Perception

Evaluate the contribution of social schemas theory and related research in helping us to understand the way in which people perceive their social environment. Social cognition is the broad topic used to describe how social experience affects what people see and how they make judgements. This can be further broken down to cognitive structures called a schema. This essay looks at what the benefits and drawbacks are of the social schema theory when describing how people understand and perceive their social environment. People often perceive the social environment by their personal knowledge, expectations and assumptions of the world. This is clearly demonstrated when these assumptions and expectations are shown to be incorrect. This is highlighted in a tv commercial which aired some years ago. A young man with a shaven head, wearing Doc Martin boots and combat trousers was seen running along a pavement towards a smartly dressed man. The young man pushes the smartly dressed man giving viewers the impression that he is going to assault him. However it is not until the final shot that you see a pallet of bricks about to fall on the smartly dressed man and the young man pushes him out of the way, saving him. This example shows how social perception is shaped by the knowledge of how things usually happen in the social world. Some psychologists believe that there are cognitive structures involved in this process. Each structure is called a schema. A schema is a mental structure containing knowledge relating to a particular kind of object. The cognitive structure is a particular way in which information is organised in memory, how it is stored, accessed and used. In social psychology schemas are based on social objects. These social objects can include types of person, types of social situation or activity and social issues. Information within a schema is knowledge packaged together so that each piece of information is linked to the whole. Having knowledge stored in this way means that when a few bits of information are perceived the whole structure is activated enabling objects to be recognised quickly and efficiently. Referring back to the example, people saw the Doc Marten boots, the shaven head and combat trousers which triggered the schema for the social category ‘skinhead’, and the information produced included the fact that they are inclined to criminality and violence. In the case of the example, people were wrong; however most of the time the schema is correct proving that schematic processing is an effective and efficient way of making sense of social experiences. Social psychologists have found different types of schema, each with its own script. These scripts dictate how people act in various social situations. It is important to acknowledge that schemas are a generalised representation of objects and therefore room should be allowed for variation. Additionally, it is important to be aware that the knowledge represented in schemas is shared knowledge. The cognitive system uses schematic processing as there is not enough cognitive capacity to take in all the available information drawn in by our senses. The schema distinguishes between relevant and irrelevant information enabling the human mind to understand the current social situation. As irrelevant information is discarded, schemas provide us with additional information which is relevant. This information tells us what to expect; making the world more predictable. Along with these benefits come costs; as highlighted in the previous example, assumptions can be inaccurate. Schematic processing may produce biases or distortions in perception which can be difficult to overcome. Schemas can be self-confirming depending on what the individual expects to understand by a situation. This is revealed in a social psychological experiment (Darley and Gross, 1983) in which participants were presented with the same girl styled to represent two different schemas but carrying out the same activity with the same results. The participants interpreted the same information differently depending on their expectations of each schema. This strongly suggests that people perceive their social environment based on their personal and shared experiences; the foundation for schemas and therefore supporting the social schema theory. Categorisation is the basic cognitive process involved in schematic processing. It is these categories which affect thinking and reasoning. Tajfel argued that we perceive a person to be more like a typical category member than they actually are as we over generalise and apply a stereotype. This is because the similarities within and the differences between each category are exaggerated resulting in important yet incorrect judgements being made; the foundation of stereotyping and prejudice in society. ‘The insight that schema theory offers is that this overgeneralisation is an inevitable consequence of a basic cognitive process.’ Schematic processing is largely automatic and below conscious awareness, however it can be influenced by motivational states and intentions. Attribution theories illustrate the processes involved in explaining the way people behave. Referencing back to the example used with the skin head, the people observing the situation would be trying to attribute a reason to why he is running. Heider argued that when judgements are made on people’s actions, causes are looked for to explain these actions. These causes can be internal (aggressive intent) or external (missed bus). The Covariation Model (Harold Kelley, 1967) proposes that we make sense of current behaviour by looking at information from past and present relating to its consistency, distinctiveness and consensus. The ‘values’ of these three variables are used to assess whether the cause is internal or external. If consensus and distinctiveness was low and consistency was high then the cause would be located internally, if the values for consensus and distinctiveness were high we would locate the cause externally. One great quality of Kelley’s theory is that it proposes precise and testable predictions about how different levels of CCD information should lead to different attributions of cause. Other research has found evidence that attribution theories overstate the rationality of people’s causal reasoning. Evidence shows that our judgements about behaviour are not always completely rational. These can be known as biases and depending on the situation can be called fundamental attribution error, which is when internal attributions are used to explain behaviour, or the actor/observer effect which is when external factors are used to explain behaviour. When explaining one’s own behaviour the actor/observer effect is referred to. It is vital not to exaggerate the difference here. Evidence shows that actors do still see internal causes as important for their own behaviour, but tend to attach weight to external causes and vice versa for observers of others’ behaviour. Psychologists have also acknowledged a self-serving bias. There is some evidence that people have an inclination to attribute their success to internal causes and their failures to external causes. One explanation of self-serving bias is cognitive bias, based on what we expect to happen. If we expect to succeed because we are making an effort to do so, so when we have succeeded it is because we made the effort to do so. If we fail it is put down to situational errors. Another explanation is motivational bias which is the need to enhance self-esteem. The attribution theory is concerned with finding out why people do things however realistically people do not walk around in their everyday lives thinking about how to explain behaviour. Looking at different people’s views about the risk of catching HIV and developing AIDS is an effort to understand the motivational aspects of biases. Psychologists are attempting to understand the irrationality of people’s perceptions of health risks. This study looks at ideas amongst groups as oppose to individuals which the majority of this essay has focused on. These are known as the social representations of risk. These express and protect the identity of the group subscribed to them. An interview based, cross cultural study was carried out of the widespread sense of personal invulnerability expressed by many people faced with the risk of HIV/AIDS (Joffe, 1999). Some of the findings of the study found that most respondents linked where AIDS originated from to a continent of which they did not identify with. Over 3/4s of the white respondents stated that AIDS originated in Africa, and an even greater proportion of black respondents said it originated in the west. Also the Britons and South Africans were equally likely to represent their own vulnerability to HIV as below average. This shows optimistic bias, which occurs when people are more optimistic than what statistics report. Optimistic bias could occur due to the lack of experience of the problem and difficulty in imagining it arising in someone’s life. This supports the schema theory as there has been no information previously collected to store and then retrieve to predict the situation accurately. This is a limitation of cognitive processing due to limited experience/imagination. This essay has shown that in order to perceive and understand the social world both cognitive processes and the environment in which social cognition takes place has to be taken into account. Incomplete information has to be dealt with quickly in order to reach decisions on how to behave appropriately. This is not without its draw backs such as the distortions of perception for example the self-confirming schema. The social schema theory is not without limitations but it is a respectable way to explain how the social environment is perceived. References Darley, J.M. and Gross, P.H. (1983) ‘A hypothesis-confirming bias in labelling effects’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol.44, pp.20–33. Dorothy Miell, Ann Phoenix, Kerry Thomas. (2002) Mapping Psychology. The Open University Kelley, H.H. (1967) ‘Attribution theory in social psychology’, in Levine D.(ed.) Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol.15, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press. Joffe, H. (1999) Risk and the ‘Other’, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Dorothy Miell, Ann Phoenix, Kerry Thomas. (2002) Mapping Psychology. The Open University