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psychology is that social behavior is purposive or goal driven. What, then, are its goals? For one thing, as Darwin has taught us, the overarching goals of any living organism are its survival and reproduction. However, since all normal human activity is ultimately intended to continue our gene pool, our discussion of the purposes of social behavior will generally focus on more immediate goals that themselves help to ensure survival and reproduction.

      Humans need to successfully navigate the physical and social worlds in order to attain the means to survive and reproduce. Such navigation requires the capacity to accurately assess the opportunities and risks that we may encounter. However, although it is important, striving to be accurate comes with a price: the expending of our cognitive resources. Deep, careful processing designed to maximize accuracy requires more mental energy than does shallow, rapid processing (Kunimi & Kojima, 2014; Petty, Cacioppo, Strathman, & Priester, 2005). Given that our mental resources are limited (Mandler, 2013), we must conserve them so that they are available for the tasks where they are needed most. Hence social cognition has the two interrelated goals of accuracy and the conservation of mental resources, and there is often a trade-off between these two goals (Andersen, Moskowitz, Blair, & Nosek, 2007). That is, accurate processing tends to be resource-intensive, whereas rapid processing requires fewer resources and may be less accurate (Andersen et al., 2007). We only want to devote as much mental energy as is necessary to be as accurate as we need to be, but no more (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989). For instance, the amount of mental energy you decide to allocate to studying for your next social psychology exam will partially depend on the extent to which being accurate (getting a good grade) or conserving cognitive resources (to spend on other activities) is important to you (Petersen, Skov, Serritzlew, & Ramsøy, 2013).

      In addition to the goals of accurate processing and conserving cognitive resources, social cognition serves the goal of self-enhancement or of helping a person maintain a positive self-image (Andersen et al., 2007; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Kruglanski, 1989). People want to feel good about themselves and consequently may interpret information in ways that can enhance their self-image. For example, people often blame other people or events for their own failures, thereby preserving a positive view of the self. This third goal can affect how we search for and process information, as we’ll see later in this chapter and again in Chapter 4. The next section introduces one fascinating feature of our mental systems: that we must believe information before we can even understand it.

      Understanding Is Believing: How You Cannot NOT Believe

      Have you ever sat in class and thought to yourself “I understand what my professor is saying, but I just don’t believe her”? Would you believe me, your textbook author, if I argued that in order to understand a statement you must first believe it to be true? If accurate, this would imply that you “can’t NOT believe everything you read” (Gilbert, Tafarodi, & Malone, 1993). Furthermore, if this tendency is real, it suggests another obstacle to separating truth from lies.

      In a set of clever studies, social psychologist Dan Gilbert and his colleagues have garnered substantial evidence for this rather surprising claim. In one study, Gilbert et al. (1993) provided participants with both true and false statements about two local crimes. Participants were informed as to which statements were true and which false, and half of the participants read these statements under conditions of divided attention, which required that they work on a different task at the same time. The crucial question was whether the false statements would influence the assignment of prison sentences. If the participants were able to identify and reject the false statements, then the false statements should not have affected the lengths of the prison sentences. However, when asked to assign prison sentences for the suspects, false statements that made the crime appear more severe led to much longer prison sentences, but only for the divided attention participants. The reason is that the divided attention participants were not able to ignore statements that they knew to be false. What this and related research has shown is that the mere act of comprehension—simply understanding a statement—requires believing, at least for a moment.

      According to Gilbert (1991), the decision to reject a claim by decertifying its validity and thereby declaring it false happens in a second step, following the initial comprehension and acceptance. The divided attention participants lacked the cognitive resources to “unbelieve” the false statements and were unable to move onto the second step and reject the false arguments. Therefore, only in retrospect can one decide that a statement is false.

      More broadly, Gilbert has argued that our mental systems must believe that a statement is true in order to comprehend it—to understand what it means. We can’t NOT believe it is true before deciding it is false. Believing is the default or automatic process that occurs upon comprehension. The controlled process—rejecting the claim—only becomes operative if the available mental resources are sufficient to make the extra effort. A good everyday example of this is a person—we’ll him call Steve—who always sets his watch ten minutes early. One morning at the coffee shop Steve glances at his watch and panics—swearing profusely about being late for class—but almost immediately realizes that he actually has ten minutes to spare, which is plenty of time to walk across campus. Steve initially “believed” his watch before he unbelieved it! The same is true when you hear your professor say that people automatically believe everything they hear—you have to believe the claim before you can reject it!

      Think Again!

      1 What does it mean to say that social cognition narrows or filters the world?

      2 As you sit in class or a coffee shop, take a minute and write down examples of each of the core components that you are engaging in.

      3 Think about what you did yesterday. What trade-offs did you make between accuracy and mental resource conservation?

      4 Why do people believe what they hear before disbelieving it?

      The Dual Mind: Automatic And Controlled Processing

      How many minds do you have? You probably think this a silly question and answer “One, of course!” Well, many psychologists claim that humans possess a dual mind—two minds in one. Evolution has given us two minds—one that we share with many other species and one that, by and large, we do not (Sherman, Gawronski, & Trope, 2014; Stanovich & West, 2002). These two minds or processing systems, called the automatic and consciously controlled systems, coexist in one brain yet seem to compete for control of our mental system (Evans, 2010; Evans & Stanovich, 2013). The primary distinction between them is that the former involves relatively little or no conscious awareness to operate, whereas the latter is largely conscious. The automatic system is, from an evolutionary point of view, both ancient and widespread, shared by many other animals. The conscious or controlled system, in contrast, is a relatively recent adaptation that is largely confined to the human species and, perhaps to a lesser extent, other primates (Corr, 2010; Lieberman, 2007b).

      A simple way to understand the differences between the two systems is to contrast sitting at your computer in your room typing a class paper with reflexively ducking to avoid being hit by an errant Frisbee on the college green. Completing the class paper requires considerable deliberation and planning and relies on the higher brain. Getting out of the way of the Frisbee occurs without forethought, is essentially an automatic response to an environmental stimulus, and is performed by the lower brain. There are several other features that distinguish the two systems (see Table 3.1). The controlled system is relatively slow and sequential (i.e., it performs one task at a time), rational (although not necessarily unbiased), capable of abstract thinking, able to tackle complex problems and future planning, and relies on the working memory system (Evans, 2010; Sloman, 2014). In contrast, the automatic system is quick, engages in parallel processing (simultaneously accomplishing multiple tasks), is intuitive, includes instinctive behaviors, is limited to narrowly defined problems and processes, and relies on implicit learning and memory. The automatic system is also more context dependent, which is to say that, as in the Frisbee example, it responds

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