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Psyc231 > Chapter 3 > Flashcards

Chapter 3 Flashcards

1
Q

What is social cognition?

A

The study of the cognitive underpinnings of social thought and social behaviour.

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2
Q

What is causal attribution?

A

The process of assigning a cause to an event or behaviour.

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3
Q

How is Gestalt psychology relevant to social cognition?

A

Because it suggests that people attempt to understand events or behaviours as a whole by understanding their underlying cause.

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4
Q

What is the naive scientists approach?

A

Heider’s argument that ordinary people are scientific, rational thinkers who make causal attributions using similar processes to those of scientists.

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5
Q

What is parsimony?

A

The extent to which an explanation is simple rather than complex. As explanations contain more parts, the chances that one part is false increase.

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6
Q

What is the correspondent inference theory?

A

Theory arguing that people attempt to infer whether a person’s action is caused by internal dispositions, and they do so by looking at factors related to the action.

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7
Q

What is correspondent inference?

A

The attribution of a personality trait that corresponds to an observed behaviour.

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8
Q

What are the three factors in correspondent inference theory?

A

Did the actor have free choice?
Was behaviour normal or expected in the situation?
Did the actor intend the action to achieve something?

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9
Q

What is the covariation model?

A

A model of causal attribution, which argues that people typically attribute the cause of behaviour to a factor that covaries most clearly with the behaviour.

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10
Q

What is the covariation principle?

A

The attribution of events to conditions that tend to be present when the event happens, and absent when the event does not happen.

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11
Q

What is consensus?

A

Information about the extent to which other people react in the same way to a particular stimulus.

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12
Q

What is distinctiveness?

A

Information about the extent to which a person reacts in a particular way to a particular stimulus or reacts the same way to many other stimuli.

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13
Q

What is consistency?

A

Information about the extent to which a person reacts in the same way to a stimulus on many other occasions.

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14
Q

What are the three elements of the covariation model?

A

Consensus, distinctiveness, consistency.

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15
Q

What is discounting?

A

If there is seemingly no relationship between a specific cause and a specific behaviour, the cause is discounted in favour of another.

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16
Q

What is a causal mechanism?

A

The mechanism, or explanation for one variable causing another.

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17
Q

What is the fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias)?

A

People’s tendency to overattribute causes to a person and infer that if a person behaves in a particular way, it must be because of some underlying trait.

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18
Q

What is the actor-observer bias?

A

The tendency for actors to attribute their own behaviours to the situation and for observers to explain behaviours in terms of personality traits.

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19
Q

What is the effect of negative and positive behaviours on the actor-observer effect?

A

For negative behaviour, people invoke the situation for themselves and personality characteristics for others.

For positive behaviour, people invoke internal causes for themselves and external causes for others.

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20
Q

What is the motivated tactician?

A

Social cognitive approach that characterizes people as having various cognitive strategies to choose from. They choose on the basis of personal motives, needs and goals.

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21
Q

What are cognitive shortcuts (heuristics)?

A

Because they are cognitive misers, people take shortcuts that provide mostly accurate information most of the time.

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22
Q

What is the cognitive miser?

A

Social cognitive approach, which argues that people will take the least cognitively demanding approach to attributions and social judgement.

23
Q

What are self-serving beliefs?

A

The tendency for people to see themselves more positively (and experience more positive outcomes) than others.

24
Q

What is the self-serving bias?

A

Attributional biases that favour the self in order to enhance or protect the self.

25
Q

What is unrealistic optimism?

A

The tendency for people to see themselves as more likely than others to experience good things, and less likely than others to experience bad things.

26
Q

What is the illusion of control?

A

The belief that we have more control over the social world than we actually do.

27
Q

What is the false consensus effect?

A

The tendency for people to see their own behaviours, attitudes and opinions as more typical than they are.

28
Q

What is the false uniqueness effect?

A

The tendency for people to see themselves as more likely to perform positive behaviours than others.

29
Q

What is the ultimate attribution error?

A

Tendency to attribute positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviours dispositionally, and positive outgroup and negative ingroup behaviours situationally.

30
Q

What is the main difference between individualistic and collectivist cultures when it comes to attribution?

A

People from collectivist cultures tend to be more aware of the context and situation than people from individualistic cultures.

31
Q

What is person perception/impression formation?

A

The study of how people make judgements about others, and the information used to make these judgements.

32
Q

What is the configural model of person perception?

A

Argues that central traits play a greater role in determining the final impression.

33
Q

What are central traits?

A

Traits that have greater influence on how people configure their impressions of others.

34
Q

What are peripheral traits?

A

Traits that have lesser influence on how people configure their impressions of others.

35
Q

What is cognitive algebra?

A

Approach to the study of person perception proposing that people assign positive and negative valence to various person attributes and combine them to form a general evaluation of a person.

36
Q

What is summation?

A

Model of cognitive algebra assuming that the overall impression that is formed is the total valence of all the pieces of information.

37
Q

What is averaging?

A

Model of cognitive algebra assuming that the overall impression is the average of all the traits on display.

38
Q

What is weighted averaging?

A

Model of cognitive algebra assuming that people assign weights of importance to different traits in different contexts and form an overall impression of a person based on weighted average.

39
Q

What is the negativity bias?

A

The common finding that negative traits are weighted more heavily than positive traits.

40
Q

What is cognitive load?

A

Condition in which a task demands a person’s attention and thinking capacity, leaving little left for another task. T

41
Q

What is the primacy effect?

A

Bias in person perception such that people remember (and assign the most importance to) the traits they observe first.

42
Q

What is the recency effect?

A

Bias in person perception such that people remember (and assign the most importance to) traits they observe most recently.

43
Q

What is the associative network?

A

Memory model whereby ideas or modes are connected by associative links.

44
Q

What is the representativeness heuristic?

A

A cognitive shortcut where people are placed in categories based on their similarity or resemblance to the category.

45
Q

What are base rates?

A

Factual information about people and categories.

46
Q

What is the conjunction fallacy?

A

The tendency to pay insufficient regard to base rates due to the representativeness heuristic.

47
Q

What is the availability heuristic?

A

Cognitive shortcut where the likelihood of an event is based on how quickly knowledge or ideas come to mind.

48
Q

What is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?

A

Cognitive shortcut where inferences are influenced by initial knowledge or information.

49
Q

What is counterfactual thinking?

A

Imagining alternatives to reality.

50
Q

What is the confirmation bias?

A

The tendency to notice or search for information that confirms one’s beliefs and not notice (or even ignore) information that discomfirms one’s beliefs.

51
Q

What is stigma by association?

A

The tendency for people to devalue someone because of their association with a stigmatized individual.

52
Q

What is projection?

A

The process whereby people attribute their own characteristics to others.

53
Q

What is magical thinking?

A

Thinking based on non-rational assumptions about the ability of events to affect each other in ways that cannot be accounted for by the known laws of physics.

54
Q

What are the features that define whether a process is automatic or controlled?

A

Awareness, intention, controllability and efficiency.

Psyc231 (4 decks)

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