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Social Cognition


Social cognition is how people think about themselves and the social world. The study of the proud to be memental processes people use to make sense out of their social environment.

Individuality:  Individual differences are defined as the aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from other people.

Individual differences conforming in social situations:


Self-esteem is a person’s evaluation of their own self-worth

Self-concept how one imagines other people perceive them

Self-perception also influences how your perceive others and how your act on your perceptions

Person Perception:

The mental processes we use to form judgments and draw conclusions about the characteristics and motives of others

Personal perception is an active and subjective process that always occurs in some interpersonal context, which has three key components:

The characteristics of the individual you are attempting to size up

Your own characteristics as the perceiver

The specific situation in which the process occurs

Perception, Experiences, and Stereotypes

On the basis of very limited information, we quickly draw conclusions about the nature of people who are complete strangers to us,, how much of this analysis is a product of past experiences or stereotypes? How does esteem influence perception?

Aronson, E., (2012) The Social Animal(11th ed). New York: Worth Publishers
Myers, D., (2015) Exploring Social Psychology(7th ed). McGraw Hill.



  1. Based on these article and video Social cognition gives and evidence of explanation terms of how someone thinks and responds to one another in a social environment. Self concept is how someone thinks and perceives themselves. According to the video Existential is an example of child that they give us in the video. When we smile back to a baby, they smile back to us. On the other hand, the categorical self is like the example of a child that finally understands the differences between their age or their gender.


  2. There are distinctive categories we put ourselves in as we age overtime. The existential self is the most basic part of self-concept. With this trait, we can separate ourselves from others. We can identify that we are not the same, physically, as other people or other objects. This is the understanding and having awareness that the self is constant and consistent. Babies understand that they exist in time and space. This leads to the relationship they will develop with themselves and other in the world. Categorical self is the idea that person understand they have properties, like age, size, gender or skills. Young children usually categorize themselves with age and gender. As they grow older, they compare themselves and make evolutions with other people. Like categorizing themselves by careers. These are more developed categories.


  3. Daniel Villalta says:

    Social cognition refers to how people think about themselves and their social environment. As individuals our personalities is what makes us different from one another. Our own perception of ourselves influence how we act weather is thru the evaluation of our self worth ( self esteem ) or how we imagine how other people perceive us ( self concept ). Person perception refers to the mental process we use to judge and draw conclusions about others thru an active and subjective process that has 3 components, the characteristics of the other person, our own personal characteristics and the specific situation that is occurring at the time. We tend to draw quick conclusions about other people with very little information.


  4. Vicki Đỗ says:

    Broadly put, social cognition is human behavior that can be influenced or impacted by means of being around people. This theme looks into the different situations for specific behavior, emotions, and actions and how those things change when we are in the presence of others. From the video, the majority of us can probably agree that self- and social-identity is a positive thing. The two aspects that stem from self-concept are existential and categorical. Having a balance between these two implies that a person has general self-awareness, which is always a good thing. However, the downside of social identity can be prejudice. This is when we categorize people into distinct groups to boost our self-esteem. While is it typically beneficial to know who you are as a person, negative outcomes will result when you begin adversely pigeonholing others for the sake of your own self-esteem.


  5. Junior Belande says:

    This article talks about self -perception and self -concept which is the way someone perceive himself or herself and to become self-aware . Self perception is very important because it is the idea that we form about ourselves and defines us. I believe that self esteem is also very important because it can have positive and negative effect on our lives. We often hear that certain people have low self-esteem and does not does not give themselve a lot of importance. They let people treat them badly because they don’t believe that they are worth anything. In contrast, when people know their worth, it will help them in their everday lives. They believe that they can be who they want to and become what they want and work for it.


  6. Huong Lam says:

    Social cognition is the way people think about themselves and the world, when people interpret the information about the world around them and make it meaningful for themselves. For individuals, they have self-esteem, self-concept (self-worth, evaluate themselves) and self-perception
    self-concept has two aspects: existential and categorical (age, skill, gender, size)
    Self-esteem contains a degree of evaluation and we may have either a positive or a negative thinkings of ourselves. We evaluate ourselves and have things that we feel good and bad about


  7. fausto Mora says:

    In this small article it is explain us about Social Cognition and how our self stem, self concept and self perception is part of us that make us who we are and how we see others and the way we want to see then. This article has good definition of each one of then and how they are part of us, and how our perception is part of us too, and the way the we decide to see people and that can let to the stereotype a group of people, drawing conclusion of the group of people behavior and the characteristics that motivate each one of those people.


  8. Self-Concept refer to the the individual’s belief about himself or herself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.
    self-concept encompasses 3 things: Self Concept: Self-Image, Ideal Self, and Self-Esteem
    The view you have of yourself (Self-image)
    How much value you place on yourself (Self-esteem or self-worth)
    What you wish you were really like (Ideal self)
    The Videos explains that self-concept includes two different experiences of the self: first, The Existential Self , the sense of being separate and distinct from others and the awareness of the constancy of the self. And second: The Categorical Self that occur when the person becomes aware that he or she is also an object in the world.


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