SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. PART 2. SOCIAL COGNITION

My way of exploring the Social Psychology continues as I move forward to the Module 2. 

This Module is devoted to the problem of Social Cognition.

Our attitude towards people depends greatly on our perception of them.

On our way of coming to know people, since the very first meeting, we analyse a person's appearance, the way they act. While getting to know them, we decide whether their mind set is similar or completely different from ours. We  try to define good and bad traits of character and behaviour.

Social cognition concerns the various psychological processes that enable individuals to take advantage of being part of a social group. Of major importance to social cognition are the various social signals that enable us to learn about the world. Such signals include facial expressions, such as fear and disgust, which warn us of danger, and eye gaze direction, which indicate where interesting things can be found. 

Thus, we can learn a great deal by simply observing others.

Another important aspect of Social Cognition is Social categorisation. 

With the help of Social categorization people can categorize themselves and others into differentiated groups.

Categorization simplifies perception and cognition related to the social world by detecting inherent similarity relationships or by imposing structure on it. We categorize people according to a class they belong to (sex, age, race and etc.). On one hand, we attribute group features to individuals (which we call stereotyping) and on the other hand, we generalize individual features to the group and put them into existing categories.

Moreover, the Module covers the problems of Structure, Stages of Social Cognition and Heuristics as a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort; the Self-fulfilling Prophecy, which I will take a closer look at in my next post.

After I have studied the theory about Social Cognition, I took a test. My results proved to be surprisingly high:

This makes me motivated to delve deeper into the study of Social Psychology. 

In fact, I'm already trying to apply my theoretucal knowledge into practice: from time to time I watch people being in action, monitor their emothions and behaviour, thus practicing my Social Cognition skills. 

Can one make a use of it? Don't hesitate to share your thoughts! (: