29. Social Cognition

Question 1

Refers to the processes by which people make sense of themselves, others, social interactions and relationships.

Answer 1

Social cognition

Question 2

The initial perceptions of another person that affect future beliefs about that person.

Answer 2

First impressions

Question 2

Solomon Asch (1946), suggested that first impressions create a ____ of ____ within which everything else that is learned about a person is interpreted.

Answer 2

frame of reference

Question 3

A particularly ____ characteristic of first impressions is physical appearance, especially attractiveness.

Answer 3

salient

Question 4

Individuals who are physically attractive benefit from the ____ ____, the tendency to assume that positive qualities cluster together.

Answer 4

halo effect

Question 5

And even more important variable than actual physical attractiveness, however, maybe how attractive people _____ themselves to be.

Answer 5

perceive

Question 6

Individuals who perceive themselves as physically attracted report being more _______________ than those that are less comfortable with their appearance.

Answer 6

extroverted, socially comfortable and mentally healthy

Question 7

In which feeling attractive leads to behaviour that is perceived by others as attractive.

Answer 7

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 8

First impressions are essentially the ____ ____ people form when they encounter someone for the first time.

Answer 8

initial schemas

Question 9

The patterns of thought hypothesised to organise human experience – apply in the social realm as in other areas of life.

Answer 9

Schemas

Question 10

Schemas direct attention, organise encoding and influence ____.

Answer 10

retrieval

Question 10

We ____ schemas about specific people or types of people, situations, roles and relationships.

Answer 10

form

Question 11

People are especially prone to recall schema relevant ____ ____ – behaviours or aspects of a situation related to activated schema.

Answer 11

social information

Question 12

As in other cognitive domains, schemas guide ____ ____ about people and relationships.

Answer 12

information processing

Question 13

Thus, schemas can be very functional in allowing us to ____ some of what will happen in particular situations.

Answer 13

predict

Question 14

Schemas are essential for social cognition. Without them people would walk into every new situation without knowing how to ____ or how others are likely to act.

Answer 14

behave

Question 15

Literally means prejudgment, involves judging people based on (either positive or negative) stereotypes. Prejudice involves a persons thoughts or cognitions about another person or group.

Answer 15

Prejudice

Question 16

Characteristics attributed to people based on the membership of specific groups. Stereotypes are often overgeneralise, inaccurate and resistant to new information.

Answer 16

Stereotypes

Question 17

Do the roots of prejudice lie in ____ psychology (such as personality dynamics or cognition) or in ____ dynamics (the oppression of one group by another)?

Answer 17

individual, social

Question 18

Are the causes of prejudice found in ____ or ____ – in the way people think or in the way they want to think?

Answer 18

cognition or motivation

Question 19

Refers to behaviours that follow from evaluations or attitudes towards members of particular groups.

Answer 19

Discrimination

Question 20

Characterised by a tendency to hate people who are different or downtrodden. These individuals tend to have a dominant, stern and sometimes sadistic father and a submissive mother.

Answer 20

The authoritarian personality

Question 21

Authoritarian personality - As adults, authoritarian individuals displace or ____ their rage onto groups such as Jews, indigenous peoples, homosexuals or other people whom they perceive to be different.

Answer 21

project

Question 22

Authoritarian personality - According to the theory, children in such families ____ and ____ their fathers, but they would be brutally punished if the expose these feelings, so they repress them.

Answer 22

fear and hate

Question 23

____ has changed in the last three decades. Today, overt racial discrimination against ethnic minorities is generally meet with public disapproval.

Answer 23

Racism

Question 24

But, racism of a seemingly different kind seems to remain alive and well. Many people claim not to be ____ but in fact hold one attitude after another that ‘just happened’ to be unfavourable to minorities.

Answer 24

racist

Question 25

Another form of conflict is between ____ and ____ attitudes toward members of minority groups.

Answer 25

explicit and implicit

Question 26

Many white people have ____ negative attitudes toward people of different ethnic backgrounds over the course of their lives.

Answer 26

absorbed

Question 27

They often express non-bigoted explicit attitudes, but when acting or responding without much conscious attention, unconscious ____ slip through the cracks.

Answer 27

stereotypes

Question 28

Paralleling the change from old-fashioned racism to ____ ____ is a change from old-fashioned sexism to more subtle brand of sexism.

Answer 28

subtle racism

Question 29

Alternatively, they may learn to recognise their unconscious tendencies towards racist thinking and perpetually ____ their reactions to try to prevent racist attitudes from colouring their actions.

Answer 29

monitor

Question 30

When conscious beliefs and values conflict with deep-seated, automatic negative stereotypes, people may alternate between extreme positions, either laying ____ ____ at the feet of members of devalued groups or refusing to hold them ____ for their behaviour.

Answer 30

excessive blame, accountable

Question 31

Duckitt (2001, 2002) suggests that prejudice is based in early ____ ____.

Answer 31

learning experiences

Question 32

Duckitts ____ ____ predicts that social situations impact on ideological beliefs through changing peoples worldviews and ideological attitudes.

Answer 32

causal model

Question 33

According to this model, social situations and personality (e.g. tough-mindedness and social conformity) each influence an individuals’ ____ – the extent to which people view the world as dangerous or competitive.

Answer 33

worldviews

Question 34

These two worldviews and personality dimensions then impact on ____ ____ (e.g. authoritarianism and social dominance).

Answer 34

ideological attitudes

Question 35

Prejudice is indeed _____ from one generation to the next, and it takes hold early.

Answer 35

transmitted

Question 36

Children show signs of prejudice by age ____ or ____.

Answer 36

four or five

Question 37

Suppressing a stereotype, however, can lead to ____ effects, in which the person later responds even more stereotypically.

Answer 37

rebound

Question 38

Such culturally patterned associations can later make ____ ____ difficult for adolescent members of devalued groups, who must somehow integrate a positive view of themselves with negative stereotypes that others hold of them.

Answer 38

identity formation

Question 39

Many theorists have argued that prejudiced social attitudes serve a function. They preserve the interests of the ____ classes.

Answer 39

dominant

Question 40

Children from both minority and majority subcultures tend to express preferences towards the majority culture by the ____ years.

Answer 40

preschool

Question 41

One process that intensifies stereotyping is that people tend to perceive members of outgroups as much more ____ than they really are and to emphasise the individuality of ingroup members.

Answer 41

homogeneous

Question 42

Thus, people of other races ‘all look alike’, and are seen to share many core ____ – which is highly unlikely, given the tremendous differences in personality that exist within any group of people.

Answer 42

traits

Question 43

Another form of subtle racism or group antagonism may lie less in the ‘presence’ of hostile feelings than in the ‘____’ of the positive feelings that normally blind people together and lead them to help each other.

Answer 43

absence

Question 44

Prejudice requires a distinction between ____ and ____ – people who belong to the group and those who do not.

Answer 44

Ingroups and outgroups

Question 45

From a ____ point of view, casting ingroup members in a positive light gives you a positive glow as a member of the group.

Answer 45

motivational

Question 46

The readiness to create and act on ingroup–outgroup distinctions probably rests on both motivational and cognitive ____.

Answer 46

processes

Question 47

Suggests that people derive part of their identity from the groups to which they belong.

Answer 47

Social identity theory

Question 48

Goals requiring the groups to cooperate for the benefit of all.

Answer 48

Superordinate goals

Question 49

Researchers conclude that ____ alone is not enough to reduce conflict; the contract must also involve corporation.

Answer 49

contact

Question 50

From a ____ perspective, ingroup effects reflect our continuous and automatic efforts to categorise and schematise information.

Answer 50

cognitive

Question 51

Other factors also ____ whether contact leads to increased tolerance or animosity.

Answer 51

influence

Question 52

Tolerance or animosity - (1) individuals must have the opportunity to get to know one another all ____ basis, as in sports teams and musical groups, and have relatively equal status.

Answer 52

one-to-one

Question 53

Tolerance or animosity - (2) people from different groups also need to have enough ____ values, beliefs, interests, culture and skills so that interactions dissolve stereotypes rather than confirm them.

Answer 53

shared

Question 54

Unfortunately, members of cultures and subcultures often differ on precisely these things, so these characteristics increase the need for superordinate goals and shared or complimentary skills that ____ differences and emphasise commonalities.

Answer 54

de-emphasise

Question 55

Attribution plays a central role in virtually every ____ ____.

Answer 55

social encounter

Question 56

Bernard Weiner (1992, 1995) proposed a model of ____ with three elements.

Answer 56

attribution

Question 57

Attribution - (1) people seek to ____ why certain events happened.

Answer 57

understand

Question 58

The process of inferring the causes of one’s own and others mental states and behaviours is called ____.

Answer 58

Attribution

Question 59

Attribution - (2) people attribute the outcome to a ____.

Answer 59

cause

Question 60

Attribution - (3) people base their ____ behaviour on the attributions that they make.

Answer 60

future

Question 61

In other words they ____ the extent to which the presence of one variable predicts the presence of another – that is, whether the two variables co-vary.

Answer 61

assess

Question 62

According to one view, when people make attributions, they are behaving like ____ ____.

Answer 62

intuitive scientists

Question 63

People attribute causes by ____ the covariation of situations, behaviour and specific people.

Answer 63

observing

Question 64

Understanding other people’s behaviour requires figuring out when their actions reflect the demands of the situation, aspects of their personalities (often called personality dispositions) or ____ between the two (the ways specific people behave in a particular situation).

Answer 64

interactions

Question 65

They rely on intuitive theories, frame hypotheses, collect data about themselves and others, and draw conclusions as ____ ____ ___ based on the pattern of data they have observed.

Answer 65

best they can

Question 66

Attributions to the person.

Answer 66

Internal attributions

Question 67

In making attributions, people rely on three types of ____: consensus, consistency and distinctiveness.

Answer 67

information

Question 68

Refers to the way most people respond.

Answer 68

Consensus

Question 69

Attributions to the situation.

Answer 69

External attributions

Question 70

Refers to the individuals likelihood to respond in this way to many different stimuli.

Answer 70

Distinctiveness

Question 71

Refers to the extent to which a person always responds in the same way to the same stimulus.

Answer 71

Consistency

Question 72

Occurs when people downplay (discount) the role of one variable because they know that others may be contributing to the behaviour in question.

Answer 72

Discounting

Question 73

Part of the difficulty in making accurate attributions is that most actions have ____ ____, some situational and some dispositional. And deciding how much to credit or blame a person, people generally adjust for the strength of situation demands through two processes, discounting and augmentation.

Answer 73

multiple causes

Question 74

Making a attribution is typically a three step process.

(1) people ____ the behaviour they have observed.
(2) based on the way they have ____ the behaviour, they categorise the persons personality.
(3) if the situation seems to have elicited or contributed to the behaviour, they may ____ the attribution of hostility.

Answer 74

categorise, interpreted, discount

Question 75

A person’s habitual manner of assigning causes to behaviours or events is referred to as his ____ ____.

Answer 75

attributional style

Question 76

Increasing (augmenting) an internal attribution for behaviour that has occurred despite situational demands.

Answer 76

Augmentation

Question 77

The fundamental attribution error occurs primarily when explaining ____ behaviour.

Answer 77

others

Question 78

When explaining our own behaviour, we are far more likely to look for causes ____ ourselves.

Answer 78

outside

Question 79

One of the most pervasive biases in social cognition, the ____ ____ ____, is the tendency to assume that other people’s behaviour corresponds to their internal states rather than external situations – that is, to attribute behaviours to peoples personalities and to ignore possible situational causes.

Answer 79

Fundamental attribution error

Question 80

Furthermore the degree to which the fundamental attribution error occurs depends on which ____ is being observed.

Answer 80

culture

Question 81

The self-serving bias takes a number of forms.

Self-serving bias (1) The majority of people rate themselves as ____ average on most dimensions.

Answer 81

above

Question 82

Another pervasive bias in social cognition is the ____ ____ ____, in which people tend to see themselves in a more positive light the others see them.

Answer 82

Self-serving bias

Question 83

Self-serving bias (2) People are also more likely to recall ____ than negative information about themselves and to see their talents as more striking and unusual than their deficiencies.

Answer 83

positive

Question 84

Self-serving bias (3) In addition, they attributed greater ____ to themselves for a group product than other group members attribute to them and assume that they are less driven by self interest than those around them.

Answer 84

responsibility

Question 85

Heuristics can lead to biases in social thinking, as in when people assume that all politicians are crooks because of some salient (most notable) examples that come to mind (the availability heuristic).

Answer 85

COGNITIVE BIASES

Question 86

____ can lead people awry, but they are essential to everyday functioning, because they allow us to make decisions and judgements rapidly and without conscious reflection. People frequently lack that time or information they need to make accurate attributions, should they do the best they can.

Answer 86

Heuristics

Question 87

Other biases reflect motivation. Schemas and attributions are influenced by wishes, needs and goals.

Answer 87

MOTIVATIONAL BIASES

Question 88

Self-serving bias (4) Finally, people take credit for their successes and attribute failure to ____, situational factors.

Answer 88

external

Question 89

Differences between social and non-social cognition.
(1) A person observing a social interaction is almost always ____ the most relevant data: the unspoken intentions, thoughts and feelings of the people involved. Because observers of a social interaction have access only to behaviours, they must infer what those behaviours mean.

Answer 89

missing

Question 90

Differences between social and non-social cognition.

(2) Social cognition is inherently intertwined with ____. People either like or dislike their roommate.

Answer 90

emotion

Question 91

The tendency to see information that confirms ones hypotheses.

Answer 91

CONFIRMATION BIAS

Question 92

Social cognition is inherently infused with cultural ____ ____ because categories (such as men, nurses or doctors) carry with them implications for how people who fit them should behave.

Answer 92

value judgements

Question 93

Differences between social and non-social cognition.
(3) Although culture influences many cognitive processes, such as categorisation, it plays a particularly ____ while in social cognition.

Answer 93

important