Unit- I

Social Psychology & Social Cognition

Human beings are essentially social beings/social animals. We stay with other and our
actions, thoughts, and feelings are affected by the presence of others. At the same
time we influence the behaviour of other individuals. This consists of large amount of
human behaviour. Social psychology is a discipline that tries to understand the human
social behaviour.
Social psychology is study of human behaviour in social setting and behavior is
profoundly influenced by the social situation—the people with whom we interact every
day. These people include our friends and family, our brothers or sisters, our religious
groups, the people we see on TV or read about or interact with on the web, as well as
people we think about, remember, or even imagine.
Social psychologists believe that human behavior is determined by both a
person’s characteristics and the social situation. They also believe that the social
situation is frequently a stronger influence on behavior than are a person’s
characteristics.
Social Psychology emerged as the interface of psychology and sociology in the
early 20th century. While Psychology analyses the nature of humans, Sociology analyses
the nature of society. Social psychology on the other hand, analyses the nature and the
relation of man to society.
The sphere/area/domain of social psychology is social and its focus is individual.
So it is the study of individual in social situation. This social situation can be person to
person interaction, person to group interaction and a group related to another group.
Social psychology is understanding how and why individuals behave, think, and
feel as they do in social situations—ones involving the actual presence of other people,
or their symbolic presence. Social psychology as the scientific field that seeks to
understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings, and thought in social
situations.
Social psychology investigates the ways in which our thoughts, feelings, and
actions are influenced by the social environments in which we live—by other people or
our thoughts about them (e.g., we imagine how they would react to actions we might
perform). Social psychology is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts,
feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people:
parents, friends, employers, teachers, strangers—indeed, by the entire social situation
(Allport, 1985). We are often influenced merely by the presence of other people,
including perfect strangers who are not interacting with us.
Social psychology is largely the study of the social situation and this social
situations create social influence - the process through which other people change our
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs. Social Influence -
The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our
thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior.

Kurt Lewin formalized the joint influence of person variables and situational
variables, which is known as the person-situation interaction, in an important equation:
Behavior = f (person, social situation). Lewin’s equation indicates that the behavior of a
given person at any given time is a function of (depends on) both the characteristics of
the person and the influence of the social situation.
DEFINITIONS
According to Gordon Allport (1954) social psychology is best defined as the
discipline that uses scientific methods in “an attempt to understand and explain how
the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined,
or implied presence of other human beings”.
Myers and Spencer (2006) define social psychology as the “scientific study of how
people think about, influence, and relate to one another”.
Barron and Byrne (2007) defined social psychology as “the scientific field that
seeks to understand the nature and cause of individual behaviour and thought in social
situations”.
Floyd Allport (1924) has defined social psychology as “the scientific study of the
experience and behaviour of individuals in relation to other individuals, groups and
culture”.
A similar definition by Gordon W. Allport (1968) states that social psychology is a
discipline “that attempts to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and
behaviour of an individual are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence
of others.”
The above definitions include the elements: scientific study, experience and
behaviour, individual, group and culture that throw light upon the nature of the discipline.
NATURE
I. Social Psychology is Scientific in Nature
II. Social Psychology Studies the Experience and Behaviour of Individuals
III. Causes of Social Behaviour and Thought

I Social Psychology Is Scientific In Nature

Many people seem to believe that only fields that use sophisticated equipment
can be viewed as scientific. In fact, the term science simply refers to adherence to a set
of basic values (ex: accuracy, objectivity) and use of a set of basic methods that can be
applied to almost any aspect of the world around us including the social side of life.
In reality the term science does not refer to a special group of highly advanced
fields. Rather, it refers to two things:
1. A set of values and
2. Several methods that can be used to study a wide range of topics.
If a given field adopts these values and methods, it is scientific in nature.
Four of the important core values which makes any discipline as
science/scientific are:
1. Accuracy is a commitment to gathering and evaluating information about the world
including social behaviour and thought in as careful, precise and error-free a manner as
possible.
2. Objectivity/fairness/impartiality is a commitment to obtaining and evaluating such
information in a manner that is free from bias as humanly possible.
3. Skepticism/doubtfulness is a commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to
the extent they have been verified again.
4. Open mindedness - willing to consider new idea, is a commitment to changing one's
views- even views that are strongly held- if existing evidence suggest that these views
areinaccurate.
Social psychology, as a field, is deeply committed to these values and applies
them in its efforts to understand the nature of social behaviour and social thought. For
this reason, it makes sense to describe social psychology as scientific in orientation.
II. Social Psychology Studies the Experience and Behaviour of Individuals OR Social
Psychology: Focus on individual Behaviour
Societies differ greatly in terms of their views concerning courtship marriage; yet
it is still individual's who fall in love. Similarly, societies vary greatly in terms of their over
all levels of violence; yet, it is still individuals who perform aggressive actions or refrain
from doing so. The same argument applies to virtually all other aspects of social
behaviour, from prejudice to helping: the actions are formed by, and thoughts occur in
the minds of individuals. Because of this fact, the focus in social psychology is strongly
on individuals. Social psychologists realize that, we do not exist in isolation from social
and cultural influences far from it.
Social psychologists typically explain human behaviour as a result of the
interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. In Kurt Lewin’s (1951)
famous heuristic formula, behaviour can be viewed as a function of the person and the
environment, B = f (P, E), i.e. behaviour is a function of person and environment. The
social psychology has a very strong focus on individuals, and tries to understand the
behaviour of individuals. It also tries to understand various environmental influences on
social thought and actions, viz., culture, social norms, etc. still the focus of the social
psychology enquiry is individual.

III. Causes of Social Behaviour

Social psychologist are primarily interested in understanding many factors and
conditions that shape social behaviour and thoughts of individuals- their action, feelings,
beliefs and memories concerning other people.
We are affected by various actions of others.
For example, you are standing in the queue for a local train ticket and somebody tries
to break the queue. In no time, you would get upset with the person and shout at him.
This and many other instances would help you to understand that your behaviour is
affected by the actions of other individuals.
Similarly, certain characteristics of people also change your behaviour.
For example, you are waiting at bus-stop, and you realize that a blind man wants to
cross a road. You would quickly move ahead and help him.
These and many other physical, psychological and social characteristics of people
are responsible for our actions. Obviously, huge number of variables play a role in this
regard and they are:
1. Cognitive Process :
Our thinking determines what we do in social circumstances.
Cognition is our thinking process. Our behaviour is determined by what we think.
That is one reason why two people do not respond to the same situation identically.
Since two different people think differently about the situations and social realities,
they respond differently.
Example: Suppose that you have arranged to meet a friend, and this person is late. In
fact, after 30 minutes you begin to suspect that your friend will never arrive. Finally he
or she does appear and says sorry I forgot all about meeting you until a few minutes
ago. How will you react? Probably with annoyance. Imagine that instead, your friend
said- I am so sorry to be late.. there was a big accident and the traffic was tied up. Now
how will you react? Probably with less annoyance but not necessarily. If your friend is
often late and has used this excuse before, you may be suspicious about whether this
explanation is true. In contrast if this is the first time your friend has been late or if your
friend has never used such an excuse in the past, you may accept it as true. In other
words, your actions in this situation will depend strongly on your memories of your
friends past behaviour and your inferences about whether his or her explanation is
really true.
Situations like this, call attention to the fact that cognitive processes play a crucial
role in social behaviour and social thought.
We are always trying to make sense out of the social world and this leads us to
engage in lots of social cognition- to think long and hard about other people- what they
are like, why they do what they do, how they might react to our behaviour and so on.

2. Environment:
The physical world around us to a great extend determines our behaviour.
Researchers have shown that the temperature is negatively related with individual
aggression and irritability.
Are people more prone to wild impulsive behaviour during the full moon than at
other times? Do we become more irritable and aggressive when the weather is hot and
steamy than when it is cool and comfortable? Does exposure to a pleasant smell in the
air make people more helpful to others?
Research findings indicate that the physical environment does indeed influence
our feelings, thoughts and behaviour.
[Link] Factors:
The biological factors influence our social behaviour. They can be understood as
physiological factors and neurological factors, genetic factors, and evolutionary factors.
The physiological factors contain hormones, functions of various glands, immune
system, motor system, etc. The neurological factors include the brain structures, the
neural cells (neurons), the neurotransmitters, etc. The genetic factor would contain the
study of influence of genes on human behaviour. The evolutionary psychology focuses
on explaining the social behaviour as a function of process of evolution.

4. Behaviour Genetics : Behaviour genetics approach is used in social psychology to

understand variation in social behaviour of human beings as a function of two
components: genetic and environmental. The research methods used are family studies,
twin studies, and adoption studies.
Family studies are based on the idea that children share 50 percent of their genes with
each parent. If genes have to influence social behaviour, the trait in question must run in
families.
Twin Studies : Monozygotic twins share 100% genetic information, whereas dizygotic
share 50% (similar to non-twin siblings). Similarities and differences between them
indicate the genetic and environmental influence.
Adoption Studies : The sibling reared in the same family should show similar social
behaviour similar to the behaviour of siblings reared apart (because of adoptions most
of the times), such a behaviour indicates the influence of environment.

5. Cultural Context : The culture in which we stay or are born and brought up determines
our behaviour. Culture is a sum of values, beliefs, practices, art, language, etc. Every
culture has a different belief and value system. For example, our decisions would depend
on whether we belong to individualistic culture or collectivistic culture.
For instance, marriage would be decided by individual in individualistic cultures and
they are decided by a process of mutual agreement among the family members in
collectivistic cultures.
Cultural beliefs and norms influence much more important aspects of behaviour,
when people should marry and whom, how many children they should have, weather
to live with one's romantic partner. Social behaviour and social thought can be and often
are strongly affected by cultural factors.
 The term culture refers to the system of shared meanings, perceptions and
beliefs held by people belonging to some group.

SCOPE OF SOIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social psychology concentrates on the individual behaviour in the social context,
so the subject matter of social psychology is the interactions of the individual with other
individuals and society as well. It is the social world, based upon the relations of human
to their fellow beings which furnishes the subject matter of social psychology.
The scope of social psychology can be broadly outlined in the following ways:
• People generally express feelings of approval and disapproval, favorability and
unfavourability, or likes and dislikes towards different persons, objects or issues
that further influence their thought and actions. This phenomenon is termed as
attitudes and social psychologists have been emphasizing upon various aspects
of attitude, such as formation of attitude, attitude change, function of attitudes
and relationship between attitudes and behaviour.
• One of the emerging areas of social psychology is social cognition, which studies
the ways people perceive, ponder/think and remember information related to
social stimuli. Various phenomena studied under social cognition are person
perception, attribution process, schema, stereotypes, etc.
• Social influence is a traditional, core area of study in social psychology which
refers to the way people affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of others.
• Social psychologists are also interested in the question of why people sometimes
act in a pro-social way (helping, liking or loving others), but at other times act in
an antisocial way (hostility, aggression or prejudice against others).
• Social psychologists have vastly studied various phenomena related to social
groups and group dynamics. Groups may be understood in terms of group
composition, group structures, group process and the effect this has on individual
change and group development, as well as on task performance. Thus, a social
psychologist studies almost everything that we do every day in the social context
Social psychology attempts to understand the relationship between minds, groups,
and behaviours in three general ways:
Firstly, it tries to see how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are
influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other(s). This includes social
perception, social interaction, and the many kinds of social influence (like trust, power,
and persuasion).
 • It deals with questions like: How do small group dynamics impact cognition and
emotional states?
• How do social groups control or contribute to behaviour, emotion, or attitudes of
the individual members?
• How does the group impact the individual?
• How does the individual operate within the social group?
• It tries to understand the influence that individual perceptions and behaviours
have upon the behaviour of groups.
• How does persuasion/influence work to change group behaviour, emotion or
attitudes?
Secondly, it tries to understand the influence that individual perceptions and
behaviours have upon the behaviour of groups. This includes looking at things like group
productivity in the workplace and group decision making.
It looks at questions like: What are the reasons behind conformity, diversity, and
deviance?
Thirdly, and finally, social psychology tries to understand groups themselves as
behavioural entities, and the relationships and influences that one group has upon
another group. It asks questions like:
• What makes some groups hostile to one another, and others neutral or civil?
• Do groups behave in a different way than an individual outside the group?
In European textbooks there is also fourth level called the “ideological” level. It
studies the societal forces that influence the human psyche.

What do Social Psychologists Study?

• Social psychologists study why we are often helpful to other people and why we
may be unfriendly or aggressive at other times.
• Social psychologists study both the benefits of having good relationships with
other people and the costs of being lonely.
• Social psychologists study what factors lead people to purchase one product
rather than another.
• Social psychologists study how men and women behave differently in social
settings.
 • Social psychologists study what makes some people more likely to engage in
environmentally friendly behaviours than others.
• Social psychologists study how someone might choose to risk their life to save
that of a complete stranger.

Social Psychology in the New Millennium - Multicultural and Evolutionary Perspectives

As the Social Psychology tries to understand the individual’s thoughts and
behaviors in social settings, the subject matter of Social Psychology goes on changing as
the years passes by. Due to the tremendous changes happening, the present day human
beings are well advanced in every sphere. The speedy growth found in every areas of
human life, social psychology is found to incorporate the latest developments into its
subject matter. This has led to the changing and formulating of new perspectives in the
study of social psychology. Mainly, multicultural perspectives and evolutionary
perspectives have become the focus of research on social psychology.

Multicultural Perspective: the field of Social Psychology has adopted an increasingly

multicultural perspective, an approach that pays careful attention to the rate of :
• culture and human diversity as factors that influences social behavior and social
thought.
• Stresses the importance of social norms and culture.
• Proposes that children learn behaviour through interactions with other children
and adults. Through these interactions, they learn the values and norms of their
society.
• Social psychologists using this perspective might look at how cultural norms and
social influence impact social behaviour. When considering something like
aggression, for example, a person taking this perspective would look at how
people are socialized to behave aggressively in certain situations.
Evolutionary Perspective:
• An important trend in the modern social psychology is the increasing influence
of a biological or evolutionary perspective.
• Mueller and Mazur (1996) predicted that men who looked dominant would attain
higher military rank in their careers than would men who would did not
look dominant.
 • In general, studies conducted from the evolutionary perspective suggest that
biological and genetic factors play some role in many aspects of social behavior.
• Argues that social behaviours are developed through genetics and inheritance.
• Emphasizes the role of biology and gene transmission across generations to
explain current behavior.
• When looking at a social problem such as aggression, a psychologist taking this
perspective would consider how genetics and evolutionary influences
contributed to the development of behaviour.
While some social psychologists tend to have a dominant perspective, many
researchers draw on a variety of theories when tackling a question or hypothesis. By
understanding all of the many influences that contribute to social behavior, including
multiculture, evolutionary, genetics, and individual differences, researchers can gain a
deeper understanding of the many forces that influence how people think and act in
social situations.

Social Cognition
(How We Think About the Social World)
Human beings are social animals. They think, feel and act by involving
themselves, others and larger groups throughout every moment of the day. Most of us
care about what other people think of us. All of us care about understanding other
people. Social cognition explains both processes
Social cognition is the study of how people make sense of other people and
themselves. It focuses on how ordinary people think and feel about people – including
themselves. The field concerns how people make sense of other people and themselves
in order to coordinate with their social world.
Social cognition is the way in which people process, remember, and use
information in social contexts to explain and predict their own behavior and that of
others. Social cognition is defined as the process by which we interpret, analyze,
remember and use information about the social world.
In the other words, social cognition is the way by which we process social
information. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions.
Social cognition is a sub-topic of Social Psychology that focuses on how people process,
store, and apply information about other people and social situations.
Social cognition involves:
1. The processes involved in perceiving other people and how we come to know
about the people in the world around us.
2. The study of the mental processes that are involved in perceiving, remembering,
thinking about, and attending to the other people in our social world.
3. 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.
More specifically, while studying social cognition social psychologists attempt to
answer following important questions of social lives of human being:
• How do we register, encode, classify, store and utilize the overflow of
information in our social world?
• What processes our cognitive system follows when we receive information
about others in order to form an overall impression of them?
• What we do in order to understand the reasons behind and origins of behaviours
of people around us?
• Is the processing of social information biased? What biases and errors generally
we commit in the process of social perception?
SCHEMA
Our social environment is flooded with information at any given time and it is
beyond our cognitive capacity to process all those information instantly. We cannot
respond to all those social stimuli in equally efficient manner and therefore, we are
required to focus on some of the most relevant and important information. Schemas
provide us a practical tool to make precise social judgements up to an extent by helping
us in registering, encoding, categorizing, organizing, storing, comprehending and
retrieving the social information and consequently, making decision about the
appropriate behaviour in a given situation
Our social interactions are largely guided by
• our expectations regarding the people involved in the interactions,
• roles played by them in the specific situations,
• norms guiding behaviours of people involved in the interaction and
• the likely events and actions in the situation.
Such expectations originate from our previous experiences and knowledge of
people, roles, norms and events of similar kinds. Social psychologists refer it as schemas.
Schemas are defined as cognitive structures containing broader expectations and
knowledge of the social world that help us systematically organize social information. The
term schema refers to the cognitive structures we have to describe various categories of
knowledge about the world.
Schemas help us to predict the likely behaviours of people occupying specific roles
in a social interaction and sequence of actions in a particular social event. They also guide
us in making inferences about the information which is not available to us in a particular
social situation. By all its functions, a schema significantly reduces the efforts we put
forth in processing the social information.

Types of Schema
Social psychologists have categorized schemas into different types:
• person schemas,
• self-schemas,
• group schemas,
• role schemas
• event schemas
Person Schemas
• Cognitive structures that attempt to illustrate the personalities of others are
called as person schema.
• Person schemas try to explain personalities of either specific persons (such as
Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, J. R. D. Tata, etc.) or explain personalities in terms of
some universal types (such as extravert, introvert, sober, sociable, depressive,
submissive, etc.).
• Person schemas help us in classifying and organizing our understanding about the
personalities of people around us and lead to make internal predictions about
their behaviour.
• Person schemas, often referred as person prototypes, generally consist of a
composition of personality traits that we use to classify people and to predict their
behaviour in particular situations.
Self Schemas
 • Similar to the way we receive, encode, store and utilize the information about
other people, we develop schemas that describe our self-concept based on past
experiences.
• Self schemas are cognitive representations about us that organize and process all
related information.
• Self schema is developed from the traits that we think as core of our self-concept.
Part of what is developing in children as they grow is the fundamental cognitive
part of the self, known as the self-concept.
The self-concept is a knowledge representation that contains knowledge about
us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities,
values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals. Throughout
childhood and adolescence, the self-concept becomes more abstract/intellectual and
complex and is organized into a variety of different cognitive aspects of the self, known
as self-schemas. The term self-schema refers to the beliefs and thoughts people have
about themselves in order to organize information about the self. These self-schemas
impact our thoughts and behaviors. Each of these beliefs includes our overall
perceptions of ourselves ("outgoing," "shy," "talkative"), as well as our knowledge of past
experiences in similar situations.
The self is not created in isolation; we are not born with perceptions of ourselves
as shy, interested in music, or charitable to others, for example. Rather, such beliefs are
determined by our observations of and interactions with others. The self has meaning
only within the social context, and it is not wrong to say that the social situation defines
our self-concept and our self-esteem. We rely on others to provide a “social reality”—to
help us determine what to think, feel, and do.

How we perceive self or self concept

1. The Looking-Glass Self: Our Sense of Self is Influenced by Others’ Views of Us
The concept of the looking-glass self states that part of how we see ourselves
comes from our perception of how others see us.
Example: We might feel that we have a great sense of humor, for example, because
others have told us, and often laugh (apparently sincerely) at our jokes.
2. Social Comparison Theory: Our Sense of Self Is Influenced by Comparisons with Others
- Self-concept and self-esteem are heavily influenced by the process of social
comparison.
3. Upward and Downward Comparisons Influence Our Self-Esteem
 Downward social comparison occurs when we attempt to create a positive image
of ourselves through favorable comparisons with others who are worse off than we are.
Upward social comparison, which occurs when we compare ourselves with others
who are better off than we are, is also common.
4. Social Identity Theory: Our Sense of Self Is Influenced by the Groups We Belong To -
we draw part of our sense of identity and self-esteem from the social groups that we
belong to

Group Schemas
• Group schemas, often referred to as stereotypes - a widely held but fixed and
oversimplified/generalized image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.
• They are the schemas regarding the people representing a particular social group
or category.
• Stereotypes specify the traits, qualities, attributes and behaviours presumably
characterizing the members of that social group or category.
• In our social interactions we try to understand our social world with the help of
number of stereotypes about people of different castes, religious groups, specific
geographical regions, speaking different languages, ethnic groups, etc

Role Schemas
• Role schemas characterize traits, qualities and behaviours of persons with a
particular role in a group.
• Role schemas help us in understanding and predicting the behaviours of persons
who occupy specific roles in a social group.
• Role schemas are categorized in various ways. For example, there are role
schemas associated with various occupational roles, such as teachers, scientists,
doctors, sales managers, HR managers, etc.
• Similarly, role schemas are also associated with other kinds of roles in social
groups, such as group leader, captain of a sports team, etc.

Event Schemas
• Event schemas, also referred to as scripts
 • They are cognitive structures that describe the expected sequences of actions and
behaviours of people participating in an event in our everyday social activities.
• We explicate/clarify scripts by asking people to describe that what actually
happens in a particular social event, what is the sequence of these actions and
what types of behaviours people do during the event.
For example, the appropriate behavioural sequence of an classroom - behavioural
sequences of teacher and students.
The phenomenon of event schema or script indicate that we store the behaviours
that are appropriate in particular situation for our broad understanding and whenever
we are encountered to such situation the script is automatically activated in order to
facilitate our smooth interaction in the situation.

HEURISTICS: THE MENTAL SHORTCUTS

In our everyday social interactions, we are flooded by information which
generally exceeds the capacity of our cognitive system. In such situations, we devise
and employ various strategies which help us to maximum utilization of our cognitive
resources in minimum cognitive efforts; consequently leading to an automatic, rapid,
spontaneous and effortless social thought process. People need mental shortcuts
because engaging in an in-depth analysis of everything we encounter would just be too
time-consuming, and also mentally exhausting.
Using heuristics, a type of mental shortcuts, is one of the most prominent such
strategies in which we make complex decisions in an automatic, rapid, spontaneous and
effortless manner by using simple rules. At a certain time, many schemas are available
to us which may guide our social interactions. We employ heuristics in order to select a
particular schema to guide our social interactions. Some of such heuristics are:

Availability Heuristics
Some schemas are more frequently used in our social interactions than others. A
schema which is most recently used is more readily available to us to guide our social
interactions.
For example, if you have always owned a laptop from Brand A and it’s time to
buy a new laptop, you’re more likely to purchase from that laptop brand again. It’s the
brand that first comes to mind. Of course, there are other factors including familiarity
and satisfaction with the product. However, the availability heuristic also plays a part in
influencing decision making when it comes to brand loyalty.

Representativeness Heuristics
It is a mental shortcut that helps us make decisions by comparing information to
our mental prototypes. Representativeness heuristic is often used when we are faced
with situations with high level of uncertainty. In such situations, we generally focus on
very essential properties of the social entities and match them with various schemas held
in our cognitive system. Furthermore, the schema which most closely resembles with the
characteristics of the particular social entity is selected.
For example, if someone quite young were to run for president of a country, they may
have trouble getting votes because they don’t fit the image we have of a president.
Instead of having short grey hair and always wearing a suit, they may have longer dark
hair and dress casually from time to time. Although that candidate may have
exceptional knowledge of the issues and actually have views that are in line with many
voters, they just don’t seem to represent our concept of “president”.

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics

In a situation where we are required to take a social decision or to express our
opinion on some social issue about which we do not have expertise, we usually try to
make a guess based on a somewhat workable cue. This cue functions as a starting point
or as an anchor and further we make modifications and adjustments in the starting point
in order to arrive at our final decision or opinion.
Suppose that you are asked in an exam to provide the population of Delhi. If you do not
know that population but you know the population of Haryana, you might use the
population of Haryana as an anchor and thinking that Delhi must be somewhat smaller
than Haryana, adjust the population of Haryana downward to produce your guess. In
most cases of social judgements, we generally use ourselves as an anchor.
SOURCES OF ERRORS IN SOCIAL COGNITION
As a human being, we consciously desire to think logically in order to make
somewhat error-free decisions, evaluations and judgements about people and events in
social surroundings. However, at various occasions our social thought process ignores
certain logical standards and we put in less cognitive effort to comprehend our social
world which subsequently leads to errors in our social cognition.
Cognitive-Experiential Self Theory
Cognitive-experiential self theory argues that many times we prefer our
intuitive/spontaneous thoughts based on past experiences over logical thinking in order
to evaluate a social situation.
For example, when a cricket player scores a century with a pair of shoes he continues
to wear the same pair of shoes in coming matches as well despite the probable
dangerous consequences of wearing an old pair of shoes. Such intuitive thoughts
originate from the past experience that the old shoes were lucky for him

Paying Attention to Inconsistent Information

When we encounter with a person in a social situation, information inconsistent
with his/her role draws our attention even at cost of some consistent and even more
relevant information.
Social psychologists have provided evidence that inconsistent information is
better remembered than the consistent information.
The research findings indicated that the inconsistent information may be
preferred over important consistent information and thus leading to potential errors in
social cognition.

Potential Costs of Thinking Too Much

At number of occasions, we excessively do careful thinking resulting into
confusion, frustration and wrong judgement.
Wilson and Schooler (1991) asked half of their research participants to “simply rate” the
several strawberry jams and the other half of them to “deeply analyze” the reasons for
the ratings they themselves gave to each jam. The researchers also took the opinion of
experts (who professionally compared various products) about the correctness of
judgement made of the two groups of participants. They found that, according to the
experts, the judgement of the second half of the participants (consisting of participants
who deeply analyzed their own rating) were not as accurate as that of the first half
(consisting of participants who simply rated the jams).

Counterfactual Thinking
 Counterfactual thinking is a tendency in which people think contrary to what
actually occurred. People think about the already occurred events by framing some
possible alternatives in terms of “What if?” and the “If I had only...”
For example, a cricketer thinks that “what could have happened if played in that
match!”

Magical Thinking
Magical thinking is the kind of thinking that involves irrational assumptions often
associated with law of similarity or law of contagion(infection).
Law of similarity states, our assumption that people/things similar to each other
in appearance may be having similar fundamental characteristics.
For example, some children might not like to eat a biscuit in the shape of a insect.
Law of contagion is the belief that when two people or objects come in contact
with each other, they pass on their properties to one another and such an impact last
long even after the contact is over.
For example, one might not like to wear the coat used by an HIV patient even after it is
dry-cleaned.

Affect & Cognition: How Feelings Shape Thought and

Thought Shapes Feelings
A large body of research findings indicate that there is a continuous and complex
interplay between affect—our current moods or emotions—and cognition—various
aspects of the ways in which we think, process, store, remember, and use information.
Existing evidence strongly suggests that the relationship between affect and cognition
is very much a two-way street:
• Our emotions and moods strongly influence several aspects of cognition
(Influence of Affect on Cognition)
• Cognition, in turn, exerts strong effects on our emotions and moods (Influence of
Cognition on Affect)

The Influence of Affect on Cognition

 First, and perhaps most obviously, our current moods can influence our perceptions
of the world around us. When we are in a good mood (experiencing positive affect), we
tend to perceive almost everything—situations, other people, ideas, even new
inventions—in more positive terms than we do when we are in a negative mood.
Indeed, this effect is so strong and so universal that we are even more likely to judge
statements as true if we encounter them while in a positive mood than if we read or hear
them while in a neutral or negative mood.
Such effects have important practical implications. For instance, consider their
impact on job interviews—a context in which interviewers meet many people for the
first time. A growing body of evidence indicates that even experienced interviewers
cannot avoid being influenced by their current moods: They assign higher ratings to the
people they interview when they are in a good mood than when they are in a bad mood.
While positive moods can increase our confidence about our interpretation given to
actions performed by other people, they can also result in less accuracy.
Another way in which affect influences cognition involves its impact on memory.
Here, two different, but related, kinds of effects seem to occur.
One is known as mood congruence (equivalent) effects - The fact that we are more
likely to store or remember positive information when in a positive mood and negative
information when in a negative mood.
This refers to the fact that current moods strongly determine which information
in a given situation is noticed and entered into memory. In other words, current moods
serve as a kind of filter, permitting primarily information consistent with these moods to
enter into long-term storage.
Second, affect also influences what specific information is retrieved from
memory, an effect known as mood dependent memory - The fact that what we
remember in a given mood may be determined, in part, by what we learned when
previously in that mood.
When experiencing a particular mood, individuals are more likely to remember
information they acquired in the past while in a similar mood than information they
acquired while in a different mood.
Current moods, in other words, serve as a kind of retrieval cue, prompting recall
of information consistent with these moods.

Illustration of the difference between these two effects

Suppose that you meet two people for the first time. You meet one when you are in a
very good mood but meet the other one when you are in a very bad mood (e.g., you
just learned that you did poorly on an important exam). Because of mood congruence
effects, you will probably notice and store in memory mainly positive information about
the first person, but you are more likely to notice and store in memory mainly negative
information about the second person. Your mood when you meet these people
determines what you notice and remember about them.
Now, imagine that at a later time, you are in a good mood. Which person comes to
mind? Probably, the one you met while in a similar (good) mood. Here, your current
mood serves to trigger memories of information you acquired (and stored in memory)
when you were in a similar mood in the past. Together, mood congruence and mood
dependent memory strongly influence the information we store in memory.

Our current moods also influence another important component of cognition:

creativity. The results of several studies suggest that being in a happy mood can increase
creativity—perhaps because being in a happy mood activates a wider range of ideas or
associations than being in a negative mood, and creativity consists, in part, of combining
such associations into new pat
A another way in which affect influences cognition involves the tendency to
engage in heuristic processing, thinking that relies heavily on mental “shortcuts”
(heuristics) and knowledge acquired through past experience. This, in turn, has influence
for decision making and problem solving—activities we all perform frequently.
 Research findings indicate that people experiencing positive affect are more likely
than people experiencing negative affect to engage in heuristic thought (i.e., to rely on
previously acquired “rules of thumb” and previously gathered information) in dealing
with current problems or decisions

The Influence of Cognition on Affect

Most research on the relationship between affect and cognition has focused on
how feelings influence thought. However, there is also strong evidence for the reverse:
the impact of cognition on affect.
One aspect of this relationship is described in what is known as the two-factor
theory of emotion (Schachter, 1964). This theory suggests that often, we don’t know our
own feelings or attitudes directly. Rather, since these internal reactions are often
somewhat ambiguous, we infer their nature from the external world—from the kinds of
situations in which we experience these reactions.
For example, if we experience increased arousal in the presence of an attractive person,
we may conclude that we are in love. In contrast, if we experience increased arousal
after being cut off in traffic by another driver, we may conclude that what we feel is
anger
A second way in which cognition can influence emotions is by activating schemas
containing a strong affective component.
For example, if we categorize an individual as belonging to a group different than our
own, we may experience a different emotional response than if we categorized that
same individual as a member of our own group.
A third way in which our thoughts can influence our affective states involves our
efforts to regulate our own emotions and feelings.
COGNITION AND THE REGULATION OF AFFECTIVE STATES
Learning to regulate our emotions is an important task but negative events and
outcomes are an unavoidable part of life, so learning to cope with the negative feelings
is crucial for personal adjustment and for good social relations with others.
Among the most important techniques we use for regulating our moods and
emotions are ones involving cognitive mechanisms. In other words, we use our thoughts
to regulate our feelings.
One technique for accomplishing this goal is giving in to temptation as a means
of improving our current mood.
 Giving in to temptation as a means of improving our current mood - Example -
When we feel “down” or distressed, we often engage in activities that we know might
be bad for us in the long run, but that make us feel better, at least temporarily (e.g.,
engage in some “retail therapy” by going shopping, eat fattening snacks, drink alcohol).
These actions make us feel better, but we know full well that they have an
important “downside.”
Why, then, do we choose to do them? In the past it was assumed that people
engage in such actions because the emotional distress we are experiencing reduces our
capacity to control our impulses/urges to do things that are enjoyable but potentially bad
for us.