Читать книгу Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett - Страница 115

Is thinking about people the same as thinking about nonpeople (such as objects, plants, animals, etc.)? In other words, is social cognition simply a subset of general cognition, or is it significantly different? People are obviously not things, but does it matter when it comes to mental processing? Social psychologists agree that people differ from things in several ways that have important implications for those processes (Jenkins & Mitchell, 2011; Mitchell, Heatherton, & Macrae, 2005; Moskowitz, 2005). Consider the following:

 People think back (and we think about their thinking). Probably the biggest difference between social and nonsocial cognition is that the object of our thoughts—people—are also social thinkers. Consequently, while we are thinking about them, they are thinking about us (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, 2013; Moskowitz, 2005). Since we are aware of their thinking, we begin thinking about their thinking, and so on. For instance, say you are strolling along the sidewalk and eye a stranger walking toward you. As you are looking at him, he glances at you. You can’t help but wonder: Does he notice my wrinkled shirt? My bad hair? Your thoughts are affected by what you think his thoughts are, and his thoughts are in turn influenced by his judgments about you. In this way, our beliefs about others’ perceptions of us affect our beliefs and perceptions about ourselves. Cooley (1902) called this phenomenon the looking-glass self, by which he meant that we see ourselves in other people because they are reflections of ourselves; we imagine how others imagine us, and this in turn affects how we think about ourselves.

 People have special relevance for our goals. Let’s say that, as the stranger approaches, you recognize him as the husband of your boss, whom you met at a recent work party. Since you are due for your annual job performance evaluation and you hope for a raise, you worry just a little more about his impression of you and what he may say to your boss. How he thinks about you is particularly important to you and will change how you think about and handle your interaction. More generally, encounters with other people have a special relevance for us, in part because they can affect whether or not we achieve our goals, such as getting a raise or doing well on a group project in class (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, 2013; Moskowitz, 2005). Not all people are equally relevant for us, of course; the greater their potential impact on our goals, the more likely we are to devote our mental resources to thinking about them.

 Thinking about people almost always involves social explanation. Virtually every time we think about other people we engage in some type of social explanation (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, 2013; Malle, 2011; Moskowitz, 2005). Perhaps you notice that your social psychology professor has not called on you for the past couple of classes despite the fact that you have repeatedly raised your hand and that she has called on you in the past. You may wonder whether she dislikes you or is not interested in what you have to say. This is natural, as all of us seek to understand why others behave as they do. We more commonly look for the meaning behind the behavior of other people than of nonhuman events, such as a flat tire or snow storm.

 We think more about people than about nonpeople. There are clearly important qualitative differences—differences in how we process social versus nonsocial information. In addition, there is a quantitative one: People think more about people than about objects, animals, and plants (Lieberman, 2013). Consider your typical day. How much time do you spend thinking about your friends, family, and other people? About things like your car, home, or textbook? Most of us devote much more effort to pondering the intentions, motivations, and behavior of other people, including partners, friends, coworkers, and even complete strangers (such as celebrities, athletes, politicians, etc.). Thoughts about people (including ourselves) dominate our consciousness and consequently impact our social experiences more than thoughts about nonpeople.

 Brains process people differently from nonpeople. The burgeoning field of social neuroscience has amply demonstrated important differences in brain activation between social and nonsocial cognition (Todorov, Fiske, & Prentice, 2011). As we discussed in Chapter 2, social thinking relies on neural regions that are not typically involved when we are engaging in nonsocial thinking (Lieberman, 2013; Mitchell et al., 2005; Parkinson & Wheatley, 2015).

Looking-Glass Self: Imagining how other people perceive and judge one’s self, which in turn can affect that sense of self