on what confirms our beliefs
Ignore events that do not fit with our stereotypes and tell ourselves that that is a rare exception.
Educated, entrepreneur, millionaire

8. Attributions Think of the word “attribute”
Attributions when we try to explain our own behavior and the behavior of others.
What do you notice about the results of our attribution scales?

9. Fritz Heider & Attribution Theory
Theory on how & why people choose particular explanations of behavior
Situational Cause
Dispositional Cause
Behavior caused by outside forces
He must have gotten stuck in traffic
Behavior caused by personality, comes from within us.
He is irresponsible!

10. How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.
Effect of Attribution
How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

11. Problems with Attribution
Fundamental Attribution Error- tendency to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes in others.
They are stupid losers.
Actor-Observer Bias- tendency to focus more on situational causes in explaining our own behavior.
I am a victim.

12. Fundamental Attribution Error
Teacher- that kid is so lazy and doesn’t care about anything!
Student- I work 30 hours a week to help support my family

13. More Attribution Problems
Self-Serving Bias- We attribute our success to personal/internal factors but attribute our failures to situational/external factors.
Hindsight bias- tendency to, after learning the outcome, to believe we could have predicted the outcome

14. Hindsight Bias “I knew that Asian kid would be valedictorian!
“I could have told you she’d meet a creepy guy on the Internet.”

15. Situational or dispositional Attributions?
A teen crashes the car. One parent says it was because of the slippery road. Another says it’s because he wasn’t paying attention to driving.
One parent uses dispositional attributes; the other uses situational attributes.

16. Cognitive Dissonance How did that survey make you feel?
Why did you feel that way?
Cognitive Dissonance Theory- when our attitudes and behaviors don’t match, we experience emotional discomfort.

17. Dealing With Cognitive Dissonance
Change Behavior
I’ll never cheat again
Change Attitude
Cheating isn’t wrong
Rationalize/Justify
The teacher stunk- I had to!
You have a belief that cheating on tests is bad. But you cheat on a test!!!

19. Cognitive Dissonance
The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognition) are inconsistent. For example, when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.

20. Festinger and Carlsmith 1957
Those told to lie for $1 felt cognitive dissonance, had to change attitude to feel better.
Those told to lie for $20 didn’t feel dissonance, didn’t have to change their attitude.