According to Todd, Galinsky, and Bodenhausen (2012), social cognition usually results from the assumption every day’s life development is as a result of the cognitive processes that are sensitive to the changes in the social environment. The ability of an individual to detect, interpret and use social cues involves an adaptive behavior that responds to the social environment. Researchers in the field of psychology is in a constant research process to identify and understand how the mental structures and processes allow people to navigate their social worlds. The authors focus on the conception of persons by noting that knowing and understanding other people’s psychology is the foundation of social cognition. People can sometimes infer the psychological dispositions corresponding to the observed behavior regardless of the presence of a constraint, a situation which can result in bias.
Humans are capable of drawing the automatic inferences about other people. The authors draw their conclusion from the fact that specific species of animals can understand and process signals. People can form active reasoning and form inferences about others in their brain ( Steele & Aronson , 2018). The formation of social perception and understanding and processing universal facial and postural cues are greatly linked to an individual’s inner emotional state. Understanding the social cues and interpreting signals heavily rely on the mental state of an individual and revolves on the ability of the brain to process the cognitive signals. Recent studies have also linked the ability to understand the emotions of others to the neuron system. Observation of the emotional response of other people depends on the ability to activate the brain regions and process the signals through the cognitive process.
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Other than the transitory state of other people, social perceivers are more likely to understand and predict the course of social interaction. A variety of observable behavioral and appearance cues are used to understand other people. As one makes the perception of others, brain processes the information signals from the cues and interpret it to form a projection. Projection, therefore, plays a key role in shaping the perception of others as it helps fill the gaps when the cognitive process cannot create a perception of others. The authors also mention group identities as an important way of cognitively representing other people. There are readily observable features which can be used to categorize people by either gender, race or occupation rapidly. Once an individual has been cat4gorized into a particular social group, the association with the particular group gets automatically activated. The working memory of an individual will process and store the stereotyping through the activation of the brain. However, the activated stereotypes can result in information process bias. A stereotype can always create bias attention when the brain is activated. The social impression of other people is usually based on the initial automatic reaction that comes when the brain gets activated thus affecting the meanings of the activated stereotyped behaviors.
In conclusion, the representation of social perceivers plays a key role in guiding the behavior thus calling for more concern from the cognitive scientists. The representations influence the behavior by making people understand how the actions of others are constructed through a cognitive process in the brain. The social impressions develop automatically when activation takes place in the brain to form a memory of a specific impression. The active reasoning is involved in the planning, anticipating and understanding the actions of others. Remembering the actions of others and develop an impression or form a stereotype. Effective social interaction is based on the cognitive representation of the major areas of social interaction.
References
Todd, A. R., Galinsky, A. D., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2012). Perspective taking undermines stereotype maintenance processes: Evidence from social memory, behavior explanation, and information solicitation — Social Cognition , 30 (1), 94-108 ( https://psychology.uiowa.edu/sites/psychology.uiowa.edu/files/groups/todd/files/BT_2010_WIREs.pdf )
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (2018). Stereotype vulnerability and intellectual performance. In Readings about the social animal . Freeman.
