What is Social Cognition? [Social Psychology]

 

Social cognition is concerned with how we think about the social world, our attempts to understand complex issues, and why we sometimes are less ‘rational’. It a sub-topic of social psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about others and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in our social interactions. How we think about others plays a major role in how we think, feel, and interact with the world around us. Cognition encompasses all processes by which the sensory input (the information taken through the senses) is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored and used. It includes all mental activities like decision-making, thinking, memory, perception, attention, etc. ‘Social’ means anything related to society.

Social Cognition refers to the different psychological processes that influence how people process, interpret, and respond to social signals. These processes allow people to understand social behavior and respond in ways that are appropriate and beneficial.

 

Social Cognition are the mental processes that people use to make sense of the social world around them (Higgins, 2000).  

 

Social cognition refers to the study of the process of collecting and assessing information about others so that we can draw inferences and form impressions about them. 

           

            [Consider the terms collecting and assessing in the above definition. When you hear a lecture, how do you take the information? Looking at the professor? Watching the board? Listening to the professor? You collect the information through the senses. After that it is passed to the brain via the neural impulse and it is processed there. This ‘processing’ involves assessing the information we have obtained and adding meaning to it, and so assessing is the same as perceiving. We add some type of meaning to the raw sensory data.]

Characteristics of Social cognition:

• In this process, people interpret, analyze and remember the info they get from other people.
• The info is not only remembered but used later in different social context and settings.
• People use the info to arrive at conclusions for example making decisions on the actions and behavior of other people.
• Social thoughts are not always rational but subjected to one’s views and beliefs.
• The processing of social information appears to be completed in an automatic manner due to some kinds of stereotype prevalent in the society.