Social Psychology - First Individual Journal - Social Cognition

Social behaviour is defined as a behaviour directed towards society. How we perceive these behaviours is dependent on our social cognition, which is the manner in which we interpret, analyze, remember and use information about the social world.

While having my vacation at Ipoh, Perak, I saw a group of heavy motorcyclists speeding down the road. It occurred to me on how social cognitions can come into play.

Why would these bikers engage in such a dangerous activity? Do they have any idea how easily they can lose their lives? Perhaps so. According to the availability heuristics, people base their judgements on the ease with which they can bring something to mind. We all know that riding a motorcycle is fairly dangerous, especially on a highway full of speeding cars. Fatal motorcycle accidents are always on the news, so we should know that it is dangerous, right? But there is a catch. The motorcycles featured in the news are almost all lightweight motorcycles. This means that when these bikers judge on the safety of this hazardous activity, what they have in their minds is that lightweight motorcycles are dangerous, not the heavyweight ones they are riding. In fact, heavyweight motorcyclists are more susceptible to fatal crashes as they are more susceptible to fatal crashes as they are more susceptible to fatal crashes as they are moving a lot faster than lightweight motorcyclists.

Another factor is the perseverance effect, the tendency for beliefs and schemas to remain unchanged despite of contradictory information. We have formed a schema about heavy motorcyclists as buff men, around 30 – 40 years old, and wears thick, heavily decorated jackets. What if someday you see a thin youngster, or even a woman in the group? You would certainly be taken aback. We may want to believe that he or she is not a member of the group, because what we see is contradictory to our schema. 

I learnt to relate social psychological concept to everyday lives and also strengthened my grasp of the concepts.