CHAPTER 9: SOCIAL COGNITION



CHAPTER 9: SOCIAL COGNITION

The goal of social cognitive research is to understand how older adults make sense of themselves, others, and events in everyday life.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL-CONTEXTUAL ASPECTS OF COGNITION

Even though basic cognitive processes decline with age, older adults may have social knowledge and skills that allow them to function effectively

SOCIAL JUDGMENT PROCESSES

Impression Formation: the way people form and revise first impressions

Hess and colleagues found that older adults are more willing to change their first impressions from positive to negative and are less willing to change a negative initial impression to a more positive view

Older adults rely on life experiences and social rules

Negativity bias: older adults let their initial impressions stand because negative information was more striking to them and thus affected them more strongly

Older adults weigh emotional information more heavily and are less likely to use detailed, specific information when forming impressions than younger adults

Older adults are at a disadvantage when the social context is demanding

Knowledge Accessibility and Social Judgments

Social knowledge: when we are faced with new situations, we draw on our previous experiences stored in memory-- must be available to guide behavior

must have had experiences with a particular subject to use it to guide behavior in similar situations in the future; must be accessible to guide behavior

Accessibility depends on the strength of the information available in memory

Age-related differences in accessibility of social knowledge may be a function of

Experience, the more you have with a particular subject the easier it will be to assess the information

Older adults rely on easily assessable social knowledge, such as impression formation

Source judgments: when you try to determine the source of a particular piece of information

Determining if information is true or false

Older adults have more difficulty ignoring false information

A processing capacity explanation for age differences in social judgments

Because older adults typically display lower levels of cognitive processing resources, it is possible that this decline might impact the social judgment process

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES AND BELIEFS

Are defined in terms of how we represent and interpret the behavior of others in a social situation

Understanding Age Differences in Social Beliefs

Three important aspects in understanding age differences

need to examine the specific content of social beliefs

Some age differences in social beliefs can be attributed to cohort or generational

need to consider the strength of these beliefs to know under what conditions they may influence behavior

must know the likelihood that these beliefs will be automatically activated when you are confronted with a situation in which these beliefs are being violated or questioned

STEROTYPES AND AGING

Content of Stereotypes

Stereotypes: are a special kind of social knowledge structure or social belief about characteristics and behaviors of a particular social group

We use them to help us process information and they affect how we interpret new information

Both older and younger adults hold similar age stereotypes

With age though the content of stereotypes does vary and becomes more elaborated when life experiences are integrated into our beliefs

Age Stereotypes and Perceived Competence

Age-based double standard: is operating when an individual attributes an older person’s failures in memory as more serious than a memory failure observed in a young adult

Younger adults generally judge older adults who are forgetful more harshly than older adults judge other older adults

Activation of Stereotypes

Implicit stereotypes: automatically activated unconscious negative stereotypes about aging that guide our behavior

Patronizing talk: is when you slow your speech, use childlike vocabulary, dramatically articulate your works, speak with demeaning emotional tones, and engage in superficial conversations

Can cause social alienation and damaging effects on older adults’ self-esteem

However, modifying speech by using more representation, more elaborations, and speaking less complexly decreases communication failures in older adults

Stereotype Threat: an evoked fear of being judged in accordance with a negative stereotype about a group to which you belong

If a negative stereotype is activated in an older adult, it can negatively influence performance on a variety of tasks

This could partially account for why older adults perform more poorly than younger adults on cognitive tasks

PERSONAL CONTROL

Personal Control: the degree to which one believes that performance in a situation depends on something one personally does

A high sense of personal control implies the belief that performance is up to you, while a low sense of personal control implies that your performance is under the influence of forces other than your own

Personal control is thought to play a role in memory, intelligence, depression, and adjustment to and survival in institutions

Multidimensionality of Personal Control

Control Strategies

Heckhausen and Schulz (1999) view control-related strategies in terms of primary and secondary control

Primary control: involves bringing the environment into line with one’s desires and goals; action is directed toward changing the external world

Secondary control: involves brining oneself in line with the environment; goal is to minimize losses

Primary control helps shape their environment to fit their goals, whereas secondary control simply minimizes losses or expands levels of primary control

With age secondary control increases, while primary control decreases

Some Criticisms Regarding Primary Control

Cross-cultural perspective challenge the notion of primacy and primary control

In collectivists societies, the emphasis is not on individualistic strategies (i.e., primary control strategies), but to establish interdependence with others, to be connected to them, and bound to a large social institutions

SOCIAL SITUATIONS AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE

Collaborative Cognition: occurs when two or more people work together to solve a cognitive task

Collaborating with others in recollection helps facilitate memory and problem-solving in older adults

Well-acquainted older couples demonstrate an expertise to develop an adaptive pattern of recalling information, which includes both social support issues and strategic efforts

Social Context and Memory

The social context can serve a facilitative function in older adults’ memory performance

Thus, it is important not to limit our explanations of social cognitive change simply to cognitive processing variables

Discussion Questions

1. How does social cognition relate to postformal thought?

2. Cognitive theorists believe that your perception of what you did or are is more important than what you actually have done or who you really are. Given this, what advice might you give to someone taking care of a person with Alzheimer’s disease?

3. How do you engage in collaborative cognition in your everyday life?

Suggested Activities and Assignments

1. Have students discuss social knowledge about common events (i.e., taking an exam, going on a date, dining out, going to the doctor, etc.). Also, have students write scripts for these events. Discuss how deviations from the expected scripts make people feel.

2. Have students find examples of aging stereotypes in the popular press and media. In particular, what negative stereotypes seem to be focused on and are any positive stereotypes common?

3. Have students devise a plan to change people’s stereotypical beliefs about aging in their community.

4. Visit a nursing home or retirement community and ask residents about how they feel the staff treats them. How do the residents treat the staff? Are there any stereotypes operating?

5. As a permutation of the above have students observe interactions in a nursing home, retirement community, or even the local grocery store. Do the students observe any examples of patronizing talk? Under what circumstances did this occur? Did the speech occur in the context of a commonly held stereotype about aging?

6. Have students read one of Blanchard-Fields articles on causal attributions (possibly the one mentioned in the “How Do We Know” box on page 320). This will give students first hand knowledge of the research and a chance to review research design from Chapter 1.

7. Have students complete the Discovering Development activity “How much control do you have over your cognitive functioning” on page 332.

8. Based on Heckhausen and Schulz research on primary and secondary control strategies, have students discuss their methods of reacting to obstacles in life (e.g., not getting a class they need, losing a job, etc.). Do they try to change the environment (primary control) or change their goals (secondary control)?

9. Visit a nursing home or retirement community and see what measures are taken to help residents maintain some degree of personal control. Or have staff from a nursing home, retirement community, or senior citizen’s center discuss the measures that are taken to help residents maintain some degree of their personal control.

10. Provide some suggestions to help maintain older adults’ sense of personal control in nursing home facilities. What is the significance of personal control?

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