Social information processing (cognition)

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Social information processing refers to a theory of how individuals, especially children, establish (or fail to establish) successful relationships with society. [1] Studies show the parts of the brain which are active during the whole social interaction are the amygdala, ventromedial frontal cortices and right somatosensory-related cortex and others.

In a social situation, children match the facial expressions of anonymous people with memories of past experiences. This helps them perceive the mood or apparent nature of the person they have to interact with. Besides the facial give-aways, factors like body language can also play an important role in determining how to behave in a social situation. [2]

When children encounter a social situation, a series of mental operations takes place before they respond. First they perceive the various features of the situation and comprehend the relevant ideas. Second, they try to attribute the information to every participant. Third, they generate answers and fourth, they select a response to finally act out the behavior.

There are two general forms of information processing: emotion and cognition. This can be explained by emotions being based on motivation, and cognition on knowledge. This notion can explain situations in society as it reflects how individuals are influenced by one another. [3]

There are various social behaviors children process in sequence which include deciphering and understanding social signs, outlining goals, creations of response, decision of action, and behavior of action. This is the process model for children according to social information processing. [4]

Related Research Articles

Emotions are biological states associated with the nervous system brought on by neurophysiological changes variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioural responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, creativity, and motivation.

Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual. It may occur either reactively or without provocation. In humans, aggression can be caused by various triggers, from frustration due to blocked goals to feeling disrespected. Human aggression can be classified into direct and indirect aggression; whilst the former is characterized by physical or verbal behavior intended to cause harm to someone, the latter is characterized by behavior intended to harm the social relations of an individual or group.

Anger management Therapy for anger prevention and control

Anger management is a psycho-therapeutic program for anger prevention and control. It has been described as deploying anger successfully. Anger is frequently a result of frustration, or of feeling blocked or thwarted from something the subject feels is important. Anger can also be a defensive response to underlying fear or feelings of vulnerability or powerlessness. Anger management programs consider anger to be a motivation caused by an identifiable reason which can be logically analyzed, and if suitable worked toward.

Social cognition is a sub-topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions.

Fight-or-flight response Physiological reaction to a perceived threat or harmful event

The fight-or-flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It was first described by Walter Bradford Cannon. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, preparing the animal for fighting or fleeing. More specifically, the adrenal medulla produces a hormonal cascade that results in the secretion of catecholamines, especially norepinephrine and epinephrine. The hormones estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol, as well as the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, also affect how organisms react to stress. The hormone osteocalcin might also play a part.

In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions—judgements and assumptions about why people behave in certain ways. However, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality. Rather than operating as objective perceivers, people are prone to perceptual errors that lead to biased interpretations of their social world. Attribution biases are present in everyday life. For example, when a driver cuts someone off, the person who has been cut off is often more likely to attribute blame to the reckless driver's inherent personality traits rather than situational circumstances. Additionally, there are many different types of attribution biases, such as the ultimate attribution error, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and hostile attribution bias. Each of these biases describes a specific tendency that people exhibit when reasoning about the cause of different behaviors.

Bobo doll experiment

The Bobo doll experiment is the collective name for the experiments performed by influential psychologist, Albert Bandura. During 1961 and 1963 he studied children's behavior after they watched a human adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll, a doll-like toy with a rounded bottom and low center of mass that rocks back to an upright position after it has been knocked down. There are different variations of the experiment. The most notable experiment measured the children's behavior after seeing the human model get rewarded, get punished, or experience no consequence for physically abusing the Bobo doll. The experiments are empirical methods to test Bandura's social learning theory. The social learning theory claims that people learn largely by observing, imitating, and modeling. It demonstrates that people learn not only by being rewarded or punished, but they can also learn from watching somebody else being rewarded or punished. These experiments are important because they resulted in many more studies concerning the effects of observational learning. The new data from the studies has practical implications, for example by providing evidence of how children can be influenced by watching violent media.

School violence encompasses physical violence, including student-on-student fighting and corporal punishment; psychological violence, including verbal abuse; sexual violence, including rape and sexual harassment; many forms of bullying, including cyberbullying; and carrying weapons in school. It is widely held to have become a serious problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved. It includes violence between school students as well as physical attacks by students on school staff.

Social behavior Behavior among two or more organisms, typically of same species

Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an exchange of goods, with the expectation that when you give, you will receive the same. This behavior can be effected by both the qualities of the individual and the environmental (situational) factors. Therefore, social behavior arises as a result of an interaction between the two—the organism and its environment. This means that, in regards to humans, social behavior can be determined by both the individual characteristics of the person, and the situation they are in.

An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or non-verbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying "thank you," and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift. Individuals have some conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion.
Researchers in psychology have proposed many different and often competing theoretical models to explain emotions and emotional expression, going as far back as James Charles Darwin's discussion of emotion as an evolved capacity. Though there is no universally accepted theory of emotion, theorists in emotion agree that healthy humans experience emotions and express them in a variety of ways, such as with their voices, faces, and bodies. The cultural norms and beliefs of a society also affect and shape the emotional expressions of its members, and expressions appropriate and important in one culture may be taboo in another.

Relational aggression or alternative aggression is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status.

The negativity bias, also known as the negativity effect, is the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things. In other words, something very positive will generally have less of an impact on a person's behavior and cognition than something equally emotional but negative. The negativity bias has been investigated within many different domains, including the formation of impressions and general evaluations; attention, learning, and memory; and decision-making and risk considerations.

Emotional self-regulation or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. Emotional self-regulation belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

Self-domestication is the process of adaptation of wild animals to cohabiting with humans, without direct human selective breeding of the animals. Dogs and cats have undergone this kind of self-domestication. Self-domestication also refers to the evolution of hominids, particularly humans and bonobos, toward collaborative, docile behavior. As described by British biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, self-domestication involves being in an environment that favors reduction in aggression, including interspecific and intraspecific antagonism, for survival. Spandrels, or evolutionary byproducts, also accompany self-domestication, including depigmentation, arrested development, and reduced sexual dimorphism.

Emotional responsivity is the ability to acknowledge an affective stimuli by exhibiting emotion. Increased emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating more response to a stimulus. Reduced emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating less response to a stimulus. Any response exhibited after exposure to the stimulus, whether it is appropriate or not, would be considered as an emotional response. Although emotional responsivity applies to nonclinical populations, it is more typically associated with individuals with schizophrenia and autism.

Social competence consists of social, emotional, cognitive and behavioral skills needed for successful social adaptation. Social competence also reflects having an ability to take another's perspective concerning a situation, learn from past experiences, and apply that learning to the changes in social interactions.

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.

Hostile attribution bias, or hostile attribution of intent, is the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign. For example, a person with high levels of hostile attribution bias might see two people laughing and immediately interpret this behavior as two people laughing about them, even though the behavior was ambiguous and may have been benign.

Nicki Rae Crick was a psychologist and professor of child development and family studies known internationally for her research on relational aggression, defined as the use of relationships as agents of harm. At the time of her death, she held the position of Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychology at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.

Social emotional development represents a specific domain of child development. It is a gradual, integrative process through which children acquire the capacity to understand, experience, express, and manage emotions and to develop meaningful relationships with others. As such, social emotional development encompasses a large range of skills and constructs, including, but not limited to: self-awareness, joint attention, play, theory of mind, self-esteem, emotion regulation, friendships, and identity development.

References

  1. Reid Griffith Fontaine, "Applying systems principles to models of social information processing and aggressive behavior in youth" (2006)
  2. Fontaine, Reid Griffith (2006). "Applying systems principles to models of social information processing and aggressive behavior in youth" (PDF). Aggression and Violent Behavior. 11: 64–76. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2005.05.003.
  3. Lemerise, Elizabeth A.; Arsenio, William F. (1 January 2000). "An Integrated Model of Emotion Processes and Cognition in Social Information Processing". Child Development. 71 (1): 107–118. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00124. JSTOR   1132223. PMID   10836564.
  4. Crick, N. R.; Dodge, K. A. (1996). "Social information-processing mechanisms in reactive and proactive aggression". Child Development. 67 (3): 993–1002. doi:10.2307/1131875. JSTOR   1131875. PMID   8706540.

Further reading