1. Social Cognition
(Chapter 3)
Dr. Bradford

2. Hypnosis- does it work?

4. Hypnosis Videos
• Hypnosis Video 1
• Hypnosis Video 2
• Hypnosis Video 3
• Hypnosis Video 4

5. Hypnosis
• Hypnosis was called animal
magnetism by Mesmer.
– Metaphors of gravitational
attraction + magnetic
attraction  ‘Animal
magnetism’
Anton Mesmer
• Sir James Braid coined the
term “Hypnosis”
– Metaphor of sleep.

6. Hypnosis
1. What happens in hypnosis is
determined by a group belief
system (aka “collective cognitive
imperative”)
– Hypnotized subject exhibits the
phenomena he thinks the hypnotist
expects, or, what he believes hypnosis
is.
2. Induction always involves a
narrowing of consciousness and
attention, usually to the voice.

7. Hypnosis
3. Hypnotic trance is more like play-acting or role-
taking
– No actual hallucinations
– “Paralogical compliance” (e.g. saying in English that
you speak no English)
4. Hypnotist as Authorization/Authority
– Hypnosis works better when hypnotist is more ‘god-
like’ or an authority figure
– Trust is necessary (one allows oneself, or
“authorizes” ones ‘self’ to be hypnotized!
– Those who are religious, and those who experienced
severe punishment as a child are more susceptible to
hypnosis.

8. Spirit Possession
• Jaynes theory explains the
persistence of spirit possession
across all cultures.
• Spirit possession in Haitian
voodoo was first captured on
film by Maya Deren in her
documentary Divine Horsemen:
The Living Gods of Haiti.

9. Charcot and Hysteria
• French neurologist Jean-
Martin Charcot (1825-1893)
used hypnosis to cure
symptoms of hysteria.
• Hysteria: typically among
women; feinting spells,
anesthesia (loss of feeling in
hands or legs), inability to
walk. Among men,
compulsions and obsessions.

10. Freud and Psychodynamics
• Young Sigmund Freud was one of Charcot’s
students.
• Under hypnosis, people could be controlled
to do things, for reasons of which they
were unaware!
– Today this is called post-hypnotic
suggestion
• Freud proposed that, like in hypnosis, we
can be guided by unconscious motives or
forces all of the time! We are all always
hypnotized!
• Psychodynamics: if a conscious force
cannot express itself, then it must be
blocked by an unconscious counter-force.

11. Sigmund Freud
• Freuds “Discoveries”
1. Linked Childhood to adult behaviors
2. Libido and infantile “sexuality”: infants
reach towards pleasure and away from
pain
3. Repression causes pathologies (e.g.
neurosis)
4. Morality derived from repressive
childhood upbringing
– Freud argued that ‘repression’ was a
necessary evil, the price to be paid for (1856-
progress (‘civilization’). 1939)

12. How well do we know ourselves?
• Why do we not seem to know
ourselves very well in many
circumstances?
• Answer: a large portion of the
human mind is “unconscious.”
• There are two views on the
nature of the ‘unconscious’-
the old, Freudian view, and a
newer version from cognitive
science, I will refer to as ‘the
cognitive unconscious.’

13. The ‘Freudian’ Unconscious
• Sigmund Freud was one of the earliest
and most influential proponents of the
idea of an ‘unconscious.’
• Freudian unconscious = all the bad
memories and experiences, mostly from
childhood, we have successfully repressed
and forgotten because it is a source of
psychic pain! (1856-1939)
• Repressed memories, however, resurface
as mental or psychic disorders!

14. Honest Signals
• Speed dating lasted 5 minutes. General preconception was that
men would be more indiscriminate, but they weren’t! How did
men know, in just 5 minutes, when the women they were talking to
would say yes also?
• Honest signal: “These are signals … that are either so costly to
make or so difficult to suppress that they are reliable in signaling
intention.” (2).
– Example: squawking made by hungry baby birds. Makes them
vulnerable to predators, but also makes their parents return.
– Male peacock; costly in terms of high metabolism, exhausting energy.
• Human honest signals:
– NOT smiles, frowns, etc. Because these signals are so frequently
planned, we cannot rely on them being honest signals. We need to
look for signals that are processed unconsciously or otherwise
uncontrollable.

15. Honest Signals
• Influence: measured by the extent to which one person causes the other person’s
pattern of speaking to match their own pattern. Subcortical structures involving
attention.
– Example: turn taking: ‘verbal pushing’, getting ‘grilled’ by questions’, verbal cues demanding
immediate response; good indicator of dominance
– unconscious: measured in millisecond
– Example: influence on speaking pitch: candidate who ‘sets the tone’ of the debate, wins!
• Mimicry: reflexive copying → unconscious back and forth trading of smiles,
interjections, and head nodding. Due to mirror neurons.
• Activity: more activity means more interest. Autonomic nervous system.
• Consistency: when there are many different thoughts or emotions going on at the
same time in your mind, your speech and movements become jerky, unevenly
accented and paced. Signal of mental focus. Greater variability, on the other
hand, means more openness to influence from others. Measures integration
within brain’s action sequence control system. Dancers and athletes show
smoothness and consistency resulting from training.
• Laughter: ancient signal similar to mimicry. Increases bonding and reduces
tension.

16. Human motivations
• Freud believed that humans had two basic
drives or motives:
1. SEX, and
2. AGGRESSION
• Most researchers today believe this list is
too short. Humans have 5 basic motives,
which can be thought of as adaptive
responses that our ancestors had to their
environments and which we have inherited.

17. Human motivations
FIVE FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN MOTIVATIONS
1. Acceptance- or not being rejected.
– We want to be accepted by those close to us, at least. This entails
being nice, sharing, cooperating, etc.
2. Belonging to a group
3. Influencing other people (power)
4. Protection- detect others who may harm us
– Because of this we react very strongly to being mistreated
5. Mate Selection and retention, intimate
relationships (sex)

18. The ‘Cognitive Unconscious’
• Cognitive Unconscious: (aka Non-
Freudian unconscious) = mental
processes that are inaccessible to
consciousness but that influence
judgments, feelings, or behavior.
• Unlike the Freudian view, which says that
the unconscious exists because of
repression, the contemporary view holds
that the unconscious exists simply
because it is more efficient for the brain
to delegate many mental tasks
(*including many high-level, ‘intelligent’
processes!) to non-conscious
components or ‘modules’

19. The ‘Cognitive Unconscious’
• Cognitive Unconscious: (aka Non-Freudian
unconscious) = mental processes that are
inaccessible to consciousness but that influence
judgments, feelings, or behavior.
Freudian Theory of Unconscious Theory of Cognitive Unconscious
Exists because the conscious mind Exists because:
represses anxiety-provoking thoughts 1. Consciousness has a limited capacity
2. Many unconscious processes evolved
before consciousness.

20. What is the Unconscious?
• Much of what we would like to see is
unseeable! We have no direct access to it.
• What does it do?
1. Learning: pattern detector
2. Attention and Selection: filter and search
engine
3. Interpretation: Translator
4. Feeling and Emotion: Evaluator
5. Goal-setting

21. How does Advertising Affect YOU?
• Why would companies spend over $200
Billion a year on advertising?
• Average American exposed to at least 3,000
ads every day.
SHAMWOW!

22. Subliminal Messages
• A subliminal stimulus is a stimulus that
cannot be consciously perceived.
– E.g. a word or picture flashed only 40 millisecond
(40 thousandths of 1 second)
– Limin (Latin) = “Threshold.” Sub-liminal = ‘below
threshold’ of awareness.
• Can the brain be influenced anyway by
stimuli that you cannot consciously perceive?

23. Subliminal Messages
YES!
• Subliminal images can elicit distinct emotions.
– Example: Disgusting images  people’s feelings of
disgust.
– Example: Images of smiling or scowling faces
altered people’s rating/evaluation or themselves.
– Among Catholics, when shown the Pope’s picture
they evaluated themselves less favorably!

24. Subliminal Messages
1. Affects are Real, but not strong enough to influence
feelings/attitudes about things they already have strong
opinions about.
2. To affect our behavior, the stimulus must be relatively
simply (e.g. one or two words, a single image)
3. Subliminal stimuli do not usually affect behavior, but
they might influence those who are already inclined to
do something anyway.
– Showing popcorn may influence those who are already
hungry, to buy popcorn at a movie theater, but not anyone
else.

25. Types of Thinking
Controlled Automatic
Thinking Thinking
(Conscious) (unconscious)

26. Vocabulary
• Schema- mental structures that organize our
knowledge about the social world (p. 49)
• Accessibility- the extent to which schemas
and concepts are at the forefront of people’s
minds and are therefore likely to be used
when making judgments…
• Priming- the process by which recent
experiences increase the accessibility of a
schema, trait, or concept

27. What we and others know (or don’t
know) about our ‘selves’
Johari Window

28. Johari Window

29. The Inference Ladder
Unconscious processes (steps 1-3)
1. Observable data: non-conscious mind manages
all of this through perception process
2. Select data: we produce lasting, memorable
patterns. Reality is a flow, full of variation. Our
mind leaves out lots of bits because it doesn’t fit
into our patterns or schemas. Our mind simply
makes stuff up! Plausability.
3. Our mind makes inferences of assumptions on
what the current moment is like, based on what
we remember/know from the past. We are
creating something that isn’t there! It isn’t
real! We aren’t in the present.

30. The Inference Ladder
Conscious processes (steps 4-6)
4. Draw conclusions about what is
happening (external situation), on
the basis of our invented internal
reality.
– This always involves a response to
surges of emotional energy as well
5. Adopt Beliefs about the world.
6. Take action (e.g. talk,
communicate)

31. ‘Century of the Self’ NOTES
PROPAGANDA, REICH, AND
BERNAYS

32. Civilization and its
Discontents
•Freud argued that Human Nature is
inherently violent and aggressive, and that
sublimation of these primal instincts is
necessary for civilization to continue.
•Sublimation occurs when primary sexual
energies are repressed, and then
redirected towards artistic or cultural ends.

33. Wilhelm Reich
•Student of Freud’s
•Contrary to Freud, Reich argued that
Human Nature is inherently peaceful,
loving, and affectionate. Rather than
repression and redirection of the
primary drives (sublimation) being
necessary for peaceful coexistence,
Reich argued that such repression was
the cause of violent and pathological
tendencies in humans. (1897-1957)

34. Reich’s “Discoveries”
1. Muscular and Character Armor:
– our personalities reflect in part the chronic
tensions we hold in our bodies
2. Primary versus Secondary Drives
– Our primary drives/desires are to reach out
towards pleasure, affection, and love. These often
get chronically unsatisfied or blocked, and we
develop secondary drives, like obtaining money, or
becoming famous, etc.

35. Reich’s “Discoveries”
3. Sexual Emotional Energy and “Function of the
Orgasm”
– His most famous and controversial claim was that
the purpose of the sexual orgasm was the release
of chronic in-built tension. The release of this
muscular “armor” (tension) would concur with a
psychological release of our character structure.
We would become more spontaneous and caring.

36. Herbert Marcuse
• Psychoanalyst, Sociologist, and
Philosopher; a leader of the student
protest movements in the 1960s.
• His most famous book is One-Dimensional
Man
• Agreed with Freud that some repression of
our instincts was necessary, but argued
that there existed in society surplus
repression, or more repression than is
technologically necessary to keep the (1898-
society running. 1979)
• Freedom is repressed through a process he
refers to as "repressive desublimation.”

37. History of Advertising
Edward Bernays
●The “Father” of Public Relations
● Nephew of Sigmund Freud
● PR was invented as "peacetime
propaganda.“ Bernays was
inspired by the mass persuasion of
the public during WWI.

38. History of Advertising
Edward Bernays
• Information does not drive
behavior.
•Bernays helped transform
advertising from a means of
conveying information into an art
of manipulation.

39. “Torches of Freedom”
●Bernays helped make smoking by
women socially acceptable
●Smoking was associated with
power and independence
●“Torches of Freedom” suggests
that to be against smoking is to be
against women’s right to vote!

40. Consumer Culture
• Advertising helped transform America
into a NEEDS culture into a DESIRE
culture.
• Consumerism is necessary to avoid
UNDER-CONSUMPTION: to grow the
economy, more stuff has to be produced,
which means that people have to buy
more stuff, which can’t happen if people
don’t desire more stuff!

41. Consumer Culture
• President Herbert Hoover’s
“Happiness Machines”
• Consumerism is necessary
for a healthy economy and
stable political order
• People must be made happy
and docile

42. PEOPLE WILL KNOW WHAT THEY
THINK ONLY WHEN THEY SEE
WHAT THEY SAY