Social cognition
Encyclopedia
Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, in the brain, of information relating to conspecifics, or members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology
in which these processes were studied according to the methods of cognitive psychology
and information processing theory
. However the term has come to be more widely used across psychology
and cognitive neuroscience
. For example, it is used to refer to various social abilities disrupted in autism
and other disorders. In cognitive neuroscience
the biological basis of social cognition is investigated. Developmental psychologists study the development of social cognition abilities.
in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is now the dominant model and approach in mainstream social psychology
. Common to social cognition theories is the idea that information is represented in the brain as "cognitive elements
"—such as schemas
, attributions, or stereotype
s—and a focus on how these cognitive elements are processed. Social cognition therefore applies and extends many themes, theories and paradigms from cognitive psychology, for example in reasoning
(representativeness heuristic
, base rate fallacy
and confirmation bias
), attention
(automaticity
and priming
) and memory
(schemas, primacy and recency). It is very likely that social psychology was always a lot more cognitive than mainstream psychology to begin with, as it traditionally discussed internal mental states such as belief
s and desires when mainstream psychology was dominated by behaviorism
and rejected them as illusory.
A notable theory of social cognition is social schema theory, although this is not the basis of all studies of social cognition (for example, see attribution theory). It has been suggested that other disciplines in social psychology such as social identity theory and social representations
may be seeking to explain largely the same phenomena as social cognition and that these different disciplines might be merged into a "coherent integrated whole". A parallel paradigm has arisen in the study of action, termed motor cognition
. Motor cognition is concerned with understanding the representation of action and the associated process.
which describes how ideas, or "concepts" are represented in the brain, and how they are categorized. According to this view, when we see or think of a concept, a mental representation or schema is "activated", bringing to mind other information which is linked to the original concept by association. This activation often happens unconsciously. As a result of activating such schemas, judgements are formed which go beyond the information actually available, since many of the associations the schema evokes extend outside the given information. This may influence thinking and social behavior regardless of whether these judgements are accurate or not. For example, if an individual is introduced as a teacher, a "teacher schema" may be activated and we might associate this person with wisdom or authority, or past experiences of teachers that we have remembered and are important to us.
When a schema is more accessible this means it can more quickly be activated and used in a particular situation. Two cognitive processes that increase the accessibility of schemas are salience
and priming
. Salience is the degree to which a particular social object stands out relative to other social objects in a situation. The higher the salience of an object the more likely that schemas for that object will be made accessible. For example, if there is one female in a group of seven males, female gender schemas may be more accessible and influence the group's thinking and behavior toward the female group member. Priming refers to any experience immediately prior to a situation that causes a schema to be more accessible. For example watching a scary movie at a theater late at night might increase the accessibility of frightening schemas that affect a person's perception of shadows and background noises as potential threats. Priming happens because of the functions of the reticular cortex.
Social cognition researchers are also interested in how new information is integrated into pre-established schemas
, especially when that information is contrary with those pre-established schemas. Pre-established schemas tend to guide attention to new information. People selectively attend to information that is consistent with the schema and ignore information that is inconsistent. This is referred to as a confirmation bias
. Sometimes inconsistent information is sub-categorized and stored away as a special case, leaving the original schema intact without any alterations. This is referred to as subtyping.
Social cognition researchers are also interested in studying the regulation
of activated schemas. It is believed that the situational activation of schemas is automatic, meaning that it is outside the control of the individual. In many situations however, the schematic information that has been activated may be in conflict with the social norms of the situation, in which case an individual is motivated to inhibit
the influence of the schematic information on their thinking and social behavior
. Whether a person will successfully regulate the application of the activated schemas is dependent on individual differences in self-regulatory ability and the presence of situational impairments to executive control. High self-regulatory ability and the lack of situational impairments on executive functioning increase the likelihood that individuals will successfully inhibit the influence of automatically activated schemas on their thinking and social behavior. However, when people stop suppressing the influence of the unwanted thoughts, a rebound effect can occur where the thought becomes hyper-accessible.
, whose behavior was reported to have changed after an accident damaged one or both of his frontal lobes. More recent neuropsychological studies have shown that brain injuries
disrupt social cognitive processes. For example, damage to the frontal lobes can affect emotional responses to social stimuli, performance on Theory of Mind
tasks. In the temporal lobe
, damage to the fusiform gyrus
can lead to the inability to recognize faces
.
People with psychological disorders such as autism
, Williams syndrome
, antisocial personality disorder
, Fragile X and Turner's syndrome show differences in social behavior compared to their unaffected peers. Parents with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show disturbances in at least one aspect of social cognition: namely, joint attention
with their young children only after a laboratory-induced relational stressor as compared to healthy parents without PTSD. However, whether social cognition is underpinned by domain-specific neural mechanisms is still an open issue.
There is now an expanding research field examining how such conditions may bias cognitive processes involved in social interaction, or conversely, how such biases may lead to the symptoms associated with the condition.
The development of social cognitive processes in infants and children has also been researched extensively (see developmental psychology
). For example, it has been suggested that some aspects of psychological processes that promote social behavior (such as face recognition) may be innate
. Consistent with this, very young babies recognize and selectively respond to social stimuli such as the voice, face and scent of their mother.
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
in which these processes were studied according to the methods of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
and information processing theory
Information processing theory
The information processing theory approach to the study of cognitive development evolved out of the American experimental tradition in psychology. Developmental psychologists who adopt the information-processing perspective account for mental development in terms of maturational changes in basic...
. However the term has come to be more widely used across psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
. For example, it is used to refer to various social abilities disrupted in autism
Autism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
and other disorders. In cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
the biological basis of social cognition is investigated. Developmental psychologists study the development of social cognition abilities.
Historical development
Social cognition came to prominence with the rise of cognitive psychologyCognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is now the dominant model and approach in mainstream social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
. Common to social cognition theories is the idea that information is represented in the brain as "cognitive elements
Mentalism (psychology)
In psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that concentrate on mental perception and thought processes, like cognitive psychology...
"—such as schemas
Schema (psychology)
A schema , in psychology and cognitive science, describes any of several concepts including:* An organized pattern of thought or behavior.* A structured cluster of pre-conceived ideas....
, attributions, or stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s—and a focus on how these cognitive elements are processed. Social cognition therefore applies and extends many themes, theories and paradigms from cognitive psychology, for example in reasoning
Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations. Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or may be a set of independently verifiable...
(representativeness heuristic
Representativeness heuristic
The representativeness heuristic is a psychological term describing a phenomenon wherein people judge the probability or frequency of a hypothesis by considering how much the hypothesis resembles available data as opposed to using a Bayesian calculation. While often very useful in everyday life, it...
, base rate fallacy
Base rate fallacy
The base rate fallacy, also called base rate neglect or base rate bias, is an error that occurs when the conditional probability of some hypothesis H given some evidence E is assessed without taking into account the "base rate" or "prior probability" of H and the total probability of evidence...
and confirmation bias
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.David Perkins, a geneticist, coined the term "myside bias" referring to a preference for "my" side of an issue...
), attention
Attention
Attention is the cognitive process of paying attention to one aspect of the environment while ignoring others. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience....
(automaticity
Automaticity
Automaticity is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice....
and priming
Priming (psychology)
Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition...
) and memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
(schemas, primacy and recency). It is very likely that social psychology was always a lot more cognitive than mainstream psychology to begin with, as it traditionally discussed internal mental states such as belief
Belief
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....
s and desires when mainstream psychology was dominated by behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
and rejected them as illusory.
A notable theory of social cognition is social schema theory, although this is not the basis of all studies of social cognition (for example, see attribution theory). It has been suggested that other disciplines in social psychology such as social identity theory and social representations
Social representations
A social representation is a stock of values, ideas, beliefs, and practices that are shared among the members of groups and communities. Social Representations Theory is a body of theory within Social Psychology and Sociological social psychology...
may be seeking to explain largely the same phenomena as social cognition and that these different disciplines might be merged into a "coherent integrated whole". A parallel paradigm has arisen in the study of action, termed motor cognition
Motor cognition
The concept of motor cognition grasps the notion that cognition is embodied in action, and that the motor system participates in what is usually considered as mental processing, including those involved in social interaction...
. Motor cognition is concerned with understanding the representation of action and the associated process.
Social schemas
Social schema theory builds on and uses terminology from schema theory in cognitive psychologyCognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
which describes how ideas, or "concepts" are represented in the brain, and how they are categorized. According to this view, when we see or think of a concept, a mental representation or schema is "activated", bringing to mind other information which is linked to the original concept by association. This activation often happens unconsciously. As a result of activating such schemas, judgements are formed which go beyond the information actually available, since many of the associations the schema evokes extend outside the given information. This may influence thinking and social behavior regardless of whether these judgements are accurate or not. For example, if an individual is introduced as a teacher, a "teacher schema" may be activated and we might associate this person with wisdom or authority, or past experiences of teachers that we have remembered and are important to us.
When a schema is more accessible this means it can more quickly be activated and used in a particular situation. Two cognitive processes that increase the accessibility of schemas are salience
Salience (neuroscience)
The salience of an item – be it an object, a person, a pixel, etc – is the state or quality by which it stands out relative to its neighbours...
and priming
Priming (psychology)
Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition...
. Salience is the degree to which a particular social object stands out relative to other social objects in a situation. The higher the salience of an object the more likely that schemas for that object will be made accessible. For example, if there is one female in a group of seven males, female gender schemas may be more accessible and influence the group's thinking and behavior toward the female group member. Priming refers to any experience immediately prior to a situation that causes a schema to be more accessible. For example watching a scary movie at a theater late at night might increase the accessibility of frightening schemas that affect a person's perception of shadows and background noises as potential threats. Priming happens because of the functions of the reticular cortex.
Social cognition researchers are also interested in how new information is integrated into pre-established schemas
Schema (psychology)
A schema , in psychology and cognitive science, describes any of several concepts including:* An organized pattern of thought or behavior.* A structured cluster of pre-conceived ideas....
, especially when that information is contrary with those pre-established schemas. Pre-established schemas tend to guide attention to new information. People selectively attend to information that is consistent with the schema and ignore information that is inconsistent. This is referred to as a confirmation bias
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.David Perkins, a geneticist, coined the term "myside bias" referring to a preference for "my" side of an issue...
. Sometimes inconsistent information is sub-categorized and stored away as a special case, leaving the original schema intact without any alterations. This is referred to as subtyping.
Social cognition researchers are also interested in studying the regulation
Regulation
Regulation is administrative legislation that constitutes or constrains rights and allocates responsibilities. It can be distinguished from primary legislation on the one hand and judge-made law on the other...
of activated schemas. It is believed that the situational activation of schemas is automatic, meaning that it is outside the control of the individual. In many situations however, the schematic information that has been activated may be in conflict with the social norms of the situation, in which case an individual is motivated to inhibit
Social inhibition
Social inhibition is a conscious or subconscious constraint by a person of behaviour of a social nature. The constraint may be in relation to behavior, appearance, or a subject matter for discussion, besides other matters. There are a number of reasons for social inhibitions, including that the...
the influence of the schematic information on their thinking and social behavior
Social behavior
In physics, physiology and sociology, social behavior is behavior directed towards society, or taking place between, members of the same species. Behavior such as predation which involves members of different species is not social...
. Whether a person will successfully regulate the application of the activated schemas is dependent on individual differences in self-regulatory ability and the presence of situational impairments to executive control. High self-regulatory ability and the lack of situational impairments on executive functioning increase the likelihood that individuals will successfully inhibit the influence of automatically activated schemas on their thinking and social behavior. However, when people stop suppressing the influence of the unwanted thoughts, a rebound effect can occur where the thought becomes hyper-accessible.
Social cognitive neuroscience
Early interest in the relationship between brain function and social cognition includes the case of Phineas GagePhineas Gage
Phineas P. Gage was an American railroad construction foreman now remembered for his improbablesurvival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and...
, whose behavior was reported to have changed after an accident damaged one or both of his frontal lobes. More recent neuropsychological studies have shown that brain injuries
Acquired brain injury
An acquired brain injury is brain damage caused by events after birth, rather than as part of a genetic or congenital disorder such as fetal alcohol syndrome, perinatal illness or perinatal hypoxia. ABI can result in cognitive, physical, emotional, or behavioural impairments that lead to permanent...
disrupt social cognitive processes. For example, damage to the frontal lobes can affect emotional responses to social stimuli, performance on Theory of Mind
Theory of mind
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own...
tasks. In the temporal lobe
Temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is a region of the cerebral cortex that is located beneath the Sylvian fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain....
, damage to the fusiform gyrus
Fusiform gyrus
The fusiform gyrus is part of the temporal lobe in Brodmann Area 37. It is also known as the occipitotemporal gyrus. Other sources have the fusiform gyrus above the occipitotemporal gyrus and underneath the parahippocampal gyrus....
can lead to the inability to recognize faces
Prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact...
.
People with psychological disorders such as autism
Autism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
, Williams syndrome
Williams syndrome
Williams syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a distinctive, "elfin" facial appearance, along with a low nasal bridge; an unusually cheerful demeanor and ease with strangers; developmental delay coupled with strong language skills; and cardiovascular problems, such as...
, antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder is described by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition , as an Axis II personality disorder characterized by "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood...
, Fragile X and Turner's syndrome show differences in social behavior compared to their unaffected peers. Parents with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show disturbances in at least one aspect of social cognition: namely, joint attention
Joint attention
Joint attention is interactionally-achieved when one person, animal or agent alerts another to a stimulus by means of eye-gazing, finger-pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indication....
with their young children only after a laboratory-induced relational stressor as compared to healthy parents without PTSD. However, whether social cognition is underpinned by domain-specific neural mechanisms is still an open issue.
There is now an expanding research field examining how such conditions may bias cognitive processes involved in social interaction, or conversely, how such biases may lead to the symptoms associated with the condition.
The development of social cognitive processes in infants and children has also been researched extensively (see developmental psychology
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
). For example, it has been suggested that some aspects of psychological processes that promote social behavior (such as face recognition) may be innate
Psychological nativism
In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are 'native' or hard wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to empiricism, the 'blank slate' or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but...
. Consistent with this, very young babies recognize and selectively respond to social stimuli such as the voice, face and scent of their mother.
See also
- Situated cognitionSituated cognitionSituated cognition poses that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts....
- Distributed cognitionDistributed cognitionDistributed cognition is a psychological theory developed in the mid 1980s by Edwin Hutchins. Using insights from sociology, cognitive science, and the psychology of Vygotsky it emphasizes the social aspects of cognition. It is a framework that involves the coordination between individuals,...
- Cognitive dissonanceCognitive dissonanceCognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...
- Face perceptionFace perceptionFace perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face.The human face's proportions and expressions are important to identify origin, emotional tendencies, health qualities, and some social information. From birth, faces are...
- Social psychologySocial psychologySocial psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
- Online participationOnline participationSeveral motivations lead people to contribute to virtual communities. Various online media , are becoming ever greater knowledge-sharing resources. Many of these communities are highly cooperative and establish their own unique culture...
- Joint attentionJoint attentionJoint attention is interactionally-achieved when one person, animal or agent alerts another to a stimulus by means of eye-gazing, finger-pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indication....
- Behavioral sinkBehavioral sinkIn 1958, ethologist John B. Calhoun conducted over-population experiments on rats on a farmland in Rockville, Maryland which resulted in the publication of an article in the Scientific American of a study of behavior under conditions of overcrowding , also referred to Crowding into the Behavioral...
- Observational learningObservational learningObservational learning is a type of learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating novel behavior executed by others...
- Social cognitive theorySocial cognitive theorySocial cognitive theory, used in psychology, education, and communication, posits that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences.-History:Social cognitive theory...
, Social cognitive theory of moralitySocial cognitive theory of moralityThe social cognitive theory of morality emphasizes a distinction between a child's moral competence and moral performance. Moral competence or acquisition of moral knowledge depends primarily on cognitive-sensory processes. It is essentially the outgrowth of these processes... - Social intelligenceSocial intelligenceSocial intelligence describes the exclusively human capacity to use very large brains to effectively navigate and negotiate complex social relationships and environments....
- Social neuroscienceSocial neuroscienceSocial neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather...
- Neurodevelopmental FrameworkNeurodevelopmental FrameworkNeurodevelopmental framework for learning, like all frameworks, is an organizing structure through which learners and learning can be understood. Intelligence theories and neuropsychology inform many of them. The framework described below is a neurodevelopmental framework for learning. The...
- Paranoid social cognitionParanoid social cognition- Paranoid and paranoid cognition: background :Paranoia is a central symptom of psychosis . It is characterized by an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, sometimes reaching delusional proportions...
Further reading
- Fiske, S.T. (2004). Social beings: A core motives approach to social psychology. New York: Wiley.
- Fiske, S.T. & Taylor, S. E. (2008). Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Malle, B. (2004). How the mind explains behavior: Folk explanations, meaning, and social interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Malle, B. & Hodges, S.D. (2005). Other Minds: How Humans Bridge the Divide Between Self and Others. New York: Guilford Press.
- Valsiner, J., Social organization of cognitive development, Internalization and externalization of constraint systems, In Demetriou, et al., (1992, eds.), Neo-Piagetian Theories of Cognitive Development. New York, Routledge.