Social Cognition in Psychology: Meaning, Factors and Personal Opinion

Running head: SOCIAL COGNITION
Psychology
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SOCIAL COGNITION 2
Introduction
Various issues make up the psychology as a topic. Every aspect has helpful content that
assists the reader on how he or she can freely interact with other people in society. In this
assignment, it is going to focus on social cognition as one of the exciting topics in psychology.
Under social cognition, the solution is going to elaborate the meaning, what other philosophers
say about the issue and finally give the personal position concerning the content of the topic.
Social cognition
Social cognition is a fascinating topic in psychology. It refers to the factors that help an
individual to feel that he or she is a member of a given social group according to Augoustinos,
Walker & Donaghue, (2014). An individual has to understand the world and what people do at
various points to enable them to react positively to multiple situations in life. For example, there
are signals that human beings use to respond to certain conditions in life. The symbols include
body movements facial expressions, sounds and many other messages that try to bring out the
position of the person towards certain conditions. Human beings may be faced with uncertain
situations such as disgust, fear, happiness among other case but everyone is expected to react in a
given direction expressing dissatisfaction of happiness towards that condition.
On the other hand, there are situations where an individual gets to know how to respond
to a given condition by looking at other people. For instance, if you consider a young baby who
is learning how to react in a given environment before that infant approaches a specific object, he
or she will look at the expressing of the mother in reference to Greifeneder, Bless & Fiedler,
(2017). If the expression in the eye is positive, the baby walks freely and picks at the material,
however, situations where the mother have expressed dissatisfaction, the infant makes a break. In

SOCIAL COGNITION 3
psychology, this condition is referred to us social referencing. The importance of such state is
that it shows people that they can learn how to respond through observation. Besides that, the
instruction is another way that people learn how to do various things. Education is better than
mere observation because in view, the person sending and the one receiving the signal should
know the signs. For instance, the child must have learned that there are specific signals from the
mother that gives an authority to go ahead with a task whereas others represent dissatisfaction
with the condition according to Wyer Jr & Srull, (2014). Smiling is one of the best signs to show
satisfaction with the situation.
Metacognitive process is a critical skill in social cognition. The term refers to a situation
whereby an individual can know the strategies to apply in different positions while solving a
problem. Apart from that, it also assists the person to understand what signals to use to ring out
the meaning of certain conditions. The components that make up the cognitive process include
memory, perception, and attention of an individual.
Factors that assist people to understand the world.
When people interact with the environment, Fiske, (2018) argues that they get varied
responses depending on where an individual is at a particular time. However, there are specific
components that assist people to take note of what is there and make meaning from the situation.
The first principal component is the eye of the individual. People use their eyes to see and send
the signals back to the brain for interpretation in reference to Donohew, Sypher & Higgins,
(2015). For example, when an individual has encountered a mango, the eye can assist him or her
to identify whether that mango is ripe of note by observation the color of the fruit. Another
critical part is the hand; it helps in touching and getting meaning from what the person has
observed. The hand is also an essential part of the body that human beings use to make signals to