1. Social Cognition

2. Social Cognition How we judge and evaluate other people
“You never get a second chance to
make a first impression”
Why?

3. Impression Formation Schema (Schemata is plural)
Set of beliefs or expectations based on prior experience
Presumed to apply to all members of the category
Primacy effect
Earlier impressions are more impactful than later knowledge
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Expectation elicits behavior from another that confirms the expectation

4. Piaget Cognitive development as a process Cognitive changes
Social cognition
Social behavior
Socialization

5. Attribution Attribution Theory
Heider (1958) – Behavior attributed to internal or external causes, not both
Laziness or traffic (not lazy + traffic)
Kelley (1967) – we consider three types of information about behavior to determine its cause
Distinctive – behavior of the other towards third party
Consistent – behavior of the other towards you
Consensus – behavior of the other similar to others’ behavior

6. Attribution Biases of Attributions Fundamental attribution error
Tendency to attribute the behavior of others to causes within themselves
Schindler helped Jews escape Nazi concentration camps because he cared (internal); Schindler believed he was simply doing what needed to be done (external)
Efficacy
One’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish a particular task

7. Self-Efficacy Efficacy
One’s belief in one’s ability to accomplish a particular task
Behavior (performance) influenced greatly by perception of control over a circumstance.
“Mom” tells you success is based on hard work. VS
“Mom” tells you success is based on luck.

8. Self-Efficacy
Learned Helplessness
Seligman (1965)

9. Attribution Biases of Attribution Defensive attribution
We are motivated to present ourselves well
Impress others
Feel good about ourselves
Self-serving bias
Tendency to attribute personal failure to external factors and personal success with internal factors
I failed the test because Mr. Willis is a jerk.
I aced the test and didn’t even study! (AKA I’m really smart!)
Just-world hypothesis
People get what they deserve
‘Protects’ us from those things happening to us.

10. Attribution Attributions across cultures
Most studies of attribution have been done on Western societies
Eastern collectivist societies attribute more personal successes and others’ failures to external factors
Self-serving bias seems to be common to all groups

11. Social Identity Theory
Tajfel & Turner (1979)
No one “personal self”, but several selves of widening circles of group membership.
Different social contexts may trigger an individual to think, feel and act on basis of his personal, family or national “level of self.”
Social identity is the individual’s self-concept derived from perceived membership of social groups (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002)
individual-based perception of what defines the “us” associated with any internalized group membership. This can be distinguished from the notion of personal identity which refers to self-knowledge that derives from the individual’s unique attributes.

12. Social Identity Theory
Group membership creates ingroup/ self-categorization and enhancement in ways that favor the in-group at the expense of the out-group.
Categorizing as group members leads them to display ingroup favoritism.
Seek positive self-esteem by separating ingroup from an outgroup
Positive distinctiveness of ‘us’
People’s sense of who they are is defined in terms of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’.
Three main variables of ingroup favoritism
Extent to which individuals identify with ingroup to internalize group membership as aspect of self-concept.
Extent to which prevailing context provides ground for comparison between groups.
Perceived relevance of comparison group,
Shaped by relative and absolute status of the ingroup.
Individuals are likely to display favoritism when an ingroup is central to their self-definition and a given comparison is meaningful or the outcome is contestable.

13. Social Identity Theory
Schoolboys were assigned to groups, which were intended as meaningless as possible.
Assigned randomly, excluding roles of interpersonal discrimination such as history of conflict, personal animosity or interdependence.
Assigned points to anonymous members of both their own group and the other group.
Conclusions
even the most minimal conditions were sufficient to encourage ingroup-favoring responses.
Participants picked a reward pair that awarded more points to people who were identified as ingroup members. In other words, they displayed ingroup favoritism.

14. Stereotypes
A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category
Most common
Sex
Race
Occupation
Physical appearance
Place of residence
Group or organization membership

15. Stereotypes Can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies
Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977)
College-aged men & women paired to have a phone conversation
Given a snapshot of their phone-mate
Was actually a randomly selected picture (attractive or unattractive)
Men responded more warmly to ‘attractive’ phone-mates; coldly to ‘unattractive’ phone-mates, which altered the pleasure of the conversations for both.

16. Stereotypes Macrae & Bodenhausen (2000)
More likely to apply stereotyped schemata in chance encounter than in structured, task-oriented situation
Goal pursuit results in more attention to individual signals
People consciously or unconsciously suppress stereotypes that violate social norms

17. Prejudice & Discrimination
An intolerant, unfavorable and rigid view of a group of people (Attitude)
Discrimination
An act or series of acts that denies opportunities and esteem to an entire group of people (Behavior)

18. Prejudice Sources of Prejudice
Frustration-aggression theory (Allport, 1954)
Displacement of hostility by exploited, oppressed, or disenfranchised away from proper target and toward lower social groups
Authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al, 1950)
Rigidly conventional, rule-following individuals hostile to those that deviate from the norms
Cognitive misers
Too much cognitive simplification, creates over-generalizations and stereotypes
Racism
Members of certain racial/ ethnic groups are innately inferior

19. Interpersonal Attraction
Harry Harlow

20. Interpersonal Attraction
The tendency to be attracted to and like someone else
Proximity
Usually the most important factor
The closer they live/work, the more frequently they interact
The more they interact, the more they tend to like each other
Less to do with convenience than the security & comfort of the familiar (Borstein, 1989)

21. Interpersonal Attraction
Physical attractiveness
Generally assume attractive people are more:
Intelligent, interesting, happy, kind, sensitive, moral and successful
Better traits = better mates = like them more
Harvey & Pauwells (1999): We like extreme attractiveness in the abstract, we typically chose those similar to our own level of attractiveness

22. Physical Attractiveness
How is it determined?
Many elements culturally specific
Weight, tan, hair color
More universal stereotypes
Feature Symmetry
Physical markers of good genes

23. Symmetry

24. Symmetry

25. Physical Attractiveness
What are the dangers?
Attractive people shown more attention and valued more highly by:
Mothers (Langlois et al, 1995)
Nurses (Badr & Abdallah, 2001)
Teachers (McCall, 1997)
Employers (Hosoda, Stone & Coats, 2003)
Gives unfair advantages and creates self-fulfilling prophecy of superior moral value

26. Interpersonal Attraction
Similarity
Shared attitudes, interests, values, backgrounds, and beliefs
Quist & Crano (2003): Voters are more likely to vote for a candidate with whom they share similar viewpoints
Opposites attract?
Dissimilarities are complementary traits
Needs or skills that complete or balance each other

27. Interpersonal Attraction
Exchange
People exchange various goods and resources with each other involving both rewards and costs
We equally ‘get something out of it’
Reward theory of attraction
We like people who make us feel rewarded and appreciated
Aronson (1994): gain-loss theory of attraction
Increases in rewarding behavior more attractive than constant rewarding

28. Interpersonal Attraction
Intimacy
Quality of genuine closeness and trust in another person
Created and maintained through continuing reciprocal pattern of trying to know the other and allowing the other to know them (Harvey & Pauwells, 1999)
‘Safe’ topics (weather, sports, shared activities) > personal topics (memories, hopes, failures)
Pacing is important
Too much, too soon is unattractive