Social cognition refers to information received from the social world which is interpreted, analysed and remembered, such that we come to think, feel and understand about the people who live around us. But the information coming in is too much so we have to learn to organise it in the form of schemas. Schemas are a set of interconnected beliefs, information and examples about social objects, events and people. Once formed the schemas guide our thinking and behaviour. They simplify information so that we can interpret new information rapidly. There are various types of schemas dealing with persons, events and social roles.

The role of schemas in organising our thinking and behaviour are:  

Schemas – Young Vs Older Generation

Request an elderly person (a male and a female) to prepare a list that describes themselves and another list that describes the younger generation. Also, ask the youth (a male and female) to describe themselves and the older generation.

Now compare the two lists how each group has a particular schema about themselves, as well as the other social group.

(i) Attribution: Understand the Causes of Behaviour

We also look for the causes of one’s own and other people’s behaviour. This is termed as attribution. If your friend does not invite you for her birthday party you are going to question why she did not do so. So we are like naïve scientists trying to establish cause and effect relationships. If you fair poorly what reasons are you likely to put forward and when you do well in the examination what reasons will you give? There are two categories either you will attribute your success or failure to internal causes pertaining to personal reasons, (e.g. “I faired poorly because I did not put in effort”, or “I did well in the examination because I put in a great deal of effort”). The

external causes include anything outside the person. For instance, “I faired poorly in the examination because the question paper was tough”.

(ii) Sources of Errors or Biases in Social Cognition: The internal or external causes lead us to commit the fundamental attribution error. For example, when we see another person come late for a meeting and drop her notes on the floor, we are likely to reach a conclusion that the person is ‘disorganised and clumsy’. We tend to explain the cause of ‘coming late’ and

‘dropping notes’ to internal causes. When we are in the same position then we are likely to attribute the reasons of the same happening to external causes, such as, there was a traffic jam and the floor was slippery. Thus when we perceive others we

perceive their behaviour to be caused by internal causes and say she is ‘that kind of a person’. When we try to explain our own behaviour we do it in terms of situational or external causes.