User:Jenny O/Social Thinking

Social thinking (Social cognition)


Social cognition refers the cognitive processes that accompany and mediate social behaviour in social contexts. Humans have developed a range of cognitive processes that enable us to live as social and cultural beings. Generally, we prefer to act as cognitive misers to conserve cognitive effort. This is achieved by using automatic (unconscious) processes that provide rapid, effortless, best-guess results, by using organized patterns of scripts, schemas, stereotypes, heuristics, and attributions. In contrast, our goals, motives and needs direct conscious, effortful and deliberate social cognition.

Attributions
Attributions refer to the inferences we make about the cause of our own behaviour or the behaviour of others. These causes are usually attributed to internal factors such as personality traits, general character or disposition, or external factors arising from the situation or context. Making attributions enables us to predict and influence behaviour, which is another method by which humans create a sense of control.

However, in our quest for efficiency in cognitive thought we tend to limit our accuracy. Accordingly we incur a number of cognitive errors and biases. One example is the self-serving bias. This bias occurs when we attribute personal successes and the failings of others to internal attributions (dispositional attribution), and personal failings and the success of others to external attributions (situational attributions). Thus, individuals tend to take the merit for success and blame the failings on other factors. For example, a student who is given a poor grade for his essay will attribute blame to the marker who, “Did not understand my argument”. However, when he receives a good mark in an exam the cause is wholly attributed to his outstanding intelligence. This bias has significant implications for the self, particularly in terms of promoting self-enhancement (maintaining self-esteem) and monitoring self-presentation.

Beliefs
I am often intrigued by peoples’ beliefs: how they develop and how steadfastly they can be maintained whether they are seemingly rational or irrational. According to the textbook automatic cognition enables us to automatically believe what we are told (acting as cognitive misers), but this can be overridden by conscious cognitive processes.Central to the notion of a belief is an element of judgement - the believer deems something to be true. Even when our beliefs are discredited we tend to maintain them (i.e., belief perseverance). This is similar to confirmation bias, a situation where we seek out or interpret information that supports our beliefs, and discredit information that does not support our beliefs. It is possible that this reflects our need to defend the personal and public self.

Human belief plays an interesting role in coping, or how people deal with trauma and return to effective functioning. In most social environments humans generally assume that the world is benevolent, fair and just, and see themselves as 'good'. These beliefs can be challenged when one is exposed to crime or trauma. Following such an experience some people are able to cope by re-establishing a sense of control (e.g., by finding an explanation or using self-blame). Coping can also be facilitated by: re-evaluating a trauma using downward comparison, restoring self-esteem and one’s belief in control, and effecting positive changes from the trauma (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). An remarkable example of coping can be seen in the manner in which Ingrid Poulson is dealing with the murder of her father and two small children, by her estranged husband.

Attitudes
Attitudes are evaluative responses to an attitude object (e.g., people, objects or issues). Like other cognitive processes, attitudes help us to assimilate a wide range of information and make sense of our world. They differ from beliefs as they relate more to feelings than knowledge. The affective nature of attitudes provide useful cognitve shortcuts for making choices and decisions (e.g., liking or disliking something simplifies a choice). Attitudes are formed, and can be altered, through processes such as mere exposure, classical or operant conditioning and social learning.

While some sources suggest attitudes incorporate all domains of the ABC triad (affect, behaviour and cognition), it is possible to hold an attitude that is not expressed in one’s behaviour. Generally, attitudes are not good predictors of behaviour. For example, one might express concern about global pollution but fail to recycle waste at home. Similarly, people may be concerned about road safety but continue to drive irresponsibly. I often get the sense that there is a difference between what someone does or says and what he or she might really think. However, it also makes sense that we would behave in this way to consciously or unconsciously regulate aspects our personal and private self.

Dual attitudes arise when one holds conflicting implicit (unconscious, automatic) and explicit (conscious, controlled) attitudes about the same attitude object. It can be difficult to express implicit attitudes, as we may be unaware of them or unwilling to express them. I thought it is interesting that implicit attitudes can be measured using the Implicit Association Test. This cognitive test uses reaction time measures to determine differences in explicit and implicit attitudes to stigmatised groups. For example, I did the racial attitudes task and was pleasantly surprised that my results reflected my self-perceptions, but I wondered how different my results would be if I lived in a different environment (e.g., an region of high racial tension).

I also though attitude polarisation was also an interesting phenomenon: We tend toward more extreme attitudes if we focus on them. This is more likely with strong initial attitudes. There is also a tendency to use confirmation and in-group biases in the process. Early research in this area focused on attitudes toward the death penalty. However, I expect this also be well illustrated by people’s attitudes toward other emotive issues such as politics, religion and race.

Consistency
Humans desire consistency in their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. The textbook provides an example of this in the stance taken by Dr Kevorkian, who steadfastly maintained his commitment to assisted suicide. I expect this desire is an essential component of the social self and how we operate in affective, behavioural and cognitive domains. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) is a state of psychological discomfort resulting from a cognitive inconsistency, that is played out between one's attitude and behaviour. Generally, we are more reluctant to change behaviour than our attitudes. Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that we attempt to resolve inconsistency by either changing our attitudes, or aligning our attitudes and behaviour though rationalisation. Choice plays an important role in this process. If there is no choice offered there is no need to rationalise your actions, as the lack of choice can be held responsible. It seems that cognitive consistency is important for self-enhancement and self-presentation, and ultimately achieving social acceptance. Human desire for consistency is universal (possibly biological) and enhanced by learning and socialisation. There are so many examples of people’s desire for consistency (and attempting to maintain a good self-image), particularly in public life. One example is the way politicians adhere to and endlessly support seemingly irrational decisions (e.g., the US withdrawal from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and later justifications – failing to acknowledge that genocide had taken place or rationalising their actions based on lack of US interest in the country). Similarly, I am reminded of a documentary that outlined the very public legal battle a family endured against a medical practitioner. At the birth of their severely deformed and very ill child, the attending doctor decided to actively 'save' the baby against the family’s wishes. It struck me that the ensuing battle between the family and the doctor was based on the doctor’s desire to maintain consistency in his attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. He would not back down, despite the incredible amount of evidence suggesting he should. If this doctor was experiencing cognitive dissonance he certainly chose to align his attitudes with his behaviour, and rationalised his actions by asserting his position as a doctor whose role, he believed, was to preserve life at all cost.

Social Influence & Persuasion
Beyond the passive, internal processes of social cognition are those active (conscious) processes of social influence used to change the attitudes, behaviour or beliefs of a group or individual. I imagine that social influence can be used in both positive (e.g., to shape socially acceptable behaviours – the socialisation of children) and negative ways (e.g., to manipulate others – through propaganda).

Social influence usually results in conformity, as failure to conform can result in social rejection, alienation and ostracism (Wikipedia). There are two types of this social influence: normative (going along with the crowd to be liked or accepted) and informational (going along with the crowd because you think the crowd knows more). Normative social influence is demonstrated in the classic experiments of Solomon Asch (1955), showing individuals following the crowd even when the crowd was obviously wrong. I wondered whether this would still apply as these experiments were done many years ago and I expected that we might have changed, at least socially (see Advances in Psychology).This does not seem to be the case (see Conformity: Replication exercise). Our tendency to conform appears to be an enduring attribute. Interestingly, in reading for my essay, cross-cultural social psychologists suggest the conformity found in Asch's experiments is not necessarily universal, citing experiments in which German and Japanese participants were less conformist, than North Americans. They suggest this might be due a high affiliation to specific social groups found in German and Japanese cultures, and less loyalty to a group of strangers in a laboratory.

James also cleverly demonstrated our level of social conformity (normative social influence) in the lecture (Week 3) where he continued to talk on social conformity for almost 15 minutes overtime, we all dutifully sat there listening and no one spoke up!

Persuasion is a type of social influence, used to change a person’s attitude or behaviour. The degree to which we are influenced by persuasion depends on aspects of the message source (credability, likability), content (emotion vs reason, mode of presentation) and audience (intelligence, required cognitive effort, age, cultural and context), and indeed our physical, cognitive and social capacity to resist persuasion.

It seems that persuasion plays an important role in our social and cultural exsitence. It can influence our personal interactions with others (e.g., assisting children to make good decisions); how we work together in a group or the workplace; what we buy, do and seek (e.g., advertising), and can shape many social norms. For instance, we are bombarded with messages through the mass media suggesting how we should think, feel and behave. As a result, many people in our society are afflicted by psychological disturbances about issues such as what we value (e.g., affluenza) or how we should look (e.g., a recent study found the psychological impact of 'appearance medicine shows' (reality television) has accounted for a 15% increase in cosmetic and weight reduction surgery from 2006 - 2007 [The Canberra Times, 1 September 2008]). Indeed, not all social influences are negative, but it is easy to see how these powerful cognitive processes can be used to manipulate behaviour.