Ch. 2 - Social Cognition

Question 1

Social Cognition

Answer 1

The study of how people come to believe what they do; how they explain, remember, predict, make decisions, and evaluate themselves and others; and why these processes so frequently produce errors.

Question 2

Cognitive Misers

Answer 2

The idea that people try to conserve cognitive energy in decision-making by taking mental shortcuts whenever they can.

Question 3

Bias Blind Spot

Answer 3

The belief that we are more objective and less biased than most other people.

Question 4

Explanatory Style

Answer 4

Habitual pattern of explaining their successes and failures that affects their sense of control and emotional well-being.

Question 5

Confirmation Bias

Answer 5

We notice, remember, and accept information that confirms what we already believe, and tend to ignore, forget, and reject information that disconfirms what we believe.

Question 6

Egocentric Bias

Answer 6

The tendency to perceive one’s self as more central to events than one really is

Question 7

Spotlight Effect

Answer 7

The tendency of people to feel as though social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it actually does.
(We think people pay attention to us more than they actually do)

Question 8

Cloak of Invisibility Illusion

Answer 8

We may feel we’re in the spotlight when imagining how others see us, but we also feel that we notice and observe others more than they notice and observe us.

Question 9

Negativity Bias

Answer 9

The tendency to focus more on potential threats than blessings (negative stimuli are more salient)

Question 10

Loss Aversion

Answer 10

When given a choice, people are more likely to try to avoid loss than try to achieve gains.

Question 11

Ingroup

Answer 11

The group which we identify and feel we belong, see those in the group as unique individuals.

Question 12

Outgroup

Answer 12

A group with which an individual does not identify, tend to see those in the outgroup as more alike.

Question 13

Belonging

Answer 13

Our desire for stable, meaningful connections with others.

Question 14

Need for Control

Answer 14

The feeling that we have the autonomy and competence to direct our own actions and make things happen.

Question 15

Attribution Theory

Answer 15

A theory that describes the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviors.

Question 16

Causal Attributions

Answer 16

Everyday people’s attempts to understand why others act as they do, not as systematic as professional scientists.

Question 17

Dispositional Attribution

Answer 17

An explanation for someone’s behavior that has to do with the person’s typical personality.

Question 18

Situational Attribution

Answer 18

An explanation for someone’s behavior that has to do with the person’s situation.

Question 19

Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 19

The tendency to overestimate people’s behavior in regards to internal dispositional factors and underestimate the role of situational factors.

Question 20

Contrast Effect

Answer 20

An object appears to be better or worse than it is, depending on the quality of objects it is compared to.

Question 21

Social Comparison

Answer 21

Process by which we evaluate our abilities, achievements, attitudes, and other attributes by comparing ourselves to others.

Question 22

Priming

Answer 22

The use of subtle cues that direct our thinking; a procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been recently encountered or frequently activated are more likely to come to mind and thus will be used in interpreting social events.

Question 23

Primacy Effect

Answer 23

Information encountered first has more impact on impressions/beliefs than subsequent information.

Question 24

Heuristics

Answer 24

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently.

Question 25

Representative Heuristic

Answer 25

A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case.
Ex). People with tattoos are often stigmatized and perceived as less professional in job interview settings. Under the representativeness heuristic, a hiring manager might perceive a candidate with tattoos as unsuited for the job

Question 26

Availability Heuristic

Answer 26

Tendency to predict likelihood of event or judge how risky it is based on how easy it is to bring specific examples to mind.
Ex). People overestimate the risk of shark attacks because there are far more news stories and movies about them. As a result, images of shark attacks are easier to bring to mind. If you can quickly think of multiple examples of something happening, then you are tricked into thinking it must happen often.

Question 27

Affect Heuristic

Answer 27

When feelings shape our evaluations of people or ideas.

Question 28

Halo Effect

Answer 28

A bias in which our favorite or unfavorable general impression of a person affects our inferences about and future expectations of that person.
Ex). Pretty People Privilege

Question 29

Schemas

Answer 29

Mental models of the world such as stereotypes, mindsets, attitudes.

Question 30

Self-Serving Bias

Answer 30

A tendency for individuals to make dispositional attributions for their successes and situational attributions for their failures.

Question 31

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Answer 31

The case whereby people 1) have an expectation about what another person is like, which 2) influences how they act toward that person, which 3) causes that person to behave in a way consistent with those people’s original expectations.

Question 32

Social Identity Theory

Answer 32

Most important memberships in religious, political, regional, national, occupational groups feed sense of belonging and self worth and shape thinking about people in or beyond our group.

Question 33

Growth Mindset

Answer 33

Believe in human ability to grow and the commitment to self improvement.

Question 34

Reconstructive Memory

Answer 34

How suggestive questioning can influence memory and eyewitness testimony.

Question 35

Reconstructive Process

Answer 35

Memories most strongly influenced not by what actually happened in the past, but what we think about those events in the present.

Question 36

Automatic Processing

Answer 36

Unconscious (implicit) and involuntary operations that guide most behavior: well-learned associations or routes that mental systems perform effortlessly without awareness.
Ex). Reading

Question 37

Controlled Processing

Answer 37

Conscious, explicit, effort we make in dealing with novel problems.
Ex). Solving a complex algebraic equation

Question 38

The Default Mode Network

Answer 38

A set of interacting brain regions that are active when not directed to a task or focused on the outside world.