What is social information processing?
Social information processing is an extremely well-supported psychological theory that describes how we all think when we interact with people. Every time any of us have a social encounter with someone, there are five cognitive steps that are responsible for how we understand that social encounter and how we react to it.
These five steps include:
1. Encoding of social cues: we selectively encode some pieces of information in social situations and ignore other pieces of information
2. Interpretation of these cues: we interpret the intentions of others in social situations based on the information we encoded
3. Clarification of goals: we select a desired outcome from the social situation
4. Response construction: we access one or more behavioral response options from our long-term memory
5. Response decision: we choose from one of the response options and make a decision for how to respond
How does this relate to aggressive behavior?
People who have impulse control issues and react to things with verbal or physical aggression tend to struggle with the first two steps. That is, they choose to pay attention to things that may not be very relevant (step 1) and then they interpret that irrelevant cue in a biased way (step 2). This is known as a “hostile attributional bias.” They assume that the other person is purposefully being hostile toward them even when they are not. Here is an example to help illustrate:
Erin and Andy are watching a movie. Erin asks a question about something that happened in the scene. Andy pauses the movie and explains that the main character is returning to his house to pick up his friend. Erin is highly offended and begins to scold Andy. “Thanks for explaining the most obvious part in the scene. I wasn’t asking about that. What, do you think that I’m an idiot?” Andy, confused by Erin’s anger, explains that he misunderstood what she was saying and he never said anything about her being an idiot. “You didn’t have to say it, it was implied,” She responded. In this example, Erin assumes that Andy is deliberately being hostile toward her when that was not his intentions.
Why does this happen?
We all have core beliefs. These core beliefs help us to organize and make sense of information. Core beliefs our based on our past experiences and they shape the way we see ourselves, others and the world. They tell us what to pay attention to and how to interpret information. Also, these beliefs maintain themselves because they are continuously reinforced over long periods of time. We scan our environments and select the cues that further reinforce an existing core belief, while ignoring the cues that challenge that core belief. Let’s return to the example of Erin and Andy:
In the time that Erin and Andy have been dating, Andy starts to notice a pattern in which Erin often assumes that he and others are questioning her intelligence. In this case, Erin likely has the core belief that she is stupid or less intelligent than others. She, consequently, seeks out cues that confirm this belief (looking for cues that indicate Andy thinks she is stupid) and ignores other cues that challenge this belief and point to her being intelligent.
How can people change this way of thinking?
One of the key tasks in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is to address maladaptive or inaccurate core beliefs. This is not a simple task and can take weeks or months of intensive work with a skilled CBT therapist. With time and effort and through guided cognitive reasoning and skill-building activities, the therapist and client can collaboratively work to modify their beliefs about themselves, others and the world. Key interventions that can help someone change their core beliefs include guided questioning and behavioral experiments. Through changing maladaptive core beliefs, people will begin to see interactions with others through a less hostile lens.
