Social Cognition

Social cognitive processes are the processes through which we live our lives (most often successfully). They are the mental activities, both conscious and unconscious, that allow us to receive, categorize, and utilize environmental input to progress through existence. Social cognitive process can be broken down into conscious (actively controllable) and unconscious (automatic) processes (Dijksterhuis, 2010). This difference between these two modes of social cognitive processing is an important distinction with links as far back as Greek philosopher Plotinus (Dijksterhuis, 2010).

There are two major differences between conscious and unconscious social cognitive processes. The first major difference is that unconscious process can be broken down into two sub-process states, whereas conscious processes cannot (Dijksterhuis, 2010). For unconscious thought, the two sub-states are preconscious and post-conscious processes. Preconscious processes occur before conscious thought occurs (Dijksterhuis, 2010). Post-conscious processes occur after conscious thought processes have already occurred and then dissipated (but recently) (Dijksterhuis, 2010).

The second major difference between conscious and unconscious thought processes is the way they operate. First, conscious and unconscious processes are not enemies on the battlefield forever clashing in an infinite conflict. Conscious processes and unconscious processes are, in a majority of cases (if not all), working in conjunction with one another to function correctly (Dijksterhuis, 2010). The difference in operation between unconscious and conscious processes is the essentially the fact that conscious processes are actively available to an individual’s mental awareness whereas unconscious processes are not (Dijksterhuis, 2010).

Most, if not all, conscious processes begin with some sort of unconscious signals (Wegner & Bargh, 1998). Unconscious processes will either trigger a conscious intention leading to a voluntary action or will simply result in a voluntary action itself (Wegner & Bargh, 1998). However, there are times when conscious thought processes will occur more often than unconscious processes, and vice versa. Conscious processes are more likely to occur, according to Wegner and Bargh (1998), when there has been less occurrences of the same type of processes in the past. Whereas, automatic processes are most likely to occur if the specific process has been consciously “trained” (as in used consciously more often) which results in an automatic process (Wegner & Bargh, 1998). This distinction is due to the very nature of social cognitive processing, in which conscious processes can become unconscious processes to allow our minds to “free up” cognitive resources to utilize on new social cognitive processes (Wegner & Bargh, 1998). For instance, I am consciously typing this paper, however, over the years my mind has created an automatic process to find the keys needed to touch each letter. If I had to consciously find each letter, this paper would take me a very long time.

An article by Morris, Squires, Taber, and Lodge (2003), sought to examine the social cognitive process of priming, specifically, affective priming. In the study, researchers examined the relationship between positively or negatively charged political stimuli and the affective evaluations that were automatically afforded to these stimuli, and the effect that this relationship had on a subsequent adjective (Morris, Squires, Taber, & Lodge, 2003). The article was directly analyzing the unconscious process of priming as well as the unconscious process of attitude activation, both of which, as mentioned previously, fall under unconscious processes. The effect of priming is demonstrated via the condition of positive or negative political stimuli, and the attitude activation is measured through the effects on the subjective adjective assessment at the end (Morris, Squires, Taber, & Lodge, 2003).

Results of this study show support for the concept of hot cognition, and that affective evaluations of political stimuli are stored in long-term memory. When these stimuli are primed once again, the unconscious thought process allow us to more quickly evaluate congruent and incongruent examples (Morris, Squires, Taber, & Lodge, 2003).

References

Dijksterhuis, A. (2010). Automaticity and the unconscious. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 228–267). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Morris, J. P., Squires, N. K., Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2003). Activation of Political Attitudes: A Psychophysiological Examination of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis. Political Psychology, 24(4), 727. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1046/j.1467-9221.2003.00349.x

Wegner, D. M., & Bargh, J. A. (1998). Control and automaticity in social life. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 446–496). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.