User:Sandy~enwikiversity/Week 3 Social Thinking

Week 3 - Social Thinking
Lecture 3 Notes

Social Thinking Overview

 * How we intake and store information about our society.
 * Why people behave the way they do.
 * We combine what we perceive through our senses with our cognitive stores and information biases.
 * Communication - Exploring the different components of verbal and non-verbal communication
 * Impressions – formation and management, cognitive map

Duplex mind automatic fast process going on (largely unconscious) cognitive miser – use as little cognitive effort as possible Knowledge Structures – pre-programmed through environmental/social learning

Schemas
 * how we categorise things
 * descriptors of events and roles people play (mostly unconscious)
 * can be objects, concepts and relationships with other objects and concepts
 * schemata (plural)
 * no effort thought
 * exceptions to the rule can interfere with and prevents the uptake of new information (proactive interference)
 * stuck in an overreliance on automatic information

Scripts
 * social situations
 * the way of interacting
 * comes from exposure, experience and social learning through TV examples, watching other people
 * pre-programmed to acquire the cultural script

Stereotyping
 * takes schemas a bit further
 * cognition efficient thing to do
 * the normative characteristics ignoring the more general characteristics
 * exaggerated
 * calling on pre-coded procedures

Social Perception
Any social objects perception can be altered through interpretation. A social object doesn’t really exist in a meaningful way without context.
 * Priming – once learnt it is more readily accessible
 * Framing – social context

Typical Vs Unusual Events
 * Consistent events tend to rely on our schemas, scripts and stereotyping.
 * Unusual events require cognitive effort to explain causes of behaviour to regain a sense of control and predictability.
 * We think we can understand why people behave the way they do.
 * Why do we make these attributions (cause)?
 * For a sense of cognitive control
 * We don’t need to use to much energy trying to understand what’s going on

Attribution Theory
A sense of control over our social environment
 * How the perceiver uses information for explanation of events and causes
 * We perceive behaviour as being caused, even to inanimate objects
 * Both disposition and situation can cause behaviour
 * Personality motivation of the actor
 * Correspondent Influence Theory - When we believe a behaviour corresponds with a person’s internal belief.
 * Correspondent Bias – Underlying tendency to overestimate internal factors and underestimate cause being external.

Fundamental Attribution Bias Behaviour is more noticeable than situational factors. We are lazy and don’t want to think about the situational factors. If we aren’t cognitively busy we are likely to look at the situational information. If we are busy we tend to go for fundamental attribution error (FAE) There are cross cultural variations in attribution bias

'Actor/Observer bias
 * Actor – attribute behaviour to situations
 * Observer – attribution behaviour to disposition (person/individual)

Ultimate Attribution Error
 * FAE – individual to individual also to in-groups and out-groups
 * Bias towards our groups and against out-groups
 * Attitudes Beliefs and Consistency

Causes of behaviour
 * inside - internal, the person
 * external - others, the situation, the environment

Attitudes, Beliefs & Consistency
Attitudes Like or dislike to an object or issues

Beliefs
 * Sets of information we hold about objects or issues.
 * This information may be true or untrue
 * Why? It helps us to deal with the complexities of the world and it helps us to make quick decisions

Implicit Attitude Automatic evaluation respose

Explicit Attitude Our conscious evaluation response

Some attitudes are not visible, especially if they are socially unacceptable.

Mere Exposure Effect
If seen once we are more likely to become familiar with it and therefore more likely to have a positive attitude e.g. exposure to a product or brand may influence our decision on which brand to purchase.. An exception to this is if we have an initial negative reaction repeated exposure is unlikely to change this view.

Classical Conditioning Attitudes can be attributed to conditioning stimulous i.e. celebrities linked to products

Operant Conditioning Reward or punishment for a certain behaviour.

Social Learning
We don't have to learn something ourselves to through experience. We can learn through observing others e.g. exposure to a conversation.

Polarisation
An extension of exposure effect. Over time we are more confident of our attitudes. They become more extreme whether they are positive or negative.

Consistency
Consistency between behaviour, cognition (feeling) and affect (belief) otherwise we experience cognitive dissonance. We like to maintain the same attitude and want others to see our attitude is consistent where we don't say one thing and do another. We also like consistent self-presentation. Our drive for consitency is automatic.

Errors in Attribution
Because it is difficult to understand the meaning behind behaviour we use shortcuts (heuristics). This leads to error and biases such as:


 * Fundamental Attribution Error - Behaviour due to personal disposition not situation
 * Actor-Observer Bias - Actor attributes behaviour to situation while observer attributes it to personal disposition
 * Self-Serving Bias - Personal sucess and other's failures are internal while personal failure and other's success are external. We take credit for our success and deny responsibility for failure
 * Ultimate Attribution Error - Internal atributions for ingroup success anf out group failure while in-group failure and out-group sucess is attributed to external causes

Attitudes and Beliefs
Attitudes
 * Evaluation towards some object which helps us deal with our complex world
 * Initial evaluations are immediate and unconscious

Dual Attitudes
 * Implicit attitude - automatic evaluated response (we may not be aware of all of our attitudes)
 * Explicit attitude - conscious evaluated response

Classical Conditioning - learning through repeated pairing of a neutral stimulus to give a conditioned resonse. Helps with the formation of implicit and explicit attitudes.

Operant Conditioning - learned behaviour through reward and punishment.

Polarisation - the more we think about an attitude the stronger it becomes

Social Influence and Persuasion
Efforts of individuals to change the beliefs, attitudes or behaviour of others

Social Influence There are two types:
 * Normative influence (public compliance) - inner beliefs that the group is wrong
 * Informal Influence (private acceptance) - inner belief that others are right

Persuasion Attempts to change a person's mind. There are three components:
 * Who - the source of the message - must be credible and likable to be believable
 * What - the actual message - miderate fear appeals and repetition are most persuasive
 * Whom - the audience - overheard messagaes are the most persuasive

The two routes of persuasion
 * Central rouet - conscious processing with careful consideration
 * Peripheral route - automatic processing influenced by a simple cue

Tutorial - Communication
The various levels of Communication

Shallow Greetings:
 * acknowledgement
 * small talk

Deeper Communication:
 * self disclosure
 * share informationand facts
 * thoughts emotions and feelings

Verbal Communication
 * words

Non-verbal communication
 * facial expressions (incl eye movement)
 * hands (gestures)
 * semiotic symbols
 * tone of voice

7% is verbal 93% is non-verbal 38% Tone of voice 55% Body language

Transmission Model of Communication Similar to computers communicating
 * encoding language → transmit frequency ↔ decoding language ← feedback understanding

There can be a breakdown at any of these levels:
 * the message may not be clear
 * there may be a large large amount of ‘noise’ (distraction) preventing the message frm getting through
 * the message may be decoded incorrectly and therefore the message misinterpreted
 * the message may be interpreted in a way that differs from its intention due to pre-existing schemas
 * feedback may not be giving leaving the understanding the message had been received as intended

Active listening - repeating back what you hear. A very important tool particularly for counsellors and dealing with children; acknowledgment being given that what has been said is understood.

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