MODULE SOCIAL COGNITION

SOCIAL COGNITION

Schemas, Self-fulfilling prophecy (Illustrations in Indian settings). Heuristics. Priming.

Automatic processing. Potential sources of error in social cognition: automatic vigilance,
optimistic bias, counterfactual thinking, magical thinking, illusory correlation. Affect in
social cognition: How thoughts shape feelings and feelings shape cognition. Combating
errors in social cognition.

SOCIAL COGNITION

Social cognition is a sub-topic of social psychology that focuses on how people process, store,
and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that
cognitive processes play in our social interactions. The way we think about others plays a major
role in how we think, feel, and interact with the world around us.

Social cognition is a broad term that describes a focus on the way perceivers encode, process,
remember, and use information in social contexts in order to make sense of other people’s
behaviour (where a social context is defined as any real or imagined scenario including
reference to self or others).

Social cognition involves:

The processes involved in perceiving other people and how we come to know about the people
in the world around us. The study of the mental processes that are involved in perceiving,
remembering, thinking about, and attending to the other people in our social world.

The reasons we attend to certain information about the social world, how this information is
stored in memory, and how it is then used to interact with other people. Social cognition is not
simply a topic within social psychology—it is an approach to studying any subject with social
psychology. Using a social-cognitive perspective, researchers can study a wide range of topics
including attitudes, person-perception, prejudice, stereotypes, self-concept, discrimination,
persuasion, decision-making, and other areas.
SCHEMAS

Schemas are mental frameworks that help us to organize social information, and that guide our
actions and the processing of information relevant to those contexts. Once schemas are formed,
they play a role in determining what we notice about the social world, what information we
remember, and how we use and interpret such information. Research findings suggest that they
influence three basic processes: attention, encoding, and retrieval.

Attention refers to what information we notice. Encoding refers to the processes through which
information we notice gets stored in memory. Finally, retrieval refers to the processes through
which we recover information from memory in order to use it in some manner.

Schemas have been found to influence all of these aspects of social cognition. With respect to
attention, schemas often act as a kind of filter: information consistent with them is more likely
to be noticed and to enter our consciousness. Schemas are particularly likely to be relied on
when we are experiencing cognitive load—when we are trying to handle a lot of information
at one time.

Turning to encoding—the information that becomes the focus of our attention is much more
likely to be stored in long-term memory. Research suggests that people tend to report
remembering information consistent with schemas more than information that is inconsistent.
Schemas can be temporarily activated by what is known as priming—transitory increases in
the ease with which specific schemas can be activated

Person Schemas

Cognitive structures that attempt to illustrate the personalities of others are called as person
schema. Person schemas try to explain personalities of either specific persons (such as
Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Buddha, J. R. D. Tata, etc.) or explain personalities in terms of
some universal types (such as extravert, introvert, sober, sociable, depressive, submissive, etc.).
Person schemas help us in classifying and organising our understanding about the personalities
of people around us and lead to make internal predictions about their behaviour.

Person schemas, often referred as person prototypes, generally consist of a composition of

personality traits that we use to classify people and to predict their behaviour in particular
situations. Generally dominant personality traits are utilised as criteria for categorising people
in our social world. Based on observations during our interactions we may infer that ‘A’ is
submissive or that ‘B’ is honest or ‘C’ is dominant. This helps us in making expectations in
our social interactions and giving us a sense of control and predictability in the situation.

Self-Schemas

Similar to the way we receive, encode, store and utilise the information about other people, we
develop schemas that describe our self-concept based on past experiences. Self-schemas are
cognitive representations about us that organize and process all related information (Markus,
1977). Self-schema is developed from the traits that we think as core of our self-concept. Self-
schemas describe the components that uniquely characterise and define our self-concept. We
have different context specific self-schemas that are activated in different social situations. For
example, self-schema of A as commanding and dominant when he is in his office may be
opposite from his self-schema as submissive and obedient when he is with his father.

Group Schemas

Group schemas, often referred to as stereotypes, are the schemas regarding the people
representing a particular social group or category (Hamilton, 1981). Stereotypes specify the
traits, qualities, attributes and behaviours presumably characterising the members of that social
group or category. In our social interactions we try to understand our social world with the help
of number of stereotypes about people of different castes, religious groups, specific
geographical regions, speaking different languages, ethnic groups, etc.

Role Schemas

Role schemas characterise traits, qualities, attributes and behaviours of persons with a
particular role in a group. Role schemas help us in understanding and predicting the behaviours
of persons who occupy specific roles in a social group. Role schemas are categorised in various
ways. For example, there are role schemas associated with various occupational roles, such as
teachers, scientists, doctors, Social Cognition sales managers, HR managers, etc. Similarly,
role schemas are also associated with other kinds of roles in social groups, such as group leader,
captain of a sports team, etc. Our initial interactions with a person are broadly guided by the
cues that prominently visible to us. However, as our familiarity with the person increases
importance of such physical cues is reduced and trait-based person schemas are given more
importance in guiding our social interactions Fiske (1998).
Event Schemas

Event schemas, also referred to as scripts, are cognitive structures that describe the expected
sequences of actions and behaviours of people participating in an event in our everyday social
activities. We explicate scripts by asking people to describe that what actually happens in a
particular social event, what is the sequence of these actions and what types of behaviours
people do during the event. For example, if we are asked to explain the appropriate behavioural

sequence of an Indian classroom, we can very vividly describe the behavioural sequences of
teacher and students. The phenomenon of event schema or script indicate that we store the
behaviours that are appropriate in particular situation for our broad understanding and
whenever we are encountered to such situation the script is automatically activated in order to
facilitate our smooth interaction in the situation.

THE SELF-CONFIRMING NATURE OF SCHEMAS

Schemas are often resistant to change—they show a strong perseverance effect, remaining
unchanged even in the face of contradictory information Such effects are sometimes described
as selfulfilling prophecies (pygmallion effect)- predictions that in a sense make themselves
come true. They influence our responses to the social world in ways that make it consistent
with the schema. The most dramatic evidence that schemas can be self-fulfilling was provided
by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), in a famous study of teachers and the unintended effects of
their expectations on students. These researchers went to an elementary school and
administered an IQ test to all students. Then they told the teachers that some of the students
had scored very high and were about to “bloom” academically. The teachers were not given
such information about other students, who constituted a control group. Although the
researchers had chosen the names of the students for each group randomly, they predicted that
this information would alter teachers’ expectations about the children and their behaviour
toward them. To find out if this was true, 8 months later the researchers tested both groups of
children once again. Results were clear: those who had been described as “bloomers” to their
teachers showed significantly larger gains on the IQ test than those in the control group. In
short, teachers’ beliefs about the students had operated in a selffulfilling manner: The students
whose teachers believed they would “bloom,” actually did.

Illustrations in Indian settings

HEURISTICS

Heuristics are timesaving mental shortcuts that reduce complex judgments to simple rules of
thumb. They are quick and easy, but can result in biased information processing (Ajzen, 1996),
which is one of the ways of identifying that they have been used instead of more time-
consuming, but more accurate, strategies.

At any given time, we are capable of handling a certain amount of information; additional input
beyond this puts us into a state of information overload where the demands on our cognitive
system are greater than its capacity. In addition, our processing capacity can be depleted by
high levels of stress or other demands To deal with such situations, people adopt various
strategies designed to “stretch” their cognitive resources—to let them do more, with less effort,
than would otherwise be the case. While many strategies for making sense of complex
information exist, one of the most useful tactics involves the use of heuristics—simple rules
for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid and efficient manner. Some of
the heuristics are:

1.Representativeness heuristic-

The representativeness heuristic is the tendency to allocate a set of attributes to someone if they
match the prototype of a given category (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). It is a quick and-easy
way of putting people in to categories. For instance, if you arrive at a hospital in need of help,
you’ll look for the person wearing a white coat and stethoscope, because these specific
attributes indicate that the person is (representative of) a doctor.

It is a strategy for making judgments based on the extent to which current stimuli or events
resemble other stimuli or categories. In other words, you would make your judgment on the
basis of a relatively simple rule: The more an individual seems to resemble or match a given
group, the more likely she or he is to belong to that group. Such judgments are often accurate
because belonging to certain groups does affect the behaviour and style of people in them, and
because people with certain traits are attracted to particular groups in the first place. But
sometimes, judgments based on representativeness are wrong, mainly for the following reason:
Decisions or judgments made on the basis of this rule tend to ignore base rates—the frequency
with which given events or patterns (e.g., occupations) occur in the total population
2. Availability heuristic-

The availability heuristic is the tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event in
terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). It is
related to the concept of accessibility, which is the extent to which a concept is readily brought
to mind (see Chapter 3 on attitudes). The difference is that availability can refer to one’s
subjective experience of accessibility – the awareness that something is accessible – whereas
accessibility is typically regarded as an objective measure of how quickly something can be
brought to mind, without explicit awareness being a necessary component. The availability
heuristic can be illustrated with varied examples from everyday life. For instance, you might
feel more trepidation about taking a flight if you have just heard about a horrific plane crash.

Availability heuristic is a strategy for making judgments on the basis of how easily specific
kinds of information can be brought to mind. Relying on availability in making social
judgments can also lead to errors. Specifically, it can lead us to overestimate the likelihood of
events that are dramatic but rare because they are easy to bring to mind. Consistent with this
principle, many people fear travel in airplanes more than travel in automobiles, even though
the chances of dying in an auto accident are hundreds of times higher. The availability heuristic
plays a role in many aspects of social thoughts including self-serving bias and stereotypes. In
addition, the availability heuristics relates to another especially important process-priming-
increased availability of information in memory/consciousness resulting from exposure to
specific stimuli or events. For e.g. during the first year of medical school many students
experience the ‘medical student syndrome’. They believe that they or others have many serious
illnesses.

Research findings indicate that priming may occur even when individuals are unaware of the
priming stimuli- an effect known as automatic priming. In other words, availability of certain
kinds of information can be increased by priming stimuli, even though we are not aware of
having been exposed to these stimuli.

3. Anchoring and adjustment heuristic--A heuristic that involves the tendency to use a number
of values as a starting adjustment. This heuristic involves the tendency to deal with uncertainty
in many situations by using something we do know as a starting point, and then making
adjustments to it. These adjustments may not be sufficient to reflect actual social reality;
perhaps because once we attain a plausible value, we stop the process.
AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSING

Social thought can occur in either of two distinctly different ways: in a systematic, logical, and
highly effortful manner known as controlled processing, or in a fast, relatively effortless, and
intuitive manner known as automatic processing. Automatic processing refers to processing of
social information that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary and relatively effortless.
Automatic processing tends to develop after we have extensive experience with a task or type
of information and reach the stage which we can perform the task or process the information
without giving it conscious thought.

For e.g., while riding a bicycle we have to devote a lot of attention to the task at first. But once
we have mastered it riding requires less and less attention until finally, we could do while
thinking of other things, talking to others etc. in such cases there is a shift from controlled to
automatic processing This is true for social thought as well as learning new skills. For instance,
we have a well-developed schema for a social group (e.g., doctors) we can think in shorthand
ways about members of that group. Research findings indicate that schemas, once activated
may exert automatic effects on behaviour. In other words, people often act in ways that are
consistent with these schemas, even though they do not intent to do so and are unaware that
their behaviour is influenced by the schemas. Recent evidence suggests that automatic and
controlled processing may often occur together, especially in situations involving some
uncertainty.

Heuristics

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments
quickly and efficiently. These rule-of-thumb strategies shorten decision-making time and allow
people to function without constantly stopping to think about their next course of action.

However, there are both benefits and drawbacks of heuristics. While heuristics are helpful in
many situations, they can also lead to cognitive biases.

Being aware of how heuristics work as well as the potential biases they introduce might help
you make better and more accurate decisions.

The History and Origins of Heuristics

It was during the 1950s that the Nobel-prize winning economist and cognitive psychologist
Herbert Simon originally introduced the concept of heuristics when he suggested that while
people strive to make rational choices, human judgment is subject to cognitive limitations.
Purely rational decisions would involve weighing all alternatives such as potential costs against
possible benefits.

But people are limited by the amount of time they have to make a choice as well as the amount
of information we have at our disposal. Other factors such as overall intelligence and accuracy
of perceptions also influence the decision-making process.

During the 1970s, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman presented their research
on cognitive biases. They proposed that these biases influence how people think and the
judgments people make.

As a result of these limitations, we are forced to rely on mental shortcuts to help us make sense
of the world. Simon's research demonstrated that humans were limited in their ability to make
rational decisions, but it was Tversky and Kahneman's work that introduced the study of
heuristics and the specific ways of thinking that people rely on to simplify the decision-making
process.

HOW HEURISTICS ARE USED

Heuristics play important roles in both problem-solving and decision-making, as we often turn
to these mental shortcuts when we need a quick solution. Here are a few different theories from
psychologists about why we rely on heuristics.

Attribute substitution:

People substitute simpler but related questions in place of more complex and difficult
questions.

Effort reduction:

People utilize heuristics as a type of cognitive laziness to reduce the mental effort required to
make choices and decisions.2

Fast and frugal:

People use heuristics because they can be fast and correct in certain contexts. Some theories
argue that heuristics are actually more accurate than they are biased.3
In order to cope with the tremendous amount of information we encounter and to speed up the
decision-making process, the brain relies on these mental strategies to simplify things so we
don't have to spend endless amounts of time analysing every detail.

For example, when trying to decide if you should drive or ride the bus to work, you might
suddenly remember that there is road construction along the bus route. You realize that this
might slow the bus and cause you to be late for work. So you leave earlier and drive to work
on an alternate route. Heuristics allow you to think through the possible outcomes quickly and
arrive at a solution.

TYPES OF HEURISTICS

There are many different kinds of heuristics, including the availability heuristic, the
representativeness heuristic, and the affect heuristic. While each type plays a role in decision-
making, they occur during different contexts. Understanding the types can help you better
understand which one you are using and when.

Availability

The availability heuristic involves making decisions based upon how easy it is to bring
something to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, you might quickly remember a
number of relevant examples. Since these are more readily available in your memory, you will
likely judge these outcomes as being more common or frequently occurring.

For example, if you are thinking of flying and suddenly think of a number of recent airline
accidents, you might feel like air travel is too dangerous and decide to travel by car instead.
Because those examples of air disasters came to mind so easily, the availability heuristic leads
you to think that plane crashes are more common than they really are.

Representativeness

The representativeness heuristic involves making a decision by comparing the present situation
to the most representative mental prototype. When you are trying to decide if someone is
trustworthy, you might compare aspects of the individual to other mental examples you hold.
A sweet older woman might remind you of your grandmother, so you might immediately
assume that she is kind, gentle, and trustworthy.

Affect

The affect heuristic involves making choices that are influenced by the emotions that an
individual is experiencing at that moment. For example, research has shown that people are
more likely to see decisions as having benefits and lower risks when they are in a positive
mood. Negative emotions, on the other hand, lead people to focus on the potential downsides
of a decision rather than the possible benefits.4

Anchoring

The anchoring bias involves the tendency to be overly influenced by the first bit of information
we hear or learn. This can make it more difficult to consider other factors and lead to poor
choices. For example, anchoring bias can influence how much you are willing to pay for
something, causing you to jump at the first offer without shopping around for a better deal.

HOW HEURISTICS CAN LEAD TO BIAS

While heuristics can help us solve problems and speed up our decision-making process, they
can introduce errors. As you saw in the examples above, heuristics can lead to inaccurate
judgments about how commonly things occur and about how representative certain things may
be. Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will work again, and
relying on an existing heuristic can make it difficult to see alternative solutions or come up
with new ideas.

Heuristics can also contribute to things such as stereotypes and prejudice. Because people use
mental shortcuts to classify and categorize people, they often overlook more relevant
information and create stereotyped categorizations that are not in tune with reality.
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1. Automatic and Controlled Processing

 Social thought can occur in either of two distinctly different ways: in a systematic,
logical, and highly effortful manner known as controlled processing, or in a fast,
relatively effortless, and intuitive manner known as automatic processing.

Automatic processing refers to processing of social information that is non-conscious,

unintentional, involuntary and relatively effortless.

 Automatic processing tends to develop after we have extensive experience with a task
or type of information and reach the stage which we can perform the task or process the
information without giving it conscious thought.

For e.g., while riding a bicycle we have to devote a lot of attention to the task at first. But once
we have mastered it riding requires less and less attention until finally, we could do while
thinking of other things, talking to others etc. in such cases there is a shift from controlled to
automatic processing

POTENTIAL SOURCES OF ERROR IN SOCIAL COGNITION

There are many different ways in which our social thought departs from rationality.
Some of them are:

1. Negativity bias (Automatic vigilance)

Negativity bias refers to a greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive

information. This bias applies to both social information and information about other aspects
of the world as well. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Negative
information reflects features of the external world that may threaten our safety or well-being.
For this reason, it is especially important that we be sensitive to such stimuli and thus able to
respond to them quickly. Several research findings offer support for this reasoning.

For instance, consider our ability to recognize facial expression in others. The
result of many studies indicates that we are faster and more accurate in detecting negative
facial expressions than positive facial expressions. In sum, we appear to have a strong
tendency to show enhanced sensitivity to negative information. This tendency seems to be a
basic aspect of social thought and may infect, be built into the structure and functioning of our
brain.

2. Optimistic bias

Optimistic bias is a powerful predisposition to overlook risks and expect things to turn
out well. In fact, research findings indicate that most people believe that they are more
likely than others to experience positive events, and less likely to experience negative
events.

Similarly, we often have greater confidence in our beliefs or judgments than is justified—an
effect known as the overconfidence barrier.

While most of us recognize that our past has been mixed in terms of “highs” and “lows,”
we tend to forecast a very rosy or golden future—one in which we will be quite happy and
in which few negative events happen to us.

Another illustration of optimism at work is the planning fallacy—our tendency to believe

that we can get more done in a given period of time than we actually can, or that a given
job will take less time than it really will. We can see this aspect of the optimistic bias in
announced schedules for public works (e.g., new roads, airports, bridges, stadiums) that
have no chance of being met. Individuals, too, adopt unrealistically optimistic schedules for
their own work.

According to Buehler et al. (1994), we fall prey to this particular kind of optimism because of
several reasons.

One is that when individuals make predictions about how long it will take them to
complete a given task, they enter a planning or narrative mode of thought in which they
focus primarily on the future and how they will perform the task.

This, in turn, prevents them from looking backward in time and remembering how long similar
tasks took them in the past.

As a result, one important “reality check” that might help them avoid being overly optimistic
is removed.
In addition, when individuals do consider past experiences in which tasks took longer than
expected, they tend to attribute such outcomes to factors outside their control.

The result: they tend to overlook important potential obstacles that can’t be easily foreseen
when predicting how long a task will take, and fall prey to the planning fallacy. Additional
findings suggest that another factor, motivation to complete a task, also plays an important role
in the planning fallacy. When predicting what will happen, individuals often guess that what
will happen is what they want to happen

3. Counterfactual thinking

Counterfactual thinking refers to the tendency to imagine other outcomes in a situation

than the ones that actually occurred. Counterfactual thoughts seem to occur automatically
in many situations—we simply can’t help imagining that things might have turned out
differently. To overcome these automatic tendencies, therefore, we must try to correct for
their influence, and this requires both active processing in which we suppress the
counterfactual thoughts or discount them.

Consistent with this idea, studies have demonstrated that anything that reduces our information-
processing capacity actually strengthens the impact of counterfactual thoughts on our
judgments and behaviour.
When counterfactual thinking does occur, a wide range of effects can follow—some of which
are beneficial and some of which are costly to the people involved.
If individuals imagine upward counterfactuals, comparing their current outcomes with more
favourable ones than they experienced, the result maybe strong feelings of dissatisfaction or
envy, especially when people do not feel capable of obtaining better outcomes in the future.
Alternatively, if individuals compare their current outcomes with less favourable ones
(downward counterfactuals)—it might have been worse—they may experience positive
feelings of satisfaction or hopefulness. In sum, engaging in counterfactual thought can strongly
influence current affective states, and willingness to gamble on obtaining those outcomes in
the future.
In addition, it appears that we often use counterfactual thinking to mitigate the bitterness of
disappointments. By assuming that negative events or disappointments were inevitable, it tends
to make these events more bearable.

Counterfactual thinking can sometimes help us to perform better—to do a better job at various
tasks. by imagining how we might have done better, we may come up with improved strategies
and ways of using our effort more effectively.

4.Thought suppression

Thought suppression refers to our effort to prevent certain thoughts from entering
consciousness. According to Daniel Wegner (1992) efforts to keep certain thoughts out of
consciousness involve two components.

First, there is an automatic monitoring process that searches for evidence that unwanted
thoughts are about to intrude. When such thoughts are detected by the first process, a second
one which is more effortful and less automatic swings into operation. This operating process
involves effortful conscious attempts to distract oneself by finding something else to think
about. Under normal circumstances these two processes do a good job of suppressing unwanted
thoughts, when information overload occurs, or when individuals are fatigued, however the
monitoring process continues to identify unwanted thoughts, but the operating process no
longer has the resources to keep them from consciousness. the result is that the individual
actually experiences pronounced rebound effect in which the unwanted thoughts occur at an
even higher rate. Sometimes people engage in thought suppression because they are told to do
so by someone else- for instance, a therapist who is trying to help them from personal problems.
Individuals who are high in reactance- those who react very negatively to perceived threats in
their personal freedom find it difficult to suppress their thoughts

5. Magical thinking

Magical thinking refers to thinking involving assumptions that don’t hold up to rational
scrutiny. One principle of such magical thinking assumes that one’s thoughts can influence the
physical world in a manner not governed by the laws of physics .For e.g. if you think about
being called on by your professor, it does not change the probability that you actually will be.

The law of similarity, suggests that things that resemble one another share basic properties. For
the same reason, people won’t eat a chocolate shaped like a cockroach even though they know,
rationally, that its shape has nothing to do with its taste.

Another principle, the law of contagion holds that when two objects touch, they pass properties
to one another and the effects of such contact may last well beyond the end of the contact
between them.

4.Illusory correlation

In psychology, illusory correlation is the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between

variables (typically people, events, or behaviours) even when no such relationship exists. A
false association may be formed because rare or novel occurrences are more salient and
therefore tend to capture one's attention.

People not only see what they expect to see, they also tend to overestimate how often they see
it. Illusory correlation occurs when people estimate that they have encountered more
confirmations of an association between social traits than they have actually seen. Statements
like” I have never seen an honest lawyer” illustrate this effect. In pointing to events that support
their stereotypes, people may even recall events that they only imagined without realizing that
the events weren’t real.

Affect and Cognition Our emotions and moods strongly influence several aspects of cognition,
and cognition, in turn, exerts strong effects on our emotions and moods
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The Influence of Affect on Cognition

Our current moods can influence our perceptions of the world around us. When we are in
a good mood (experiencing positive affect), we tend to perceive almost everything—
situations, other people, ideas, even new inventions—in more positive terms than we do
when we are in a negative mood. Another way in which affect influences cognition involves
its impact on memory. Here, two different, but related, kinds of effects seem to occur. One
is known as mood congruence effects.

This refers to the fact that current moods strongly determine which information in a
given situation is noticed and entered into memory. In other words, current moods serve as
a kind of filter, permitting primarily information consistent with these moods to enter into long-
term storage.

Second, affect also influences what specific information is retrieved from memory, an
effect known as mood dependent memory. When experiencing a particular mood,
individuals are more likely to remember information they acquired in the past while in a similar
mood than information they acquired while in a different mood. Current moods, in other words,
serve as a kind of retrieval cue, prompting recall of information consistent with these moods.

The Influence of Cognition on Affect

One aspect of this relationship is described in what is known as the two-factor theory of
emotion (Schachter, 1964). This theory suggests that often, we don’t know our own
feelings or attitudes directly. Rather, since these internal reactions are often somewhat
ambiguous, we infer their nature from the external world—from the kinds of situations
in which we experience these reactions.

A second way in which cognition can influence emotions is by activating schemas

containing a strong affective component.

A third way in which our thoughts can influence our affective states involves our efforts
to regulate our own emotions and feelings. When we feel “down” or distressed, we often
engage in activities that we know might be bad for us in the long run, but that make us feel
better, at least findings indicate that the tendency to yield to temptation is a conscious choice,
not a simple lapse in the ability to control our own impulses temporarily (e.g., drinking
alcohol).

PRIMING

priming

A situation that occurs when stimuli or events increase the availability in memory or
consciousness of specific types of information held in memory.

unpriming

Refers to the fact that the effects of the schemas tend to persist until they are somehow
expressed in thought or behavior and only then do their effects decrease

Priming: We all develop a large array of schemas—cognitive frameworks that help us

interpret and use social information. The stronger and better-developed schemas are, the
more likely they are to influence our thinking, and especially our memory for social
information (e.g., Stangor & McMillan, 1992; Tice et al., 2000).

Second, schemas can be temporarily activated by what is known as priming—transitory

increases in the ease with which specific schemas can be activated (Sparrow &Wegner,
2006).

For instance, suppose you have just seen a violent movie. Now, you are looking for a parking
spot and you notice one, but another driver turns in front of you and takes it first. Do you
perceive her behavior as aggressive? Because the violent movie has activated your schema for
“aggression,” you may, in fact, be more likely to perceive her taking the parking spot as
aggressive. This illustrates the effects of priming—recent experiences make some schemas
active, and as a result, they exert effects on our current thinking.

Social psychologists describe unpriming as a process by which thoughts or actions that

have been primed by a recent experience dissipates once it finds expression.

Unpriming effects are clearly demonstrated in a study by Sparrow and Wegner (2006).
Participants were given a series of very easy “yes–no” questions (e.g., “Does a triangle have
three sides?”).
One group of participants was told to try to answer the questions randomly—not correctly.

Another group responded to the questions twice; the first time, they were told to try to answer
them correctly, while the second time, they were to try to answer them randomly.

It was predicted that participants in the first group would not be able to answer the questions
randomly; their schema for “answering correctly” would be activated, and lead them to provide
the correct answers.

In contrast, participants who answered the questions twice—first correctly and then
randomly—would do better at responding randomly. Their first set of answers would provide
expression for the schema “answer questions correctly,” and so permit them to answer
randomly the second time around. That’s precisely what happened; those who only answered
the question once and were told to do so randomly were actually correct 58 percent of the
time—their activated schema prevented them from replying in a truly random manner. The
participants who first answered the questions correctly and then randomly did much better:
their answers the second time were correct only 49 percent of the time—they did show random
performance. These findings indicate that once primed schemas are somehow expressed,
unpriming occurs, and the influence of the primed

schemas disappears. Figure 2.7 summarizes the nature of unpriming. If primed schemas are not
expressed, however, their effects may persist for long periods of time—even years (Budson &
Price, 2005; Mitchell, 2006).

COMBATING ERRORS IN SOCIAL COGNITION

Social cognition is subject to many types of errors. Some of the most important errors of which
we should be are of and try to guard against are

1.The self-confirming effect of schemas

Once they are formed, schemas tend to become self- confirming. They lead us to notice only
information that is consistent with them. And cause us to act in ways that confirm their validity.

2.The negativity bias

We tend to be highly sensitive to negative information, devoting more attention to it, and
assigning more importance to it than positive information.

3.The optimistic bias.

We generally expect things to turn out well, even when such expectations are somewhat
unrealistic. However, if we anticipate feedback that may be negative and have important
consequences for us, we may brace for the worst and may show a reversal of our usual
optimism.

4.Counterfactual thinking

Counterfactual thinking can increase our satisfaction if we imagine worse outcomes than
actually occurred. But may lead to strong feelings of regret and envy, if we imagine better
outcomes than actually occurred.

5.Thought suppressions

In many situations we try to suppress thoughts that we believe, will get us into trouble.
Unfortunately, trying to suppress such thoughts often lead us to have them more than otherwise
be the case.

6.The role of affective states

When we are in a good mood, we evaluate almost everything more positively than would
otherwise be the case, The opposite is true when we are in a bad mood.

HOW TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS BY COMBATING ERRORS IN SOCIAL

COGNITION

While heuristics can be a useful tool, there are ways you can improve your decision-making
and avoid cognitive bias at the same time.

Slow Down

We are more likely to make an error in judgment if we are trying to make a decision quickly
or are under pressure to do so.

Whenever possible, take a few deep breaths. Do something to distract yourself from the
decision at hand. When you return to it, you may find you have a fresh perspective, or notice
something you didn't before.
Identify the Goal

We tend to focus automatically on what works for us and make decisions that serve our best
interest. But take a moment to know what you're trying to achieve. Are there other people who
will be affected by this decision? What's best for them? Is there a common goal that can be
achieved that will serve all parties

Process Your Emotions

Fast decision-making often relies on our emotions from past experiences that bubble to the
surface.8 Is your decision based on facts or emotions? While our emotions can be helpful, they
may influence our decisions in a negative way if they prevent us from seeing the full picture.

Recognize All-or-Nothing Thinking

When making a decision, it's a common tendency to believe you have to pick a single, well-
defined path, and there's no going back. In reality, this often isn't the case.

Sometimes there are compromises involving two choices, or a third or fourth option that we
didn't even think of at first. Try to recognize the nuances and possibilities of all choices
involved, instead of using all-or-nothing thinking.