Cognitive Bias In Social Psychology

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in mental processing that occurs when we attempt to simplify information and take cognitive shortcuts which can influence our behaviour. As cognitive misers, we often use cognitive shortcuts, or heuristics, to explain the environment around us. Social psychology is the study of the social causes of and influences on behaviour. In this essay the effects of cognitive biases on our decision-making processes in the domain of self-concept and the domain of stereotypes and prejudice in social psychology will be discussed.

The first domain being discussed in this essay is self-concept. Self-concept is the awareness of our consciousness and our individual identities which is shaped by our own self-beliefs and

In a study researching praise acceptance through the self-serving bias, it was shown that people are far more likely to accept flattery directed towards themselves as sincere but are more suspicious of praise given to other people. It was shown that those with a higher level of self-esteem were more likely to agree that the ingratiation posed to them was accurate than those with lower levels of self-esteem (Vonk, 2002). Particularly in individualist cultures where there is a greater emphasis on self-independence, it is necessary to protect the self-esteem from being damaged. Therefore, people can adopt skewed views of themselves which can lead to the unfair blame of bad outcomes on other people and can cause us to disregard our flaws, preventing growth and learning. However, there are also positive behavioural benefits of this bias as we are able to stay more motivated in difficult situations as we blame this on external factors rather than our own

A stereotype is an oversimplified view of a group of people that focuses on a set of prominent traits which can represent members of that group but often does not reflect individuals accurately. We create stereotype biases when we group people or things together based on a common trait and then base our assumptions of that group on the prototype i.e. the most typical version of an individual in that category. Once this stereotype is developed we could presume everyone from that group has obtained all the traits of the stereotype (Wyer, 1988). As cognitive misers, this heuristic is useful to quickly make judgments of other people or situations and frees up cognitive resources for other tasks (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994). Prejudice is an unjust attitude towards individuals based on insufficient knowledge about their social group. This can then lead to stigmatisation, which is when an individual’s stereotype can put them at a lower category and have them viewed and treated more negatively than other groups. We can make prejudgments about others based on these assumptions and these judgments can lead to behavioural