Social Cognition And Discursive Psychology And Social Psychology

Social psychology is a specific branch of psychology that employs a number of different theoretical perspectives in order to focus on the social nature of individuals within society (Augoustinos, Walker, and Donaghue 2014). Two examples of such perspectives that help do this are Social cognition and discursive psychology. This essay will critically assess both perspectives by both comparing and contrasting them in order to gain a better insight into their impact on social psychology.

Social cognition is a specific area of social psychology that seeks to understand how humans make sense of their social world and their role within it (László 2013). Having originally been founded from the concepts and methods of cognitive psychology, it is now

Unlike social cognition, it is a relatively new perspective and was initially formed as a novel approach to assessing issues within traditional social psychology such as the self, identity, attitudes etc. (Potter and Wetherell 1987). Discursive psychology is able to do this using methods such as discourse analysis which assesses how actions can be performed through the use of talk and texts i.e. an individual’s language during a speech (Potter 2011). In contrast to social cognition, discursive psychology views the role of language as key when assessing social interactions (Holtgraves and Kashima

One significant similarity is in the way that they interpret the data that is formed using their methodology. For example, social cognitive research uses categorization a means of interpreting results whereas discursive research is also very similar in its formulation of interpretative repertoires (Moss 2008). The social cognitive approach argues that categorization is a direct result of individuals organizing their knowledge of the world (Moskowitz 2004). This results in the formation of mental representations collectively known as schemas, which can influence behaviour both positively and negatively. Stereotypes are a group of schema and have been shown to impact upon decisions to harm others (Correll et al. 2002; 2007). This is because schemas can actually be incorrect and be externally influenced. For example, in Correll et al.’s (2007) study participants were shown numerous pictures of people of varying races in two separate conditions where they would either be holding ordinary objects or weapons. They were then given an option to shoot if there was a perceived threat and results showed that participants were more likely to shoot black people regardless of whether they were holding a weapon or not. This suggests that participants had used their schemas to categorize all black people as a