SOCIAL COGNITION

SCHEMAS : MENTAL FRAMEWORK FOR ORGANIZING AND USING SOCIAL

INFORMATION :

Schemas are mental frameworks centering on specific theme that help us to

organize social information. There are various types of schemas. "Self schema" is
for organizing knowledge about our-self knowledge. Schemas for other individuals
are "person schema". Schema for social roles are called "role schemas" and
Schemas for events or situations are called "event schema" (event script).

Schemas are mental frameworks centering on specific theme that help us to

organize social information.

The Impact of Schemas on Social Cognition: Attention, Encoding, and Retrieval :

Schemas influence social cognition by acting upon three basic cognitive processes.
They are attention, encoding and retrieval. Attention is cognitive process of
focusing on specific information while ignoring other things. Encoding is storing
this information in memory. Retrieval refers to the processes of recalling the
information stored in memory and using it.

Attention :

Schemas work as mechanism that helps individuals to focus attention on specific

aspects of environment. The stimulus that is coherent with schemas is more easily
noticed than the stimulus that is not fitting with the schemas one hold (unless the
information has high strength of attracting information). E.g., while watching a
cricket match we quickly notice happenings on the ground as compared to the
noise in the stadium.

Encoding :

Information that is consistent with schemas is more likely to be saved in the long-
term memory than the one that is less relevant. We remember easily the
instances when people have agreed with us than when they have disagreed. In
contrast, we also 19 remember some instances, which do not at all fit in the
schemas. For example, if you go to the government office and your work is done
in five minutes, most probably you will not forget the instance, because it was
contradictory to your expectations.

Retrieval :

The relationship between schemas and retrieval is a complex issue. Some

researchers have shown that information that is consistent with schemas is better
retrieved. Others have shown that the information inconsistent with the schemas
are more easily stored and retrieved.

HEURISTICS : REDUCING EFFORTS IN SOCIAL COGNITION :

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have carried out series of experiments to
demonstrate that human beings use mental short-cuts to make sense of the
world under conditions of uncertainty. They proved that individuals do not think
rationally while making judgments. They make systematic errors and biases in
their inferences. They argued that human beings use heuristics because they
cannot manage information. This is known as information overload. Human
cognitive system can process limited amount of information at a given point of
time. When the information is more than it could be processed, we fail to process
all information. This is called as information overload.

Information Overload is a situation when the information for processing is more

than the ability of our cognitive system.

We use smart tactics under conditions of information overload and manage this
information. These tactics are known as heuristics. Heuristics are simple rules of
thumb or mental shortcuts that help us to make complex decisions and drawing
inferences in speedy and efficient way. They reduces our mental efforts. Tversky
and Kahneman have demonstrated the use of three heuristics
They are :

1. Representativeness Heuristics,

2. Availability Heuristics,

and 3. Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics.

Heuristics may help us in making correct judgments. But Tversky and Kahneman
have viewed them as potential sources of errors in our thinking. Kahneman was
awarded Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992 for this work (Tversky died on 2 June,
1996 and Nobel is not given posthumously). Now we will discuss each of these
heuristics.

Heuristics are rules of thumb or mental shortcuts that people use to make
decisions and draw inferences rapidly and with reduced efforts when the
cognitive system is overloaded with information.

Representativeness Heuristics :

Have a look at following example give by Tversky and Kahneman: Linda is 31 yrs,
single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a
student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues,
and participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which statement is more likely?

a. Linda is a bank teller.

b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.

Most of you would answer ‘B’, that is ‘Linda is a bank teller and active in the
feminist movement.’ In reality, ‘A’ is more likely than ‘B’. Because ‘B’ (bank tellers
who are feminist activist) is a subset of set ‘A’ (bank tellers). We know that
probability of subset is always less than (or at the most equal to) the probability
of set.

Why did we make this error? It happened because we used something called as
‘representativeness heuristics’. When likelihood of an event is judged on the basis
of the extent that it represents the essential features of the parent population or
of its generating process is called as representativeness heuristics. When an
individual is similar to a typical member of a given group, then he/she is judged to
be more likely a member of that group. The heuristic is useful in inductive
reasoning.

Representativeness heuristics is a strategy for making judgments and decisions on

the basis of the extent to which current stimulus or event resembles to other
stimuli or category.

The use of this heuristic can systematically lead to make errors in judgements.
One such example is ‘base rate fallacy’. In an experiment by Tversky and
Kahneman, subjects were told that a 22 profile of Jack is picked up from 100
profiles in which 30 are engineers and 70 are lawyers. Jack is 30 yr old man. He is
married and had no children. He is man of high ability and high motivation and
promises to be quite successful in his field. He is liked by his colleagues. What is
more likely occupation of Jack? Many responded Engineer. While doing so they
ignored very important information regarding base rate. The base rate of
engineers is 30% and so the probability of Jack being an engineer can not be more
than .30. This is called as base rate fallacy. Subjects ignored base rates because
they focused on representativeness. Hence, representativeness heuristics can also
lead to errors.

Availability Heuristics :

The availability heuristic is a phenomenon in which people predict the frequency

of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example
can be brought to mind. There are situations in which people assess the
frequency of a class or the probability of an event by the ease with which
instances or occurrences can be brought to mind. E.g., one may assess the risk of
heart attack among middle-aged people by recalling such occurrences among
one's acquaintances. Availability is a useful clue for assessing frequency or
probability. Kahneman and Tversy asked participants to judge whether letter ‘K’
would appear more frequently at 1st place or 3rd place in all English language
words. Many answered 1st place. This simply happened because you can think of
many words that begin with letter ‘K’ than that have letter ‘K’ in the third position
(Tversky and Kahneman, 1974).

Availability Heuristics refers to the strategy of making judgements or assess the

frequency of a class or the probability of an event on the basis of how easily
specific type of information can be easily brought to mind.

Availability heuristics may lead to errors in decisions and judgments. A person

argues that cigarette smoking is not unhealthy because he knows somebody who
smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and lived 100 years. That case could
simply be an unusual case that does not represents health of smokers in general.

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics :

Anchoring and adjustment is a heuristic that influences the way people intuitively
assess probabilities. While assessing the probability of an event, people start with
an implicitly suggested reference point (anchor) and make adjustments to it to
reach their estimate. A person begins with a first approximation (anchor) and
then make adjustments to that number based on additional information.

For example, in one of the experiments, Kahneman and Tversky asked students to
guess the percentage of African nations which are members of the United
Nations. One group of students were first asked "Was it more or less than 45%?"
whereas other group of students were asked "Was it more or less than 65%?" The
first group of students guessed lower values than the second group. This is
because of the use of Anchoring and Adjustment heuristics. The initial question
set the high (65%) or low (45%) as an anchor. Then individuals made adjustment
around that anchor and gave answers around anchor. So individuals under high
anchor condition judged the percentage of African nations much higher than
those who are in low anchor condition. Similar pattern of answers have been
found for other kinds of estimates. Typically impact of adjustments are not
sufficient to overcome the effect of anchor.

This may be evident in selling and buying of goods. Suppose you go for buying in
the markets where bargaining is possible. You want to buy a ‘Jeans’, then what is
the process you follow. The shopkeeper tells you a price and you bargain around
that price and settle for something lower than that. Your bargain is adjusted
around the anchor (initial price told by shopkeeper)

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics refers to the tendency to use some value as
a initial point and then adjust the final judgment.

POTENTIAL SOURCES OF ERRORS IN SOCIAL COGNITION :

Human beings reason thoughtfully on most of the social occasions, does not
guarantee us rationality of thinking. This means that though we try to be correct
in our thought process, we are likely to make errors in our social judgments. We
shall explore some errors in cognition.

Negativity Bias :

Take following example: Niranjan is bright, helpful, social, jealous, and friendly
person. Which adjective has attracted your attention the most. Perhaps, jealous…
right…! This happens because of our tendency called as negativity bias. The
tendency of Human beings to pay more attention to negative information than
positive information is called as negativity bias. Social psychologists have
recognized this tendency of human beings for a long time.

Negativity bias refers to the tendency to show greater sensitivity to negative

information than positive information.

We pay more attention to any negative event, characteristics, etc., of social

situation. This is seen in variety of social situations.

Such a tendency has a strong evolutionary relevance. Negative information

reflects potentially dangerous aspects of the situation which may cause threat to
the survival of the individual. Hence, one need to be sensitive to such an
information. Human beings detect negative emotions very quickly than positive
emotions. This does not mean that we are always negative in our attention.
Indeed we also pay attention to positive information, and negativity bias gets
eliminated under positive priming conditions.
The Optimistic Bias :

We also have an exactly opposite bias called as ‘optimistic bias’. The optimistic
bias refers to the tendency to expect the overall outcomes as positive. Generally,
most people believe that they are more likely to experience positive events than
others.

The optimistic bias refers to the tendency to expect the overall outcomes as
positive.

The effect of optimistic bias is seen on many of our actions and behaviors. Two
examples are overconfidence barrier and planning fallacy.

Overconfidence barrier refers to tendency to be more confident about the

accuracy of our judgments than sensible.

We believe that we are more likely to be successful in studies, relations,

marriage, jobs, and live longer life than what seems reasonable. This bias is called
as overconfidence barrier.

Another result of the optimism is planning fallacy. Planning fallacy is a tendency

to make optimistic bias regarding the time estimations for a given task. We tend
to believe that we will finish a task much earlier than what it would actually take.
Think of your time-tables for examination studies. We typically never finish our
studies in the planned time. Because we tend to be unrealistically optimistic in
our estimations of time.

Planning fallacy is a tendency to believe that we can do more work in given

period of time than actually or realistically is possible.

The planning fallacy occurs because we tend to ignore how much time a particular
task has taken in past. We tent to focus on future and make a narrative account.
Even when we focus on past. we believe that we took more time because of the
external factors outside our control which may not affect us now. So if we pay
careful attention to potential obstacles, then we can correctly estimate the time
required and avoid the planning fallacy.
Counterfactual Thinking :

Suppose your friend applies for a specific college and fail to get admission
because of less merit. You quickly think that ‘he should have studied more’. If you
know that somebody met with an accident and you think ‘what if he wouldn’t
have started at that time. This is typically known as counterfactual thinking.
Counterfactual thinking is thinking about a past that did not happen. It is
tendency to imagine other outcomes in the situation than the once that have
occurred. Counterfactual thinking is not just limited to the negative events. It is
wide range of automatic thinking that influences our social cognition.

Counterfactual thinking is thinking about a past that did not happen. It is

tendency to imagine other outcomes in the situation than the one’s that have
occurred.

Counterfactual literally means ‘contrary to the facts’. The term counterfactual

thinking refers to a set of cognitions involving the simulation of alternatives to
past or present factual events or circumstances. Suppose, two of your friends
failed in unit test because they did not study well. Since the outcome is similar,
you should feel similar sympathy for them. Now, imagine that A otherwise studies
regularly, and B rarely studies. Now for whom you will have more sympathy..?
You think of alternatives for the behavior of A than B and feel more sympathetic
for him.

Counterfactual thinking is a very strong bias in thinking. In order to get rid of

counterfactual thinking one need to suppress counterfactual thoughts or discount
them.

Counterfactual thinking can be beneficial or costly for the user depending on how
it is used. Suppose you have missed a top position in your class by one point. You
think that ‘you could have done better’ or ‘least you retained second position in
class’, you are engaging in two different types of counterfactual thoughts: upward
and downward. This is one useful classification of counterfactuals is based on
their direction of comparison (Roese, 1994). Counterfactuals may result in
alternative circumstances that are evaluatively better than actual (i.e., upward
counterfactuals) or evaluatively worse than actual (i.e., downward
counterfactuals).

Often, regret can be confused with counterfactual thinking. Regret is an emotion

whereas counterfactual thinking is thought.

Thought Suppression :

Human beings can manage to keep some thought out of their consciousness. This
is called as thought suppression. If certain thoughts are disturbing, we can stay
mentally healthy by keeping them out of mind. Thought suppression can be
achieved in two stages:

(i) Monitoring Process: this is an automatic monitoring process, which

identifies an unwanted interrupting thought.

(ii) Operating Process: this is an effortful, controlled process to find other

important thought to distract from the disturbing thought. Individuals engage in
thought suppression by influencing their feeling or behaviors.

Magical Thinking :

Suppose your friend offers you chocolates that have shape of insect, or
cockroach. Will you eat that chocolate..? Most probably no. if you think
rationally, the shape of the chocolate does not decide the contents. But still you
will not, this is because of magical thinking. Magical thinking involves assumption
that does not hold under rational scrutiny, but still individuals believe in them.
One of the examples of it is, if two things resemble in external appearance, then
they share similar fundamental properties. The plastic or rubber model of snakes
or lizard can also create panic among the people.

Magical thinking involves assumption that does not hold under rational scrutiny.

Positive view of Social Cognition :

From the earlier discussion it appears that we are making only errors in thinking.
Look at various kinds of heuristics that human beings use and various kinds of
errors we make in social thinking. This provides a vey grim view of social
cognition. As if we are making all judgments and decision irrationally. But in
reality, we are processing huge amount of social information. And still, most of
the time, in our social interactions, we are making useful and efficient judgments.
It is also true that we are cognitive misers, and lazy about using rationality, but
these rules of thumb often give us useful judgments. So we need not feel that this
is making our life worse. It is certainly bringing some limitation to human
thinking, and hence we are not becoming machines that process information,
computers. This is what gives humanness to human thinking.

AFFECT AND COGNITION :

In this section we shall discuss the complex relationship between affect and
cognition. Cognition involves thinking, decision making, etc., whereas affect is
expression of mood, a feeling state. Thought these two are independent systems
of mind, their interplay has been a matter of extensive research. Affect influences
cognition and cognition also influences affect. We shall discuss both in detail.

Influence of Affect on Cognition :

Our mood influences perceptions of the world around. When we are in sad
mood, everything just looks gloomy to us, whereas when we are in cheerful
mood, everything seems to be brighter than usual. Mood influences our memory,
judgments, perceptions and many other aspects of cognition. Researchers have
found that even experienced interviewers are influenced by their mood while
evaluating the candidates. Mood in general is seen as a mediatory mechanism
that influences cognition.

The impact of mood on memory is very well researched. There are two important
effects that have been found in this connection. They are mood congruent
memory and mood dependent memory. Mood dependent memory refers to the
idea that the material can be better recalled in the mood in which the material is
learned. (Earlier it was also known as state dependent hypothesis). If we learn
(i.e., store in memory) something in positive mood, then we are more likely to
recall it in positive mood (Figure 2). The mood in which the material was stored
serves as a tag and the current mood serves as a retrieval cue. This is called as a
mood dependent memory.

The mood congruent memory refers to the phenomenon that the present mood
determines what would be recalled (Figure 3). If you are in positive mood then
the positive information would be entered in the memory and recalled form the
memory. If you are in the negative mood then the negative information will be
easily recalled. So the information consistent (congruent) with the present mood
is recalled. Here mood serves as a filter.

Mood Congruent Memory

Among these two effects, the mood dependent is comparatively inconsistent in

research literature. The findings regarding the mood congruent memory are
more consistent. In addition, an asymmetry has also been reported in mood
congruent memory. Mood congruent memory for positive mood is far more
common than for negative mood. This can be attributed to the motivational
mechanism to maintain the mood.

Mood also influences other cognitive functions than memory. Several research
studies on creativity indicate that positive mood influences creativity positively.
Mood helps in creating new associations that are required in creativity.

We have discussed heuristics in previous section. People who are in positive

mood are more likely to use heuristics as compared to those who are in negative
mood. This may be beneficial for tasks with experience. But it may not be
similarly beneficial for novel tasks wherein systematic problem solving is
required.

Mood also influences the way we attribute motives to people’s behavior. When
we are in positive mood we tend to attribute positive motives to people’s
behavior than when we are in negative mood.

The Influence of Cognition on Affect :

As affect influences cognition, cognition can also influences mood. One of the
sources to understand this influence is to understand Schachter’s Two-Stage
model of emotions. This theory suggests that initial physiological arousal is
general and people look out for cues to attribute that arousal. Depending on the
cue they find out, they label the emotion. This process of identifying the cue and
attribution is cognitive in nature. The second source is through the activation of
schemas. If the schema contains affective information, and if that schema gets
activated, then the related affect is also experienced.

Cognition and Regulation of Affective States :

We need to control our emotional reactions in almost all social circumstances.

We also need to manage our own negative feelings in order to function
effectively. We employ various techniques to do so. One of them is that we
engage in behaviors that give pleasure but are potentially unhealthy. We
deliberately give in to our temptations in order to lift our mood. Tice and others
(2000) have conducted an experiment where they put the participants in good
and bad mood. They were provided 15 minutes break to prepare for IQ test. The
bad mood subjects procrastinated and their mood has got lifted because of that.
Another strategy people use to cope with negative events is ‘not to generate
counterfactual thoughts’. So, one thinks that the negative outcome was
completely unavoidable. This reduces the negativity of the emotional reaction.

Affect and Cognition: Social Neuroscience Evidence :

It was stated earlier that there is an interplay of affect and cognition, essentially
they are two separate systems. Several factor analytic studies have clearly
demonstrated that cognition and mood are independent dimensions. In addition,
the neuroscience research has also confirmed the view that there exist two
distinct systems in the brain for these two dimensions. The brain region that is
associated with cognition is prefrontal cortex whereas the limbic system is
associated with emotions. Some experimental research on game theory highlight
this fact. One of the games is ‘ultimatum game’. In this first subject is provided
with some money. He had to offer some part of it to other individual, if the other
individual agrees, the money is shared, and if the other individual doesn’t agree
then no one gets anything. Classic economics theory would predict that the other
person would accept any non-zero amount, whereas in reality the offers below
40% are rejected. The MRI studies indicated that when people make such
judgments, both, the prefrontal cortex and limbic system were active. In addition,
the research on delayed and immediate gratification through rewards also
supports this distinction. Increased activity is observed in limbic system for
immediate reward than for delayed reward.