2- Schemas and Categorisation Flashcards
How do we form impressions?
Based off very little information
What are biases?
Errors when forming impressions
What is information like in biases?
May be inaccurate but what we remember
What is the primacy effect?
The first information/feature we noticed has the strongest impact
What is the recency effect?
The last information we took in has the strongest impact
Which effect is more common when forming biases?
Primacy
What is the positivity and negativity effect?
We tend to form positive impressions, but negative info attracts our attention
How does physical appearance impact on us forming impressions?
We think that physically attractive people are also good
What are schemas?
Cognitive structures linking different cognitions
What two things do schemas help us to do?
- Organise social information
- Fill in gaps
What three things do schemas influence?
- Attention
- Encoding
- Retrieval
What are person schemas?
Person specific knowledge
What are role schemas?
Knowledge about specific roles
What are scripts?
Schemas about events
What are content-free schemas?
General rules for processing information
What are self-schemas?
Complex schemas about the self
What does schema application require?
Categorisation
What is categorisation?
The process of classifying some objects, events, people
What are categories instead of rigid/fixed systems?
‘Fuzzy’ boundaries based on a prototype
What is a prototype?
A cognitive representation defining attributes of a category
How does our prototype help us categorise?
We look at if something matches with our prototype to see if it fits
What is an associative network?
Nodes are connected by associative links along which cognitive activation is spread
What do we do with information when we come across it?
Information spreads and links to other information
How are categories organised in hierarchies?
Less inclusive at the top, more inclusive at the bottom
Why do we categorise?
It’s a fast way to think without using too many resources- saves us time and cognitive processing
What do categorisations reduce?
Uncertainty
What do categorisation provide?
Norms for understanding ourselves in relation to others, and meaning
What type of ability are schemas and categories associated with?
Innate
What happens to schemas over time?
More resilient and more complex
How do schemas become more organised over time?
We develop links between schemas
What are the three processes by Rothbart to change schemas?
Bookkeeping, conversion, and subtyping
What is bookkeeping?
We get schema inconsistent information, we store this and gradually change that schema
What is conversion?
An abrupt change in the schema by a large amount of schema inconsistent information
What is subtyping?
We form subtypes within categories
