Social Cognition

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

How social information is acquired,organised and used. Cognitive models of how with think applied to the social world. Goes into other psychological phenomenons : cognitive dissonance, person perception and halo effect

Question 2

Too much information for our short term memory. How is information processed?

Answer 2

salient features are categorised we can later infer information about stimuli without processing full data

Question 3

Prototypes

Answer 3

Cognitive representation of a category. Not all members of a category are identical. They differ.

Question 4

Compare categories and prototypes and give example

Answer 4

A category are instances grouped together as they share family resemblance, for example attractiveness.
A prototype is a cognitive representation of a category for example an image of a model is a prototype for the category attractiveness.
A category is a fuzzy set varying instances centred around on a prototype.

Question 5

Are prototypes always the average and are categories always hierarchal.

Answer 5

No prototypes can instead be extreme version of a category. Yes categories are hierarchal from very broad to specific

Question 6

What’s an examplar

Answer 6

A category can be represented as a specific instance the individual has encountered.

Question 7

What does brewer suggest happens when we become more familiar with categories

Answer 7

We shift from representing with prototypes to examplars.

Question 8

What does Judd and Park suggest happens when we become familiar with categories

Answer 8

We use both examplars and prototypes to represent ingorups but use examplars to represent out groups

Question 9

Schemas

Answer 9

Sets of related cognitions that allow us to make sense of a person/ situation /place based on limited information - fills the blanks

Question 10

Types of schemas

Answer 10

Person, role ,scripts

Question 11

Person schemas

Answer 11

Knowledge about specific individual

Question 12

Role schema

Answer 12

Knowledge structures about role occupants and what they do, roles are socially defined.

Question 13

Scripts

Answer 13

Schemas for situations. Different for different events . If you have no schema for that situation you feel out of place.

Question 14

What’s a limitation of schemas

Answer 14

Lead us astray : eyewitness testimony.

Question 15

What is a stereotype

Answer 15

Widely shared, simplified generalisation about members of a social group

Question 16

How does the process of categorisation lead to stereotypes

Answer 16

When making a judgment on a focal dimension (what our judgment would be with no influence of ourselves) we recruit any peripheral dimension that may be useful ( previous knowledge we have from our scripts) and this is categorised. This can create a perceptual distortion on the focal dimension. This also causes perceptual accentuation of similarities within and differences between social groups.

Question 17

What type of processing is schemas

Answer 17

Top-down. Uses prior knowledge rather than new information in current context

Question 18

What is the accentuation principe

Answer 18

Categorisation of stimuli produces a perceptual accentuation of similarities within groups and differences between groups.

Question 19

Who’s and what study first demonstrated the process of categorisation on stereotypes

Answer 19

Tajfel 1957;59) line study

Question 20

List some social cognitive models

Answer 20

Consistency seeker, naive scientist, , cognitive miser, motivated tacticians

Question 21

Consistency seeker (rationalising mind)

Answer 21

We are motivated to reduce discrepancies in our cognition - cognitive dissonance.

Question 22

Naive scientist

Answer 22

Later research showed we are ok with opposing cognitions. People hold theories about how the world works. Heiders attribution theory

Question 23

Heiders attribution theory

Answer 23

Our behaviour is motivated and not random so we look for motivatiors in others behaviour. This could be internal or external causes

Question 24

Cognitive misers

Answer 24

Using heuristics to solve problems ( cognitive short cuts that provide adequately accurate inferences for most of us most the time )

Question 25

Motivated tacticians

Answer 25

Multiple cognitive strategies available which they chose among the basis of personal goals, motives and needs. Viske and Taylor

Question 26

What are the criticism of social cognition

Answer 26

reductionist, neglect of developmental approaches, ignores biolology, ununified,