Automatic Processes and Controlled Processes

In Milgram's study, the Teachers seemed to know little or nothing about the actual causes of their behavior: they tended to blame the Experimenter and the Learner without realizing that the social situation and their acceptance of a subordinate role in that situation were important determinants of their behavior. As if to underscore this last point, Milgram (1974) warned that the Teachers’ explanations of their own actions were of questionable accuracy:

While we must take seriously everything the subject says, we need not necessarily think that he fully understands the causes of his own behavior. A line must be drawn between listening carefully to what the subject says and mistaking it for the full story. The subject is controlled by many forces in the situation beyond his awareness, implicit structures that regulate his behavior without signaling this fact to him. And we have one enormous advantage over the subject: In each condition, we have slightly varied the nature of the circumstances which the subject confronts and thus know the importance of each of the factors. The participant, and he alone, has experienced the predicament, but he cannot place it in the perspective that comes only from an overview. (pp. 44-45; emphasis added)

The last sentence contradicts common sense. Who else should know better the causes of an action than the person who has performed it? Most of us assume that, if we want to know why someone did something, we need only ask him or her. But research in social psychology shows time and time again that this common-sensical idea often is wrong.

What social psychologists have demonstrated is that our everyday assumptions and inferences about the causes of our own and others' actions often are inaccurate, or at least incomplete. In fact, Milgram (1974) claimed that “it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act”: we incorrectly believe that our actions are caused primarily by internal factors — such as motives or intentions (factors of which we generally are aware and can report to others) — when, in fact, our actions are caused primarily by external factors of which we are unaware (p. 205). Milgram's claim probably is too extreme: internal and external factors interact in producing cognitions, emotions, and behavior. Nevertheless, he was correct that we often are unaware of the true causes of our mental events and behaviors. Just as the mental processes that organize and structure the sentences we speak generally operate at the unconscious level, the mental processing of information in the immediate social situation generally occurs unconsciously.

Each of us processes information about the world every moment of our lives, even when we are deeply asleep (such as when sleepwalking). Most of this information is processed very quickly, with little or no attention or mental effort. For example, it usually requires little effort on our part to rapidly process sensory information required for the performance of a habit[∂]. The habitual behaviors involved in driving a car are a good example of this. People who have been driving for several years usually pay little or attention to their driving-related actions: the information needed to correctly perform these actions are processed unconsciously or preconsciously. On the other hand, people usually pay close attention, and thereby exert a great deal of mental effort, to the processing of novel (unfamiliar) information. For example, right now you are paying close attention to these words and trying to relate them to other things you know so that you can understand what I am trying to communicate. The problem is that we can pay attention to only a small amount of current information, which means that other current information must be processed either preconsciously or unconsciously.

In order to demonstrate this to yourself, see if you can read these words while trying to understand what is being said in a nearby conversation (if there are no people conversing nearby, then turn on the television and try to understand what people are saying there). You'll probably find that you have no trouble reading these words while trying to understand the conversation around you. This is because, just as driving a car can be performed without consciously processing the information, reading words has become habitual from many years of reading. The visual information contained in written words is processed unconsciously and translated into the appropriate sounds. Nevertheless, you cannot understand the meaning of an unfamiliar written sentence if at the same time, you are trying to understand a nearby conversation. Understanding the meaning of a sentence requires attention and conscious processing of information.

When processing information from your surroundings without attending to it, you are using a set of mental processes referred to as automatic processes — a set of mental processes that:

• occur at either the preconscious or unconscious levels;
• are performed rapidly and efficiently;
• require little or no mental effort.

Automatic processes are used whenever:

• the situation elicits reflexive behaviors resulting from the evolution by natural selection of our nervous systems (adaptations such as rapidly pulling one's hand away from a hot object);
• the situation evokes habitual behaviors resulting from prior learning (such as recognizing your name spoken at a noisy party or driving your car down a freeway).

Most of the information we process in this manner is either very familiar or trivial and, therefore, never enters the conscious level.

When processing information from your surroundings by attending to it, you are using a set of mental processes referred to as controlled processes — a set of mental processes that:

• occur at the conscious level;
• are performed slowly and inefficiently;
• require a great deal of mental effort.

Controlled processes are used whenever:

• the situation is novel and, therefore, there are no reflexive or habitual behaviors that allow one to respond adaptively to it;
• the situation contains a component that, for whatever reason, "grabs" one's attention;
• one deliberately focuses one's attention on the situation (for example, when you pay attention to some habitual action, such as the movements involved in tying your shoes).

Although you now typically use automatic processes when driving a car, this was not the case when initially learning to drive. At first, controlled processes were needed to stay within lane markings, to avoid other cars, and to do all the other things required to drive safely. This is because driving was an unfamiliar situation and you had not yet developed habitual cognitions and behaviors. After much practice, however, the situational demands became very familiar and the most adaptive responses had been well learned. In general, controlled processes are required to learn how to respond to novel situations; and, once the appropriate responses develop into cognitive and behavioral habits, automatic processes then can be used to perceive and interpret situational stimuli that release the habitual responses.

Why do we have both controlled processes and automatic processes? If controlled processes are so important for learning to respond adaptively to unfamiliar situations, why don't we try to use them in all situationswhy don't we rid ourselves of automatic processes, especially given the fact that any situation, regardless of how similar it is to previous situations, always contains novel aspects? Furthermore, given that a major goal of education is to help students develop their ability to think critically, even with respect to situations and topics for which they already have firmly established and adaptive responses, it seems obvious that the more we use our automatic processes, the less able we are to think critically. If critical thinking comprises an essential set of skills necessary for succeeding in our rapidly changing world, shouldn't we teach people to reduce (and perhaps eliminate) their reliance on automatic processes?

Let’s try to answer these questions by performing a simple experiment. Count silently to 50. This should be a very simple task. Why? Because you first learned to count many years ago, and constant practice has caused this skill to develop into a habit that requires only automatic processes. Once you say "1," you're off and running to the next number in the sequence, the one after that, and so on. In fact, you should be able to count to 50 while doing other things (such as driving or making dinner) because you don't have to pay attention to your counting. Now, count backwards from 100 by subtracting 3.5 each time (that is, 100, 96.5, 93, 89.5, etc.). This task probably is unfamiliar and, therefore, requires you to pay close attention: your working memory must form a mental representation of each number after you have completed the subtraction, and then consciously subtract 3.5 from it, giving a result that you must store as a mental representation until you have subtracted 3.5 from it, and so on. This task requires the use of controlled processes. When using controlled processes to perform one task, you are unable simultaneously to perform another task that requires attention. For example, it would be very difficult to count backwards from 100 by subtracting 3.5 each time while trying to drive to a location in an unfamilar part of town through heavy freeway traffic with aggressive drivers constantly changing lanes around you during a downpour. On the other hand, you could perform the counting task while driving your normal route home in light traffic on a sunny day.

Automatic processes produce adaptive responses to familiar situations quickly, efficiently, and nonconsciously, whereas controlled processes produce adaptive responses slowly, in a plodding manner that demands a great deal of attention and mental effort. When we use automatic processes to perform one or more habitual/reflexive behaviors, our working memory is free to attend to figuring out how to respond to a complex or novel task. In general, we prefer to use automatic processes because they require little or no mental effort (we tend to be cognitive misers[∂]). We use controlled processes only when we must or are highly motivated to use them. The conscious part of working memory consists of a group of “trouble-shooting” mental processes. That is, when a novel situation occurs that gives rise to a problem that we are motivated to solve correctly (assuming that we believe we have the requisite knowledge to solve it), the controlled processes of working memory take over. In all other situations, we rely upon automatic processes to get the job done. For example, you use primarily automatic processes to drive unless something unexpected happens, at which point controlled processes take over. These allow you to analyze the unfamiliar situation in more depth in order to figure out how best to respond. The same is true for social situations. Much of the information coming in from social situations is processed automatically. Only a small amount of the information is attended to and analyzed with controlled processes in working memory. Because we rely so heavily upon automatic processes, many of our responses to social situations occur “mindlessly.”

Mindlessness In Social Situations
The situational demands in Milgram's standard condition caused participants to automatically process the information provided by the Experimenter, the Learner, the shock generator, etc. Because most of us are trained from early childhood to obey legitimate authority figures without question (such as parents, teachers, police officers, principals, and so on), the information received by the Teachers was processed and responded to automatically. Obedient responses make up a well-learned habit activated by commands from someone we have accepted as an authority figure. In other words, we respond "mindlessly" to what the authority tells us to do. Many of us also are taught from early childhood that it is important to help others whenever we can, and to comply with their reasonable requests for help. Thus, throughout our lives, we comply mindlessly to others' requests for assistance, unless we perceive their requests to be unreasonable, which provides a justification for refusing to comply. Let’s consider an example of this.

Let's say that you are copying pages from an assigned reading when someone walks up behind you and says: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine?” Would you step aside and let the person use the machine first? It probably depends on several factors, such as how much of a rush you are in. Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz (1978) performed an experimental study in which they observed how often library patrons would comply with this request, as well as several variants. When the request was made of people using a copy machine in a university library, about 60% stepped aside to let the other person (the confederate) use the copier first.

In a second condition, the confederate added several words to the original request: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine because I have to make copies?" It should be obvious that the bolded words added no new information: the first sentence of the request made it clear that the person wanted to make copies. The participants receiving this request were referred to as the "redundant-request" group because the added words were redundant (able to be omitted without loss of meaning). Do you think that the addition of, "because I have to make copies," would make it more likely, less likely, or equally likely that participants would step aside and let the confederate use the machine? The researchers found that the redundant request increased by 33% the percentage of participants who stepped aside: 93% allowed the confederate to use the copy machine first!

In a third condition, the confederate added nonredundant words to the original request: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copy machine because I am in a rush?” The researchers found that 94% of the participants in the "nonredundant-request" group complied with the request, which is equivalent to the percentage complying with the redundant request. Thus, it seems, if we want to maximize the number of people who comply with a request, all we need do is add the word "because" followed by words that complete the sentence. In other words, the results of the experiment suggest that we automatically process the word "because" uttered by someone making a request, and comply without thinking.

The results of this study illustrate well what is meant by mindlessness: the tendency to automatically process social information and to respond without conscious deliberation. But we tend to repond mindlessly only when we are not given a good reason to think more carefully about the information. Participants in the study published by Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz (1978) responded "mindfully" (that is, they used controlled processes) when the request became less reasonable; instead of five pages, the confederate asked to copy 20 pages. The same three groups were observed and the results are presented in Table 1.

As you can see, compared to the condition in which the confederate asked to copy five pages, fewer participants stepped aside when the confederate made the simple request: “Excuse me, I have 20 pages. May I use the copy machine?” (60% versus 24% compliance, respectively). Furthermore, when the request included 20 copies, the word "because" no longer had the mindless effect on compliance among those in the redundant-request group: only 24% stepped aside when the words "because I have to make copies" were added, which was equivalent to the percentage stepping aside in the simple-request group. This means that these participants used controlled processes to think about the added words and realized that they provided no new information. Finally, the nonredundant request increased compliance to 42%; but, probably because the request now was judged by the participants to be less reasonable, the amount of compliance in the 20-copy condition was less than half of that in the 5-copy condition.

The results of this study show clearly that when we judge the social situation to be relatively unimportant, we tend to use automatic processes, thereby responding mindlessly to information. On the other hand, when we judge the social situation to be relatively important, we tend to become motivated to devote the time and mental effort required to use controlled processes, thereby responding mindfully to information. This may help you to understand why you sometimes will sign a petition handed to you without even reading it or listening to the petition's rationale provided by the person making the request; but if that person then whips out five more petitions and begins to provide rationales for them, you probably will switch to a more mindful attitude.

[ADD STROOP TEST IN FUTURE]

Study Questions

1. According to social psychologists such as Stanley Milgram, why do people often not know the causes of their own behavior?
2. At what level of awareness do we tend to process information in our immediate social situations?
3. What is an example of a habit that is not mentioned in the textbook?
4. Is the information required for the performance of a habit processed consciously? Why or why not?
5. How would you define automatic processes in your own words?
6. When do we tend to use automatic processes?
7. How would you define controlled processes in your own words?
8. When do we tend to use controlled processes?
9. What is an example of a situation, not mentioned in the textbook, in which you would use controlled processes?
10. How would you use the concepts of automatic and controlled processes to explain the behaviors of the Teachers in Milgram's studies of obedience?
11. How is working memory related to controlled processes?
12. How is working memory related to automatic processes?
13. How would you define "mindlessness" in your own words?
14. How would you define "mindfulness" in your own words?
15. In what type of social situation are we most likely to act mindlessly?
16. In what type of social situation are we most likely to act mindfully?
17. How does the Stroop Test Illustrate the distinction between automatic and controlled processes?

What is the Cognitive Unconscious?

At every moment, our senses are being bombarded by a large amount of information and processed in sensory memory[∂]. As we saw in Section 4, very little of this information is consciously attended to. Nevertheless, there is much evidence that we register the information in some way. For example, if someone is talking to you but you are thinking about something else, that person might complain, "you haven't heard a word I’ve said!” At that point, you may have repeated verbatim what the person had said even though you really hadn’t been paying attention. In this case, you attended to the preconscious information in sensory memory that had just been automatically processed. There also are many sets of unconscious mental processes that automatically process a great deal of the information needed for us to consciously think, feel, and behave. These unconscious automatic processes make up what is called the "cognitive unconscious."

The cognitive unconscious comprises a large set of unconscious mental processes involved in knowing the world around us — mental processes involved in cognitive tasks such as perception, memory formation, memory retrieval, decision-making, and so on. These automatic processes determine conscious cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. For example, when you have a name on the “tip of your tongue,” you often recall consciously its first letter and the number of syllables it has because of the influence of the implicit (unconscious) memory on your conscious thoughts. After trying to recall the name for a few minutes, you may eventually give up and start doing something else. Even after you stop trying to retrieve the name, unconscious automatic processes may continue to work on its retrieval, which is demonstrated when the name "pops" mysteriously into awareness. The sudden recall is not so mysterious when one understands that unconscious mental processes perform the "lion's share" of the processing of information in our minds.

The concept of the cognitive unconscious helps us better understand the sometimes bizarre effects of brain damage on mental processes such as the encoding, storing, and retrieving of memories. As you learned in Section 4, people with damage to the hippocampi and related structures often are unable consciously to recall or recognize events previously experienced. Nonetheless, these events may have been encoded and stored as implicit memories, which is indicated when the memories affect conscious cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. In rare cases of brain damage, these memories may be both implicit and explicit, depending upon the retrieval cues used and the manner in which the memories are retrieved. For example, in 1988, a fourteen-year-old boy named Neil was found to have a tumor growing in his brain. The tumor was removed, but Neil no longer could read and suffered complete anterograde amnesia[∂] for anything that had happened since his medical problems began:

Curiously, however, Neil performed reasonably well at school.... The psychologists who tested his memory wondered how he managed to do so well. To find out, they asked him some questions about an audiotaped book he had been studying, Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee. He remembered nothing. Noting Neil’s frustration, and realizing that his class performance was based on written responses, the examiner asked Neil to write down his answers, beginning with anything that he could recall from the book. (Schacter, 1996, p. 65)

Surprisingly, Neil was able to write what he had heard on the audiotape. It seemed that Neil could retrieve explicit memories when writing, but was unable to speak what he was writing or afterwards to read what he had written.

Other tests were tried. When asked about his stay at a hospital two years before — a stay for which he suffered complete amnesia — Neil was able to write about a person who was on the ambulance that drove him to the hospital. He also remembered many other events:

Neil’s parents asked him to write down the names of the children in his class. He produced a long list, which turned out to be accurate. When his mother asked him what had happened at school that day, Neil wrote, “Mum I saw tulips on the way home.” ... Neil’s parents equipped him with a small notebook, and he began to communicate regularly about incidents in his everyday life. Yet he remained unable to recount these episodes orally [in speech]. When he wrote them down, Neil was unable to read them, and often expressed surprise when someone told him what he had written. After an afternoon’s excursion to several familiar locations, Neil was unable to remember anything when asked. But when told to write down what had happened, he provided a succinct, and accurate, summary of the afternoon’s activities. (p. 65)

Neil’s brain damage somehow disconnected cognitive processes that normally work together and are accessible to consciousness. In intact brains, neural centers associated with the abilities to write , speak, and remember are connected and, therefore, able to communicate. This allows us to retrieve explicit (semantic and episodic memories) regardless of whether we are speaking or writing. Neil’s cognitive processes, however, were separated: semantic and episodic memories encoded and stored during the day were available to language areas associated with writing, but not with speech. Thus, with respect to speech, the memories were implicit but, with respect to writing, they were explicit. The field known as cognitive neuroscience studies cases such as this to develop theories about the links between brain activity and the processing of information.

Schemas and Automatic Processes
A schema, is a set of beliefs and knowledge acquired by an individual about a category of events, such as objects, people, situations, activities, and so on. A schema is developed through experiences that provide information about the events making up a category. For example, each of us has a self-schema (also called a "self-concept"), which consists of everything we know and believe about ourselves. The narrator in Notes from the Underground, first published in 1864 by the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dosteovsky (1821-1881), described his self-schema in this way:

I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite.... [D]o you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after. (Dostoevsky, 1918 )

The self-schema of this fictional character seems quite negative: he ascribes many negative characteristics to himself. How might a self-schema as negative as this one affect a person in everyday life? It seems likely that such a person would have many interpersonal difficulties and would find it difficult to be successful in many occupations, especially those requiring interpersonal skills. Furthermore, this person probably would be depressed and angry most of the time, and would express behaviors would make him appear odd to others. In other words, our self-schemas are extremely important for how we react cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally to a particular situation. They affect:

• which events we attend to in the situation;
• how we perceive these events;
• how we interpret these perceptions;
• how we respond cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally to the events;
• which aspects of the events are encoded and how they are encoded into semantic and episodic memories.

This is true not only for self-schemas, but for all types of schema. For example, you undoubtedly have developed a college-professor schema based on your experiences with college professors. You also probably have developed subdivisions of this college-professor schema — perhaps subdivided by discipline (such as psychology professors versus chemistry professors) or educational institution (such as professors at two-year teaching-oriented colleges versus professors at four-year teaching-oriented colleges/universities versus professors at research-oriented universities with graduate schools). When you speak with a college professor of a particular type, the relevant schema is activated. This schema then determines: (a) how you perceive and interpret what is happening during the conversation, which allows you to organize the events in a meaningful way; and (b) how you respond cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally. For instance, if your professor asks you, "have you read the book?” you will interpret the question as asking about the course textbook, which will determine how you answer the question. If, on the other hand, a well-dressed young man appears at your front door and asks, "have you read 'The Book'?” you will interpret the same question in a very different way, which will lead to very different cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses.

Figure 1. The Activation of a Schema Causes the Automatic Processing of
Sensory Information and the Expression of Involuntary Conscious
Cognitions, Emotions, and Behaviors.

Schemas, however, not only influence how we perceive and interpret current situations, they also influence what we remember about them later on. For example, when you call up a memory for an experience with a professor, your college-professor schema is again activated so that you can construct a complete memory for the event. Because of this, you will tend to distort the memory so that it becomes more consistent with the schema. Thus, you will tend to add details that are consistent with the schema even though they never happened. For example, you may remember that your professor wore a sports jacket yesterday (because professors often wear such things) when, in fact, he actually wore a sweater. In addition, you will tend to accurately remember details that are consistent with the schema and forget details that are not consistent with it.For example, you might remember correctly that he wore laced shoes of a conservative style, probably because many professors do so. On the other hand, you may forget that you saw your professor at the car wash because that is not consistent with your schema of professors.

If schemas can cause us to introduce inaccuracies into our perceptions and interpretations of current situations, and our episodic memories of past events, why do we use them at all? The answer is that schemas are essential for our ability to function in everyday life. As suggested above, schemas allow us to organize and respond appropriately to events in the external world. For example, on the first day of this class, your classroom schema allowed you to walk in and immediately organize all of the information you were presented with. You knew, for example, that the person standing behind the desk at the front of the class was the instructor, and that everyone else was a student. You also knew that the instructor’s words were something you needed to write down, but that what other students were saying typically did not need to be written down. The effects of schemas on our perceptions, interpretations, and memories of social situations is referred to as "social cognition," a topic to which we will turn next.

Study Questions

18. How would you define the cognitive unconscious in your own words?
19. What is an example from your own life of the influence of the cognitive unconscious?
20. How are automatic processes related to the cognitive unconscious?
21. How are controlled processes related to the cognitive unconscious?
22. How does the case study of Neil help us to understand the cognitive unconscious?
23. How would you define the field of "cognitive neuroscience" in your own words?
24. What is an example of a schema not mentioned in the textbook?
25. In what ways are we influenced by schemas?
26. How are schemas related to automatic and controlled processing of information?
27. How are schemas related to the cognitive unconscious?
28. Why are self-schemas thought to be especially important influences on our conscious cognitions, emotions, and behaviors?
29. How would you explain the information presented in Figure 1 to someone who knows nothing about the topic?
30. What effects do schemas tend to have on episodic memories?
31. What problems may result from using schemas to process information?
32. What are the benefits of using schemas to process information?

What Is Social Cognition?

Social cognition refers to the processing of information about social situations through the use of schemas and other cognitive structures (this processing often occurs automatically). In general, when we study social cognition, we are interested in understanding how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions. Two aspects of social cognition will be discussed in the rest of Section 5-3: person perception and attributions.

Person Perception
In Milgram’s obedience study, most participants were paired with an Experimenter who “was a somewhat dry, hard, technical-looking man” in his early thirties, and with a Learner who “was soft, avuncular [like an uncle], and innocuous [harmless]” (Milgram, 1974, p. 58). The Experimenter, because of his physical appearance and behaviors, was someone that most people probably would obey in such a situation, whereas the Learner, because of his physical appearance and behaviors, was someone that most people probably would not wish to hurt. Could it be that the Teachers were responding more to the appearance of these two men than to their particular social roles? If these two men had switched roles, would the Teachers have had an easier time resisting the commands of the “soft, avuncular, and innocuous” looking experimenter, or perhaps an easier time shocking the “dry, hard, technical-looking” Learner?

Milgram performed an experimental manipulation that examined this question. He used a new Experimenter who “was rather soft and unaggressive” and a new Learner who had “a hard bony face and prognothic jaw [a jaw that projects beyond the upper part of the face], who looked as if he could do well in a scrap” (pp. 58-59). In this experimental manipulation, obedience decreased to only 50%, whereas it had been 65% with the original Experimenter and Learner. Although Milgram dismissed this result by concluding, “the change in personnel had little effect on the level of obedience” (p. 59), this change is comparable to some of the other manipulations in which he concluded that there was an effect. A change in obedience of 15% seems very large, especially when we recall that there was very little change in obedience when laboratories were moved, when women were used as Teachers instead of men, and when the Teacher was allowed to hear the Learner screaming instead of just hearing a single pounding on the wall at 300 volts. Thus, it would seem that changing the physical appearance of the Experimenter and Learner led to a large drop in obedience.

Why did this change occur? It seems likely that the Teachers felt differently towards the new Experimenter and the new Learner because of the differences in their physical appearance compared to the original Experimenter and the original Learner. A discussed below, the physical appearance of an individual leads people to attribute particular personality characteristics to that individual. It is very likely that the stern appearance of the original Experimenter made the Teachers more hesitant to defy his orders, and the softer and less threatening appearance of the new Experimenter made them less hesitant to defy his orders. It also seems probable that the kindly appearance of the original Learner and the meaner appearance of the new Learner caused the Teachers to respond differently to them, too. The effects of Milgram's manipulation of the physical appearance of his confederates on the obedience of the Teachers is consistent with research on "person perception."

When we infer that an individual has particular internal qualities, such as a particular emotional state and personality characteristics, we are engaged in person perception. When we make inferences about the internal qualities of individuals whom we are meeting for the first time (that is, when we are developing a "first impression" of those individuals), we tend to rely on easily observable and, hence, superficial features such as:

• physical appearance,
• facial expressions,
• bodily movements,
• mannerisms,
• what they say,
• how they say it,
• what we have heard about them from others.

Person perception often involves automatic processes that occurs unconsciously through the activation of schemas. One type of schema, social stereotypes, are of particular importance for person perception. A social stereotype is an oversimplified and rigidly held set of beliefs about members of a social group. Gender stereotypes and racial/ethnic stereotypes are two types of social stereotypes that have a major influence on the internal qualities we ascribe to others.

Pittinsky, Shih, and Trahan (2005) performed a fascinating study of the influence of gender and racial/ethic stereotypes on person perception. The participants consisted of undergraduate students attending Harvard University. They were instructed to use e-mail to ask another student, "Amy Chen," a list of questions. Deception was used in that "Amy Chen" did not exist: "she" was, in reality, the experimenter, who, after giving instructions to the participants, went to a different room and corresponded with the participants by e-mail. The first message from the confederate stated that her name was "Amy Chen." The independent variable consisted of variations of Amy Chen's e-mail address. The first address, chen@wjh.harvard.edu, made salient the confederate's Asian-American identity. The second address, amy@wjh.harvard.edu, made salient the confederate's female identity. The third address, ac@wjh.harvard.edu, made salient neither the confederate's racial/ethnic identity nor the confederate's gender identity, thereby serving as the control condition. It is important to remeber that all participants knew that her name was "Amy Chen." What they wanted to determine was whether or not the e-mail address would activate social stereotypes that affected their conscious cognitions (their memories; see next paragraph)

During the e-mail discussion, the confederate disclosed her SAT subtest scores for quantitative reasoning (730) and verbal reasoning (720). According to the common racial/ethnic stereotype in the United States (especially among those in higher education), Asian Americans are believed to be superior at quantititative reasoning and inferior at verbal reasoning. In addition, according to the common gender stereotype in the United States, females are superior at verbal reasoning and inferior at quantititative reasoning. Thus, the hypotheses tested were:

1. The group for which the Asian-American identity was made salient (by using the e-mail address, chen@wjh.harvard.edu) would remember the confederate as having a higher quantitative-reasoning score and a lower verbal-reasoning score compared to the memories of those in the other two groups.
2. The group for which the female identity was made salient (by using the e-mail address, amy@wjh.harvard.edu) would remember the confederate as having a higher verbal-reasoning score and a lower quantitative-reasoning score compared to the memories of those in the other two groups.

The research results are presented in Table 2.

Identity Made Most Salient	Recall of SAT Subtest Scores
	Quantitative	Verbal
Asian American	734 (highest)	718 (lowest)
Female	726 (lowest)	727 (highest)
Neither	728	725

As you can see, participants receiving e-mails from the address that made salient the confederate's Asian-American identity later remembered:

(a) her quantitative-reasoning score as being higher than did participants from the other two groups;
(b) her verbal-reasoning score as being lower than did participants from the other two groups.

Participants receiving e-mails from the address that made salient the confederate's female identity later remembered:

(c) her quantitative-reasoning score as being lower than did participants from the other two groups;
(d) her verbal-reasoning score as being higher than did participants from the other two groups.

Participants receiving e-mails from the address that made neither her racial/ethnic nor gender identity salient remembered her scores as being in between those remembered by participants in the other two groups. Thus, even something apparently as trivial as an individual's e-mail address can activate social stereotypes that affect how others perceive the individual — in this case, what they infer about the individual's intellectual abilities. Furthermore, the research participants were completely unaware of the fact that the confederate's e-mail address influenced their memories of her SAT subtest scores. This shows that, when social stereotypes are activated, they cause us to automatically process information about an individual, which then unconsciously determines our conscious cognitions, emotions, and behaviors (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Explanation For the Results Obtained In the
Study By Pittinsky, Shih, and Trahan (2005).

Benefits & Harms of Social Stereotypes
Inferences based on social stereotypes tend to be inaccurate because, by definition, stereotypes are “oversimplified,” which means that they cause us to process information in a superficial and inaccurate manner. Furthermore, they are “rigidly held,” which means that they are activated and determine how we process information even when consciously we know that a particular stereotype doesn't apply to a situation, and even when consciously we know that the stereotype (such as a racial stereotype) is based on irrational prejudice and, hence, is highly inaccurate.

Given that social stereotypes are so easily developed and so easily activated, and assuming that our minds evolved to help us adapt well to our environments, we must conclude that there is something beneficial about the use social stereotypes when making inferences about others. Although it is true that we will be wrong to some degree whenever we rely upon social stereotypes to make inferences about individuals, and that stereotypes based on prejudice and other unfounded beliefs will lead to highly inaccurate inferences, it still is true that the activation of social stereotypes (as well as other schemas) allows us to quickly assess and respond to social situations. Our subsequent responses will tend to be adaptive to the degree that a particular social stereotype reflects what generally is true about a group of people.

For example, consider your college-professor stereotype. This stereotype is activated whenever you see someone identified as a college professor. If you are a student, the inferences you make, although determined by automatic processes and an oversimplified set of beliefs about college professors, will help you to interact with this individual as long as your stereotype identifies accurately key qualities of college professors, on average. For example, you probably will infer that the professor is intelligent, interested in scholarly pursuits, and may be arrogant and elitist. These inferences will help you to tailor your conversation in appropriate ways (for example, you probably won't greet him with, "hey dude, whassup?"). This suggests that at least some social stereotypes can lead to relatively accurate inferences about individuals. This is most likely to be the case when two propositions are true:

(1) The individual has chosen to be a member of the stereotyped group. This makes it more likely that individual already has personality characteristics, beliefs, standards, and values similar to those of the group as a whole.
(2) The individual has been a member of the stereotyped group for some time. This makes it more likely that the individual has conformed to the beliefs, standards, and values of the group as a whole.

For example, inferences about individual college professors based on their occupational stereotype tend to be accurate because these individuals chose to be members of a group of individuals who generally share particular personality characteristics, beliefs, standards, and values. Nevertheless, each college professor also is a unique individual who undoubtedly will deviate from the stereotype to varying degrees.

Social stereotypes for which one or both propositions listed above are false will tend to lead to inaccurate inferences about individuals. One example is the physical-attractiveness stereotype, which is the belief that physically attractive people exhibit mostly positive personality characteristics. In general, when people compare a physically attractive person to a physically unattractive person, they tend to judge the attractive person as being more sociable, successful, happy, self-confident, sensitive, warm, kind, poised, intelligent, competent, and friendly. The physical-attractiveness stereotype has a very strong effect on person perception in most everyday situations, and for people in every age group (from physically attractive babies to physically attractive elderly adults). Teachers, for example, tend to infer that physically attractive students are more intelligent than physically unattractive students, and that physically unattractive students will perform poorly in their studies. Advertisements typically include physically attractive people because viewers tend to attribute positive personality characteristics to them, which causes the viewers to experience positive emotional responses that are associated with the product advertised (see the discussion of classical conditioning in Section 3).

Although the effects of the physical-attractiveness stereotype on person perception are very strong, most of the positive inferences about the personal qualities of attractive people are incorrect, on average. In other words, the degree of physical attractiveness shows few correlations with personality characteristics. Evidence for this claim can be found in studies in which participants were asked to judge the "before" or "after" photographs of people who received plastic surgery [REFERENCE]. The personalities of plastic-surgery patients do not change as a result of the surgery. Thus, if others perceive their personalities to be more positive, on average, when viewing the more attractive "after" photographs than when viewing the less attractive "before" photographs, we can conclude that the participants' inferences about the patients' personalities are inaccurate. In fact, this is exactly what is found in these studies, which demonstrates conclusively that person perception based on physical attractiveness often leads to invalid inferences about personal qualities.

The most accurate judgements made with regard to physical attractiveness involve the personality trait of "sociability" and the degree of success experienced by physically attractive versus unattractive people. It is true that, on average, attractive people are more sociable and more successful than unattractive people. This probably has to do with the fact that, because attractive people are perceived to have more positive personal qualities, others treat physically attractive people in ways that encourage them to be more sociable and lead to greater success in life. For example, experimental studies that varied the physical attractiveness of interviewees for a fictional job (the participants were those observing the interviews and then choosing one of the "applicants" for the job) show that physically attractive applicants are more likely than unattractive people to be chosen for the job, even when the backgrounds of both were identical and they answered the interview questions in identical ways [REFERENCE].

Another study asked male participants to have a phone conversation with a female participant [GET REFERENCE]. Before the conversation began, the male participants were shown what they were told was a photograph of the female participant they were to converse with, which was not true. Some of the photographs were of physically attractive females, whereas other photographs were of physically unattractive females. The male and female participants then conversed on the phone for about ten minutes. Afterwards, another group of participants listened to the phone conversations and were asked to judge the personalities of the female participants. When the male participants with whom they spoke thought that they were physically attractive, the female participants were judged to be more friendly, on average, than when the male participants thought that they were physically unattractive, regardless of their actual degree of attractiveness. In other words, the male participants' beliefs about the female participants' physical attractiveness caused the women to behave accordingly, presumably in response to the expectations of the male participant based on the influence of the physical-attractiveness stereotype. In other words, our expectations about another's personality can cause the other person to act in ways consisten with our expectations. This is known as the self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948), which occurs when one’s expectations about the future behavior of another person actually elicits that behavior. With respect to the physical-attractiveness stereotype, the expectations we have that attractive people will be more successful and more sociable than unattractive people cause us to treat them in ways that elicit the expected behaviors.

Study Questions

33. How would you define "social cognition" in your own words?
34. What is an example from earlier today of a situation in which you were engaged in social cognition?
35. How did Milgram study the effects of person perception on obedience? What did he find?
36. How would you define "person perception" in your own words?
37. Do you think that controlled processes can be used in person perception? (Please explain your answer.)
38. What is an example from earlier today of a situation in which you were engaged in person perception?
39. What kinds of information are used in person perception when we meet someone new?
40. What kinds of information do you think we use in person perception when we see a member of our immediate family?
41. How would you define "social stereotype" in your own words?
42. What is an example of a social stereotype not mentioned in the textbook?
43. What were the hypotheses tested in the study reported by Pittinsky, Shih, and Trahan (2005)? How did they test these hypotheses?
44. How did the results of the study reported by Pittinsky, Shih, and Trahan (2005) show the influence of social stereotypes on person perception?
45. When a person rejects a social stereotype because it is based on prejudice and false beliefs about a group of people, what influence does this have on the inferences this person makes about individual members of the stereotyped group? (Please explain your answer.)
46. What are the benefits of social stereotypes?
47. What are the harms of social stereotypes?
48. When are social stereotypes most likely to be accurate, in general terms?
49. What is the physical-attractiveness stereotype?
50. Given that you know that a great deal of research has shown that the physical-attractiveness stereotype is mostly inaccurate, do you think that it no longer will affect the inferences you make about physically attractive versus physically unattractive people? Why or why not?
51. How would you define the "self-fulfilling prophecy" in your own words?
52. How are social stereotypes related to self-fulfilling prophecies?
53. What is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy from your own life?