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Social Cognition - Social Cognition And Cognitive Mechanisms, Social Cognition And Social Knowledge, Social Cognition And Processing Goals

The basic goal of social cognition is to understand how people make sense of themselves, others, and events in everyday life. Research from the perspective of adult development and aging has focused on broadening the understanding of cognitive aging include how life experiences and changes in pragmatic knowledge, social expertise, and values influence age-related differences in how people think. In order to address these issues, one must consider both the basic cognitive architecture of the aging adult and the functional architecture of everyday cognition in a social context. Even if certain basic cognitive mechanisms decline (such as memory recall or how fast information is processed), older adults may still possess the social knowledge and skills that allow them to function effectively.

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Social Cognition - Social Cognition And Cognitive Mechanisms

In the mainstream social cognition literature, researchers use an information-processing approach to examine social cognitive processes. In particular, they examine how the accuracy of social perceptions can be impaired by cognitive load (i.e., attending to too many cognitive activities at one time). A heavy cognitive load depletes the resources required to devote the time necessary to make an acc…

Social Cognition - Social Cognition And Social Knowledge

In contrast to the influence of limitations on processing resources on social judgment biases, social cognition research also suggests that when strong beliefs and knowledge are activated automatically, they can influence social judgments in general, and invite social judgment biases in particular. Walter Mischel suggests that there are individual differences in the strength of social representati…

Social Cognition - Social Cognition And Processing Goals

Change in the relative importance of social goals as people grow older profoundly influences how individuals interpret and use social information. Laura Carstensen and colleagues suggest that emotional goals become increasingly important and salient across the adult life span. They have demonstrated that older adults pay more attention to emotional information in text, and thus remember it better …

Social Cognition - Stereotypes And Cognitive Functioning

Finally, the literature suggests that there is a negative impact of age-related stereotypes on cognitive functioning in older adults. Such stereotypes represent a set of socially shared beliefs about personal attributes and behaviors of older adults. Studies examining age-related differences in the content and structure of stereotypes find that older and young adults hold similar age-related negat…

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