Attention and perception in the social environment

Social cognition refers to the mental processes by which people think about themselves and others in the social world.

It involves how we select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

Two of the most basic and fundamental processes in this area are attention and social perception.

Selective Social Attention

The social world is replete with an overwhelming amount of information. Our senses are constantly bombarded with stimuli from other people, their actions, expressions, and the context in which we interact.

Because our capacity to process information is limited, we cannot pay attention to everything simultaneously.

Social attention is, therefore, a selective process. We tend to focus our attention on certain stimuli in the social environment while ignoring others.

The factors that capture our attention can vary, including the salience or prominence of the stimulus (something that stands out), its relevance to our current goals or needs, or even our preexisting expectations and mental schemas.

For example, if we are looking for a friend in a crowd, our attention will be sharpened to detect their distinctive features.

Social Perception as a Constructive Process

Once we have paid attention to certain social stimuli, the next step is social perception, which is the process by which we form impressions and make inferences about other people.

This is not simply a passive reception of information, but an active and constructive process.

Our brain organizes and interprets the incoming sensory information (facial expressions, tone of voice, body language) to give it meaning.

This interpretation is strongly influenced by our experiences past experiences, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and, as we will see later, by the mental schemas we have activated.

For example, the same smile can be perceived as genuine or fake depending on our previous experiences or the contextual information we have about the person.

Social perception is, therefore, inherently subjective and susceptible to errors and biases.