Chapter 2: Social Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
-people construct their understanding of reality
-the mind actively selects pieces of info and organized these into a knowledge network
(How we think about and understand people in social situations)
3 motives influence choices:
- Need for accurate knowledge (collecting all the data and info)
- Need for closure (need to make a decision to move in with ur life)
- Need to confirm what one already believe
Confirming what we believe
People often believe info that confirms their existing views
Cognitive system
A conscious, rational, and controlled system of thinking
-slow
-effortful
-infrequent
-uses more energy
-one thing at a time
Experimental system
An unconscious , intuitive, and automatic system of thinking
-fast
-automatic
-frequent
-uses implicit associations (associations you have between 2 things bc of ur experience in the world)
-subconscious
-uses heuristics
Dual process theories
2 ways of processing information
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts
Loss adversion
Brain protects you from pain but it’s not the best decision for you
Implicit attitudes
Automatic associations that make up the experimental system (unconscious attitudes)
Ex: seeing a spider and feeling fear, it’s not rational it’s just how our brain reacts
Explicit attitudes
Attitudes people are consciously aware of through the cognitive system (conscious attitudes)
Automaticity
Performing behaviour without much conscious attention
Controlled reasoning processes
Need to use this to override the automatic routine that you have
Conditions necessary for an experiential system override:
- awareness
- motivation
- ability (takes energy)
Categories
Mental “containers” where people place things that are similar to each other
Schema
A mental structure, stored in memory that’s based on pattern of learned associations
Scripts
“Temporal sequence” - there is an order to how things happen
Impressions
Rather than an event, it’s about schemas that represent knowledge about people
How do schemas work?
-accessibility (how easy can someone bring an idea to consciousness and use it wo thinking)
-salience (what makes them accessible) (an active schema in one’s mind)
-priming (exposure to a stimulus in the environment increases the salience of a schema )
Associative networks
Models for how pieces of info are linked together and stored in memory
Semantic association
Concepts are linked bc of the word or from the same category
Experiential associations
When you experienced things together
Chronically accessible schemas
-personalities
-gonna notice diff things in ur atmosphere based on ur interests
-product if ur personality
Ex: suspicious person sees threat everywhere
Confirmation bias
We tend to seek out and evaluate new info so that it confirms what we already believe or feel
Self fulfilling prophecy
Schemas can create the social reality that one expects
EX: you go to a party expecting to have a good time, so you go in smile, talk to people, and you do have a good time
Mood:
A generalized state of affect that persists longer than the experience of an emotion
