We analyze the features of social cognition

The features of social cognition can explain how each of us, from day to day, processes a frenzied flow of information. Man is a social being and is constantly in contact with other people, through him we know the social environment and the world that is around us. The psychology of social cognition describes and studies how an individual can perceive, explain and reproduce the information received, processing its social aspects with the help of his thinking.

The formulation of cognitive problems for today is aimed at detailed studies of the detailed characteristics of the perception process and on the search for answers to such questions:

1. How does a person formulate his conclusions based on the information received about the environment?
2. Why do we pay attention to certain actions of some individuals, while ignoring others?
3. What are the features of social cognition that are aimed at the search, perception and coding of information?
4. How is the process of obtaining knowledge about surrounding individuals carried out?
5. What tools do people use to acquire social knowledge?
6. How do people manage to accumulate a lot of information about different events and other people?

When analyzing the psychological characteristics of social cognition, scientists focus their attention on the fact that there is one basic mechanism of cognition - this is categorization. It is it that carries stability in judgments and fixing information within certain limits.

It is impossible to understand the whole essence of social psychology if we do not separate out such a category as the object of cognition. It is what the cognitive activity of man is directed at: the object, process or phenomenon, that is, it can be anything from the environment around us. It is worth noting that it is around the study of the object and turns all social psychology.

The scientist J. Bruner outlined in this context the problem of cognition, which is related to the perception of each other by people, and called it social perception. This concept characterizes the integral and systemic perception by the individual of other living objects, namely: people, groups, different social communities. On the one hand, the question arises: how can knowledge differ between the subject and the subject? In fact, there are features of social cognition of how a person interprets the behavior of himself similar and the processes of the material world. For example, one who is perceived can not be passive or indifferent to the one who studies it. The object will always try to cause only positive and positive emotions, and an object or natural phenomenon simply can not do it physically, because it is not a living being.

If we continue research in this vein, it becomes quite obvious that some characteristics require a more detailed study of their influence on the final result of cognition:

- features of the object and subject of knowledge;

- Age, sex, professional specificity of social characteristics;

- intergroup and interpersonal mechanisms of perception;

- patterns of perception and cognition;

- the meaning of the first impression.

The peculiarities of social cognition can help us understand why we pay attention, for example, to the behavior of our best friend, but at the same time we do not care at all about the mood in this morning of a neighbor. Psychology is a very multifaceted science, but even it can not provide answers to all the questions that are associated with our consciousness and cognition, it will only be able to help and lift the veil, and all the puzzles a person is fully capable of guessing independently.