You are encouraged to set yourself to be without distraction from your learning for the period of each lecture. For a self-paced lesson, a minimum of 15 minutes is recommended for each period. This is to enable you to adequately digest the instructions and content, to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication, and to achieve meaningful learning.
A good example to help better understand what social cognition is would be to think back to when you were getting ready on the first day of school in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Before you leave for school, you spent time picking out your best outfit, trying to figure out what you were going to say, and (hopefully) combed your hair. During this process, you’re worried about the first impression you would be giving. You also probably spent time worrying about how to interpret the signals/messages that other people gave off.
Examining that is social cognition.
How exactly do psychologists define social cognition? While there is no single definition, there are some common factors that many experts have identified as being important.
Social cognition involves:
The processes involved in perceiving other people and how we come to know about the people in the world around us.
The study of the mental processes that are involved in perceiving, remembering, thinking about, and attending to the other people in our social world.
The reasons we attend to certain information about the social world, how this information is stored in memory, and how it is then used to interact with other people.
In this section, we will go through some examples thinking errors that happen when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them. These errors are known as Cognitive Biases; and they affect the decisions and judgments that you make.
What is it that makes us think about the SKY when we see the word BLUE?
Why is it that when I say APPLE, you think of the PHONE, and someone else thinks FRUIT?
The answer to these questions is that we are all primed.
We’ve all heard or have used the phrase, “they were primed for that”. This is talking about something (an action, message, etc.) which was created specifically to nudge us towards a certain outcome.
This short video below explains how priming works:
3.3.1 Social Cognition 1 Lecture.mp4Belief in Just World
Lerner (1980) proposed that individuals need to believe in a just world to deal with witnessed or experienced injustice, helplessness, and insecurity. The just-world theory assumes that people want to believe that they live in a world where good things happen to good people and bad things only to bad ones and where therefore everyone harvests what they sow. This belief is essential for people to feel safe and positive and to perceive the world as a predictable and manageable place.
The Halo Effect
The halo effect is also something referred to as the "physical attractiveness stereotype" and the "what is beautiful is also good" principle.
Physical appearance is often a major part of the halo effect. People who are considered attractive tend to be rated higher on other positive traits as well.
However, this effect doesn't just affect our perceptions of people based on their attractiveness. It can also encompass other traits as well. People who are sociable or kind, for example, may also be seen as more likable and intelligent. The halo effect makes it so that perceptions of one quality lead to biased judgments of other qualities.
This short video below explains how these concepts work:
3.3.2 Social Perception 2 Lecture.mp4Belief Perseverance
If you’ve ever attempted to change someone’s belief based on your knowledge of facts, only to have them refuse to consider the validity of the information you’ve presented, you’ve encountered belief perseverance in action. People have a natural tendency to cling to their pre-existing beliefs, even when new information is provided that proves those beliefs wrong. In other words, beliefs persevere. This is something we see regularly today in debates about climate change, criminal justice, and vaccination. Once someone has adopted a belief, even if the evidence for it is weak, it’s very difficult to change it.
Negativity Bias
Have you ever found yourself dwelling on an insult or fixating on your mistakes? Criticisms often have a greater impact than compliments, and bad news frequently draws more attention than good. The reason for this is that negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Psychologists refer to this as the negativity bias and it can have a powerful effect on your behavior, your decisions, and even your relationships. This psychological phenomenon explains why bad first impressions can be so difficult to overcome and why past traumas can have such long lingering effects.
Optimistic Bias
Researchers have found that the human brain is sometimes too optimistic for its own good. This bias leads us to believe that we are less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than reality would suggest. We believe that we will live longer than the average, that our children will be smarter than the average, and that we will be more successful in life than the average. But by definition, we can't all be above average.
This short video below explains how these concepts work:
3.3.2 Social Cognition 4 Lecture.mp4Selective filtering
Selective filtering refers to the behaviour of only believing information that supports your thoughts and actions.
Confirmation bias
A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring information that confirms your previously existing beliefs or biases. For example, imagine that a person holds a belief that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people. Whenever this person encounters a person that is both left-handed and creative, they place greater importance on this "evidence" that supports what they already believe. This individual might even seek proof that further backs up this belief while discounting examples that don't support the idea.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief or expectation that an individual holds about a future event that manifests because the individual holds it. For example, if you wake up and immediately think—perhaps for no particular reason at all—that today is going to be a terrible day, your attitude might make your prediction come true. You may unconsciously work to affirm your belief by ignoring the positive, amplifying the negative, and behaving in ways that are unlikely to contribute to an enjoyable day.
This short video below explains how these concepts work:
3.3.4 Social Cognition 5 Lecture.mp4Much theory and research in social cognition has been devoted to understanding cognitive biases in human thought and message framing. These information is used to address health behaviors. Health messages can be framed in terms of gains and losses. Messages that emphasize benefits are more persuasive for behaviors that have certain outcomes. Recommendations regarding exactly how to take action increase effectiveness as well.
Here's a closer look at how these cognitive biases influence the day-to-day decisions you make that can affect your health, from small choices like what to eat for lunch to the bigger decisions that could have lifelong consequences for your health.
Confirmation Bias
How does this confirmation bias influence your health? We tend to focus on the news stories or research reports that reinforce our current health and lifestyle choices while dismissing possibly useful and relevant information that conflicts with our behavior, habits, preferences, and choices. For example, if you exercise a few times a week but otherwise spend most of your time sitting at a desk, you might be more inclined to ignore health reports warning that too much sitting might be hurting your health.
Optimism Bias
If you ask people to estimate how likely it is that they will ever experience an accident, serious illness, divorce, or job loss, they will likely underestimate the true probability of these events happening to them. People are more likely to believe that their lives will be filled with positive events such as earning high incomes, owning their own homes, and living long lives. This bias means we are also more likely to believe that engaging in unhealthy or risky behaviors will not have a negative effect on our health. This is particularly true if we believe that the negative outcomes are rare or unlikely.
For example, you would be more likely to continue tanning and neglecting to use sunscreen if you believed that skin cancer is a rare disease. In doing so, you not only underestimate the overall prevalence of skin cancer, but optimism bias leads you to underestimate the likelihood that you would get skin cancer—regardless of your health choices and behaviors.
In the last of the Piagetian stages, a child becomes able to reason not only about tangible objects and events, but also about hypothetical or abstract ones. The formal operational stage—the period when the individual can think and reason with a wider perspective.
This stage of cognitive development marks a movement from an ability to think and reason from concrete visible events to an ability to think hypothetically and entertain what-if possibilities about the world. An individual can solve problems through abstract concepts and utilize hypothetical and deductive reasoning. Adolescents use trial and error to solve problems, and the ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodical way emerges.
This video explains some of the cognitive development consistent with formal operational thought:
This video by Udacity was originally hosted in Youtube within this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q4tlPEihAM
The idea of adolescent egocentrism was developed by psychologist David Elkind in the 1960s based on his observations of young adolescents and his study of Piagetian theory.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development final stage — formal operations, typically starts at age 12. During this stage, young adolescents developed their ability to analyze their thoughts as well as conceptualize other people’s thoughts. They become more socially conscious and how they fit into this social world. Their brains undergo a massive cognitive update. Additionally, adolescents undergo major physiological changes as their bodies develop. Elkind theorizes due to these changes in the body, they become quickly preoccupied with themselves and how they appear. Specifically, how they appear among their peers. They are hyperfocused on their body and their behaviors as they make efforts to decipher social constructs. This egocentric mentality is only a reaction to the dramatic changes happening from both within and out.
By observing other people's behavior, expressions, comments, and appearance they can interpret this information and make reasonable guesses about what another person may be thinking, wanting, needing, or feeling. As such, adolescents also begin to wonder about what other people may be thinking about them! Unfortunately, these new cognitive abilities appear at the same time that younger adolescents are struggling with insecurities about their changing appearance, changing identity, and changing life experiences. All of these factors combine to create the "imaginary audience."
Adolescents may mistakenly believe that everyone around them is watching and judging them, scrutinizing their every move, and can become painfully self-conscious as a result. The concept of an imaginary audience helps parents to understand why their teenagers spend eons in front of the bathroom mirror just to run to the store for a short errand, or become incredibly embarrassed over a seemingly minor mistake. Therefore, the imaginary audience provides an example of the inter-relationship between cognitive, emotional, and social development.
While the ability to use abstract thought and keen observational skills enables adolescents to become more attuned to others and more sensitive to people's needs, it can also lead to some new social and emotional difficulties when they use their new cognitive abilities to compare themselves to others. Adolescents may feel exceptionally unique and different from other people, including their own peers. This the "personal fable."
Many adolescents believe they have unique abilities, or conversely, unique problems, different from anyone else in the world. Some adolescents feel as though they are better, smarter, or stronger than others. This personal fable can lead to some devastating consequences because they may take dangerous risks when they over-estimate their abilities and believe they can "handle it," or mistakenly believe they are omnipotent and that bad things cannot happen to them.
Conversely, other adolescents may feel as though they are dumber, weaker, and inferior to others. This kind of personal fable can lead to feelings of sadness, frustration, and loneliness. If these negative thoughts and feelings continue to strengthen, youth can become depressed or hopeless, which can lead to other dangerous behaviors such as drug use, unsafe sexual activity, or even suicide.
Teenagers have always worried about how they measure up: Am I popular? Attractive? Do I fit in?
Social media now answers those questions in a very public and quantifiable way. It’s not just about the number of “likes” and online friends a young person has. The data on popularity can be even more granular: how many photos you’re “tagged” in, the level of activity and comments on your posts, how long it takes to accumulate those status markers, and even the “follow ratio,” that is, how many people you follow versus follow you.
Sites like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook offer much more than a virtual place to hang out. New research shows that they play a key role in how teens measure and manage social success; it also finds that the overuse of social media may bring added risks to an adolescent’s mental health.
Watch Bailey Parnell discuss how our growing and unchecked obsession with social media has unintended long term consequences on our mental health, our sense of identity and self-worth.
This video by Tedx Talk was originally hosted in Youtube within this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q4tlPEihAM
Adolescent risk-takers: The power of peers. (2018, February 21). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q4tlPEihAM
Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU. (2017, June 22). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o
Kassin, S., Fein, S. & Markus, H. R. (2017). Social Psychology 10th Edition. Cengage Learning
