3. Social Judgment Processes
Learning Objectives
• What is the negativity bias in impression formation, and
how does it influence older adult’s thinking?
• Are there age differences in accessibility of social
information?
• How does processing context influence social
judgments?
• To what extent do processing capacity limitations
influence social judgments in older adults?
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4. Social Judgment Processes
Impression Formation
• Declines in cognitive processing resources
might impact the social judgment process.
– Research suggests that we make initial snap
judgments and later correct or adjust them based on
more reflective thinking.
• Thus, age-related changes in processing capacity might
make older adults more vulnerable to social judgment
biases.
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5. Social Judgment Processes
Impression Formation (cont.)
• When forming an initial impression
– Older adults also use less detailed information.
• Due to deficiencies in memory capacity
• Older adults also weigh negative information
more heavily in their social judgments than
young adults do.
– In particular, older adults are more willing to change
their initial impression from positive to negative.
– But are less willing to change an initial from negative
to positive even in light of new positive information
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6. Social Judgment Processes
Knowledge Accessibility and Social Judgments
• When we are faced with new situations, we draw
on our previous experiences stored in memory.
– To do so:
• Social knowledge structures must be available to guide
behavior.
• Social information must also be accessible to guide behavior.
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7. Social Judgment Processes
A Processing Capacity Explanation for Age
Differences in Social Judgments
• Declines in cognitive processing resources
might impact the social judgment process.
– Research suggests that we make initial snap
judgments and later correct or adjust them based on
more reflective thinking.
• Thus, age-related changes in processing capacity might
make older adults more vulnerable to social judgment
biases.
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9. Social Knowledge Structures and Beliefs
Learning Objectives
• What are social knowledge structures and social beliefs?
• What are social beliefs, and how do they change with
age?
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10. Social Knowledge Structures and Beliefs
Understanding Age Differences in Social
Beliefs
• Does the content of our social knowledge and
beliefs change as we grow older?
• How do our knowledge structures and beliefs
affect our social judgments, memory, problem
solving, and more?
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11. Social Knowledge Structures and Beliefs
Understanding Age Differences in Social
Beliefs
• Understanding age differences in social belief
systems has three important aspects:
1. We must examine the specific content of social
beliefs.
2. We must consider the strength of these beliefs
to know under what conditions they may
influence behavior.
3. We need to know the likelihood that these
beliefs are being violated or questioned.
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12. Social Knowledge Structures and Beliefs
Understanding Age Differences in Social
Beliefs
• Age differences were found in the types of
social rules evoked in different types of
situations.
– The belief “Marriage is more important that a career”
increases with age.
– Compare with “The marriage was already in trouble”
(Figure 8.2)
• Cohort differences can be profound.
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14. Social Judgments and Causal Attributions
Learning Objectives
• What are causal attributions?
• What is the correspondence bias?
• How does the nature of our causal attributions change
with age?
• What alternative explanations are there for the
dispositional bias found in older adults?
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15. Social Judgments and Causal Attributions
Attributional Biases
• Causal attributions
– Explanations people construct to explain their
behavior
• Dispositional attributions
– Behavioral explanations that reside within the person
• Situational attributions
– Behavioral explanations that reside outside the
person
• Correspondence bias
– Relying on dispositional information and ignoring
situational information
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17. Motivation and Social Processing Goals
Learning Objectives
• How do goals influence the way we process information,
and how does this change with age?
• How do emotions influence the way we process
information, and how does this change with age?
• How does a need for closure influence the way we
process information, and how does it change with age?
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18. Motivation and Social Processing Goals
Personal Goals
• Personal goals play a major role in creating
direction in our lives.
• Selective optimization with compensation (SOC)
is an important theoretical model.
– Growing older causes shift in priorities.
• Re-evaluating interests
• Shifting priorities means goal selection may be
perceived differently by older and younger
adults.
• Goal selection requires that we thoughtfully
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19. Motivation and Social Processing Goals
Emotions as a Processing Goal
• Older adults avoid negative information and
focus more on positive information when making
decisions and judgments, and when
remembering events.
– Phenomenon is called a positivity effect.
– Emotions may impede information processing.
– Focus on positive information can interfere with
decision making by causing older adults to miss
important negative information.
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20. Motivation and Social Processing Goals
Cognitive Style as a Processing Goal
• People with high need for closure and an
inability to tolerate ambiguous situations:
– Prefer order and predictability
– Are uncomfortable with ambiguity
– Are closed-minded
– Prefer quick and decisive answers
• It may be that limited cognitive resources and
motivational differences are both age-related.
• Declines in working memory may be related to
need for closure.
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22. Stereotypes and Aging
Learning Objectives
• How does the content of stereotypes about aging differ
across adulthood?
• How do young and older adults perceive the competency
of the elderly?
• How do negative stereotypes about aging unconsciously
guide our behavior?
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23. Stereotypes and Aging
Content of Stereotypes
• A special kind of social knowledge structure or
social belief that represent organized prior
knowledge about a group of people that affects
how we interpret new information
– Young and older adults hold similar stereotypes about
aging.
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24. Stereotypes and Aging
Age Stereotypes and Perceived Competence
• An age-based double standard operates when
people judge older adults’ failures in memory.
– In this case, younger adults judge older adults who
are forgetful more harshly than older adults do.
– However, younger adults also make positive
judgments about older adults being more responsible
despite such memory failures.
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25. Stereotypes and Aging
Activation of Stereotypes
• Implicit stereotypes
– Automatically activated negative stereotypes about
aging guide behavior beyond our awareness.
• Implicit negative stereotypes can negatively influence
performance.
• Implicit stereotyping influences the way we
communicate with older adults.
– Patronizing talk
• Includes slow speech, simple vocabulary, careful
enunciation, a demeaning emotional tone, and superficial
conversation
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26. Stereotypes and Aging
Stereotype Threat
• An evoked fear of being judged in accordance
with a negative stereotype about a group to
which you belong
– Do negative stereotypes influence the cognitive
functioning of older adults?
– Middle-aged adults are also susceptible to negative
age stereotypes.
– Influence of stereotypes is not restricted to memory.
• Physical aging is also a negative aging stereotype.
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28. Personal Control
Learning Objectives
• What is the multidimensionality of personal control?
• How do assimilation and accommodation influence
behavior?
• What is primary and secondary control?
• What is the primacy of primary control over secondary
control?
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29. Personal Control
Multidimensionality of Personal Control
• Personal control is the degree to which one believes that
one’s performance in a situation depends on something
that one personally does.
• One’s sense of control depends on which domain, such
as intelligence or health, is being assessed.
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30. Personal Control
Control Strategies
• Brandtstädter(1999) proposes that the
preservation and stabilization of a positive view
of the self and personal development in later life
involve three interdependent processes:
– Assimilative activities
• Used when one must prevent losses important to self-esteem
– Accommodations
• Involve readjusting one’s goals and aspirations
– Immunizing mechanisms
• Alter the effects of self-discrepant information
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31. Personal Control
Control Strategies (Cont.)
• Heckhausen and Schulz view control-related
strategies in terms of primary and secondary
control.
– Primary control helps change the environment to
match one’s goals.
• It involves bringing the environment into line with one’s
desires and goals.
– Secondary control reappraises the environment in
light of one’s decline in functioning.
• The individual turns inward toward the self and assesses the
situation.
– Control strategies are what one does, actions taken,
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32. Personal Control
Some Criticisms Regarding Primary Control
• Cross-cultural perspectives challenge the notion
of primacy and primary control.
• In collectivists societies, the emphasis is not on
individualistic strategies such as those found in
primary control, but to establish
interdependence with others, to be connected to
them, and bound to a large social institution.
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34. Social Situations and Social Competence
Learning Objectives
• What is the social facilitation of cognitive functioning?
• What is collaborative cognition, and does it facilitate
memory in older adults?
• How does the social context influence memory
performance in older adults?
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35. Social Situations and Social Competence
Collaborative Cognition
• Occurs when two or more people work together
to solve a cognitive task
• Collaborating with others in recollection helps
facilitate memory in older adults
• Findings indicate that well-acquainted older
couples demonstrate an expertise to develop an
adaptive pattern of recalling information.
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36. Social Situations and Social Competence
Social Context and Memory
• Importantly, the social context can serve a
facilitative function in older adults’ memory
performance.
• Thus, it is important not to limit our explanations
of social cognitive change simply to cognitive
processing variables, but to also include social
factors.
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