Chapter 3

Social Cognition:
How We Think About the
Social World

Slides prepared by JoNell Strough, Ph.D. & Philip Lemaster, M.A.

West Virginia University

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 Multimedia Directory
Slide 15Schemas and Stereotypes Video

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 Social Cognition

• How people think about themselves and

the social world, or more specifically,
how people select, interpret,
remember, and use social information
to make judgments and decisions

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 Rodin’s famous sculpture, The Thinker, mimics controlled thinking, where people sit
down and consider something slowly and deliberately. Even when we do not know it,
however, we are engaging in automatic thinking, which is nonconscious, unintentional,
involuntary, and effortless.
Source: Sean Nel 2009. Shutterstock.com

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 Social Cognition

• Central topic in social psychology

• People are generally trying to form
accurate impressions of the world.
• People sometimes form wrong
impressions.

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Two Kinds of Social Cognition

1. Automatic thinking
– Quick
– No conscious deliberation of thoughts,
perceptions, assumptions
2. Controlled thinking
– Effortful and deliberate
– Thinking about self and environment
– Carefully selecting the right course of
action

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 On Automatic Pilot:
Low-Effort Thinking
• We often size up a new situation very
quickly.
• Often these quick conclusions are
correct.
– Example—You can tell the difference
between a college classroom and a frat
party without having to think about it.

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 On Automatic Pilot:
Low-Effort Thinking
• Imagine a different approach: slow and
deliberate thinking.
• Imagine driving down the road and
stopping repeatedly to analyze every
twist and turn.
• Imagine meeting a new person and
excusing yourself for 15 minutes to
analyze what you learned from them.

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 Automatic Thinking

• Thinking that is nonconscious,

unintentional, involuntary, and
effortless.
• We engage in an automatic analysis of
our environments based on past
experiences and knowledge of the
world.

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Is this man an alcoholic or just down on his luck? Our judgments about other people can
be influenced by schemas that are accessible in our memories. If you had just been
talking to a friend about a relative who had an alcohol problem, you might be more likely
to think that this man has an alcohol problem as well, because alcoholism is accessible in
your memory.
Source: Guido Koppes/Age Fotostock

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 People as Everyday Theorists:
Automatic Thinking with Schemas

• Schemas
– Schemas are the mental structures people
use to organize their knowledge about the
social world around themes or subjects.
– Schemas therefore influence the
information people notice, think about, and
remember.
• Sounds exhausting, right?

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 People as Everyday Theorists:
Automatic Thinking with Schemas

• The term schema encompasses our

knowledge and impression of:
– Other people
– Ourselves
– Social roles
• E.g., what a librarian or engineer is like
– Specific events
• E.g., what usually happens when people eat
a meal in a restaurant

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 Schemas and Stereotypes

• When applied to members of a social

group such as a fraternity, gender, or
race, schemas are commonly referred
to as stereotypes.
– Can be applied rapidly and automatically
when we encounter other people.

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 Schemas and Stereotypes
Video

Click on the screenshot for an example of how low-effort thinking using schemas
may reflect stereotypes that lead to errors in judgement.
Back to Directory
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 Function of Schemas

• Schemas used to
– Organize what we know
– Interpret new situations
• Korsakov’s syndrome
– Neurological disorder
• Can’t form memories
– Each situation is new

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Schemas as Memory Guides

• Helps “fill in the blanks” when trying to

remember
– Remember some information that was
there
• Particularly information to which our
schemas led us to pay more attention
– Also remember other information that was
never there
• Add this information unknowingly

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Schemas as Memory Guides

• Examples
– Ask people what is the most famous line of
dialogue in the classic movie Casablanca,
and they will probably say, “Play it again,
Sam.”
– Ask what is the most famous line from the
original Star Trek TV series, and they will
probably say, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

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Schemas as Memory Guides

• Here is a piece of trivia that might

surprise you—both of these lines are
reconstructions. The characters never
said them.

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Memory Reconstructions Tend To
Be Consistent with Schemas
• People who read a story about a
marriage proposal can later insert
incorrect details
– Details not been in the story
• e.g., future plans, roses
– But, details consistent with a marriage
proposal schema

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Memory Reconstructions Tend To
Be Consistent with Schemas
• Over time schemas become
– Stronger
– More resistant to change

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Which Schemas Are Applied?
Accessibility and Priming
• Accessibility
– The extent to which schemas and concepts
are at the forefront of people’s minds and
are therefore likely to be used when we are
making judgments about the social world

Priming
The process by which recent experiences increase
the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.

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Which Schemas Are Applied?
Accessibility
• Something can become accessible for
three reasons:
1. Chronically accessible due to past
experience.
2. Accessible because it is related to a
current goal
3. Temporarily accessible because of our
recent experience

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 Figure 3.1
How We Interpret an Ambiguous Situation
The role of accessibility and priming.

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Which Schemas Are Applied?
Priming
• Suppose you read about a man named
Donald.
– Donald’s actions are ambiguous
– Could be interpreted as positive or
negative

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Which Schemas Are Applied?
Priming
• People who previously memorize words
like adventurous
– Form positive impressions
• People primed with words like reckless
and stubborn
– Form negative impressions

Priming is a good example of automatic thinking

because it occurs quickly, unintentionally, and
unconsciously.

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 Figure 3.2
Priming and Accessibility
In the second of a pair of studies, people were asked to read this paragraph about
Donald and form an impression of him. In the first study, some of the participants had
memorized words that could be used to interpret Donald in a negative way (e.g.,
reckless, conceited), while others had memorized words that could be used to interpret
Donald in a positive way (e.g., adventurous, self-confident). As the graph shows, those
who had memorized the negative words formed a much more negative impression of
Donald than did those who had memorized the positive words.
(Based on data in Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977.)

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 Persistence of Schemas

• Jurors given instructions to ignore

inadmissible evidence
– Beliefs may persist
• Even if evidence is discredited
– Belief persists

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Making Our Schemas Come True:
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• The case whereby people
– Have an expectation about what another
person is like, which;
– Influences how they act toward that
person, which;
– Causes that person to behave consistently
with people’s original expectations, making
the expectations come true.

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 Figure 3.3
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
A sad cycle in four acts.

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Making Our Schemas Come True:
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Teachers led to believe particular
students will bloom:
1. Create a warmer emotional climate for
those students, giving them more
personal attention, encouragement, and
support,
2. Give “bloomers” more challenging
material,

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Making Our Schemas Come True:
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Teachers led to believe particular
students will bloom:
3. Give “bloomers” more and better
feedback,
4. Give “bloomers” more opportunities to
respond in class and give them longer to
respond.

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 Figure 3.4
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Percentage of First and Second Graders Who
Improved on an IQ Test Over the Course of the School Year
Those whom the teachers expected to do well actually improved more than the other
students. (Adapted from Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968)

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Making Our Schemas Come True:
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Some limits of self-fulfilling prophecies
– People’s true nature can win out in social
interaction.
– Self-fulfilling prophecies are most likely to
occur when people are distracted.

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Teachers can unintentionally make their expectations about their students come true by
treating some students differently from others.
Source: Mary Kate Denny/ PhotoEdit

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Priming Metaphors about the
Body and Mind
• Physical sensations can prime
metaphors

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Priming Metaphors about the
Body and Mind
• Metaphors can influence decisions
– Holding hot coffee or iced coffee
– Encounter a stranger
• Hot coffee  Primes “warm & friendly”
metaphor
– Stranger rated as friendly
• Iced coffee  Primes “unfriendly people are
cold”
– Rate stranger as unfriendly

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Will this person’s answers to the questionnaire be influenced by how heavy the clipboard
is? Why or why not?
Source: wdstock/iStockphoto

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 Mental Strategies and
Shortcuts
• Mental shortcuts
– Efficient
• Don’t usually have time to fully search all
options
– Usually lead to good decisions quickly

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 Mental Strategies and
Shortcuts
• Schemas are a shortcut people use
– But we don’t have a ready-made schema
for every judgment or decision
– Sometimes there are too many schemas
available
• So what do we do?

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 Mental Strategies and
Shortcuts
• Judgmental Heuristics
– Mental shortcuts people use to make
judgments quickly and efficiently

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 Availability Heuristic

• A mental rule of thumb whereby people

base a judgment on the ease with
which they can bring something to
mind.
• Trouble—sometimes what is easiest to
remember is not typical of the overall
picture, leading to faulty conclusions

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 Physicians have been found to use the availability heuristic when making diagnoses.
Their diagnoses are influenced by how easily they can bring different diseases to mind.
Source: Robin Nelson/PhotoEdit

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 How Easy Does it Come to
Mind? 
• Availability Heuristic
– Example
• When physicians are diagnosing diseases, it
might seem straightforward for them to
observe people’s symptoms and figure out
what disease, if any, they have.
– Sometimes, symptoms might be a sign of
several different disorders.
– Do doctors use the availability heuristic,
whereby they are more likely to consider
diagnoses that come to mind easily?

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 How Easy Does it Come to
Mind? 
• Availability Heuristic
– Example
• When physicians are diagnosing diseases, it
might seem straightforward for them to
observe people’s symptoms and figure out
what disease, if any, they have.
– Several studies of medical diagnoses suggest
that the answer is yes.

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Availability Heuristic and Self-
Judgments
• People were asked to remember either
6 or 12 examples of their own past
assertive behaviors
– People who thought of 6 examples
• Rated themselves as relatively assertive
• It was easy to think of this many examples
– “Hey, this is easy—I guess I’m a pretty
assertive person”

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Availability Heuristic and Self-
Judgments
• People were asked to remember either
6 or 12 examples of their own past
assertive behaviors
– People who thought of 12 examples
• Rated themselves as relatively unassertive
• it was difficult to think of this many
examples
– “Hmm, this is hard—I must not be a very
assertive person”.

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 Figure 3.5
Availability and Assertiveness
People asked to think of 6 times they had behaved assertively found it easy to do so and
concluded that they were pretty assertive people. People asked to think of 12 times they
had behaved assertively found it difficult to think of so many examples and concluded
that they were not very assertive people (see the left-hand side of the graph). Similar
results were found among people asked to think of 6 or 12 times they had behaved
unassertively (see the right-hand side of the graph). These results show that people
often base their judgments on availability, or how easily they can bring information to
mind. (Adapted from Schwartz et al., 1991)

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 How Similar Is A to B?
The Representativeness Heuristic
• Representativeness heuristic
– A mental shortcut whereby people classify
something according to how similar it is to
a typical case
• Base rate information
– Information about the frequency of
members of different categories in the
population

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 The Power of Unconscious
Thinking
• Automatic thinking occurs
unconsciously.
– Although unconscious processes can
sometimes lead to tragic errors,
unconscious thinking is frequently critical
to navigating our way through the world.

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 The Power of Unconscious
Thinking
• “Cocktail party" effect
– Realize that someone across room
mentioned your name
– Has been demonstrated under controlled
experimental conditions

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Research has found that people’s goals can be activated unconsciously by their recent
experiences. For example, someone who walks by a church might have the “Golden
Rule” activated without knowing it, making him or her more likely to give money to a
homeless person.
Source: Ginasander/Dreamstime

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 The Power of Unconscious
Thinking
• Decisions may be influenced by factors
outside conscious awareness when
there are competing goals
– When self-interest conflicts with sharing
with others (Shariff and Norenzayan, 2007)
• Priming altruistic goals
– Increases charitable behavior
• Unaware of influence of prime on decision

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 Cultural Determinants of
Schemas
• Cultural Universal
– All people have schemas
• Culture Differences
– Content of schemas

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Take a quick look at these two photos and see if you notice any differences between
them. As discussed in the text, the differences you notice may have to do with the
culture in which you grew up.
Source: Takahiko Masuda

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Culture and Social Cognition

• Analytic thinking style

– focus on objects without considering
surrounding
– context
– associated with Western cultures
• Holistic thinking style
– focus on the overall context, relation
between objects
– associated with Eastern cultures

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Culture and Social Cognition

• Eastern and Western cultures

– equally capable of using both styles
– environment in which people live “primes”
one style over the other

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Controlled Social Cognition
High-Effort Thinking
• Controlled Thinking
– Thinking that is conscious, intentional,
voluntary, and effortful.

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 Controlled Thinking and
Free Will
• Association between conscious thought
& behavior creates perception of free
will
– But, forces outside of awareness may
influence behavior and conscious thoughts
• May overestimate or underestimate amount
of control

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 Controlled Thinking and
Free Will
• Belief in free will
– Predicts behavior
• Cheating
• Helping

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Facilitated communication was developed to allow communication-impaired people to
express themselves. Unfortunately, it appears to be the case that the facilitators were
unwittingly controlling the communications.
Source: Robin Nelson/PhotoEdit

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 Mentally Undoing the Past

• Counterfactual Reasoning
– Mentally changing some aspect of the past
in imagining what might have been
• “If only I had answered that one question
differently, I would have passed the test.”
– Can have a big influence on our emotional
reactions to events
– The easier it is to mentally undo an
outcome, the stronger the emotional
reaction to it.

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 Counterfactual Reasoning

• Among people who had suffered the

loss of a spouse or child
– Imagining more ways to avert tragedy was
associated with greater distress

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Who do you think would be happier: someone who won a silver medal at the Olympics or
someone who won a bronze? Surprisingly, research shows that silver medalists are often
less happy, because they can more easily imagine how they might have come in first and
won a gold.
Source: REUTERS/Nikola Solic

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 Counterfactual Reasoning

• Silver medal winners (2nd place) often

express greater dissatisfaction than
bronze medal winners (3rd place)
– Silver
• May imagine ways they could have placed
first and won gold
– Bronze
• May imagine ways they would not have won
any medal

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 Counterfactual Reasoning

• Positive consequences
– Motivation to improve in future
• Negative consequences
– If it leads to rumination—repetitive focus
on negative things
– Associated with depression

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Improving Human Thinking

• Make people more humble

– Ask people to consider the point of view
opposite to their own
• People realize there are other ways to
construe the world
– Make fewer judgment errors
• Teach basic statistical principles
– Facilitates application of principles to
everyday life
• E.g., base rates

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 Figure 3.6
Performance on a Test of Statistical Reasoning Abilities by Graduate Students in
Different Disciplines
After 2 years of graduate study, students in psychology and medicine showed more
improvement on statistical reasoning problems than students in law and chemistry did.
(Adapted from Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, & Cheng, 1987)

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 Summary and Review

• High effort thinking versus “Automatic

Pilot”
• Schemas
• Primacy effect

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 Summary and Review

• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• Heuristics
– Availability Heuristic
– Representativeness Heuristic
• Base rate information
• Counterfactual thinking

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