Chapter 8: Social Cognition Flashcards
What are stereotypes? Why do we have them?
Common social beliefs of a particular social group. We have them to help us quickly process information during social interactions.
The ability to estimate the age of someone by seeing their face ________ with age.
Decreases
Are older adults better or worse at judging the age of faces within their age group than younger individuals?
Better
How do older adult’s perspectives on aging differ from younger adults?
They have a more positive view of aging
How can believing in negative stereotypes about age negatively affect a person? There are 6 ways
- Reduces will to live
- Impairs memory
- Reduces health promotion behaviors
- Lengthens recovery time from illness
- Increases cardiovascular reactivity to stress
- Decreases longevity
What is the age-based double standard?
It is when a person attributes an older person’s failure in memory as more serious than a memory failure observed in younger adults.
How do perceptions of memory failure differ between older and younger adults?
Young adults view memory failures as more serious in older adults while older adults view memory failures as less serious in other older adults.
How do the perceptions of the causes behind memory failure differ between younger and older adults?
Both older and younger adults believe memory failure in older adults is caused by mental decline while memory failure in younger adults is caused by a lack of effort or attention.
According to research, how are older adults typically stereotyped across different cultures?
Warm and incompetent
What is implicit stereotyping?
Social beliefs that unconsciously affect our behavior
What were the results of John Bargh’s study of implicit stereotyping?
Young adults who were primed with an image of an elderly person showed changes in behavior based on their stereotypes. For example, young adults who were implicitly primed walked slower down the hall after the experiment than those who were not.
What was the Implicit Association Test?
It was a study to test implicit stereotyping. Individuals were asked to categorize faces as young or old and unpleasant or pleasant by pressing a button with their right or left hand. In the first part of the study, the right hand was associated with young and pleasant while the left hand was associated with old and unpleasant.In the seond part, the right hand is associated with old and pleasant while the left hand is associated with young and unpleasant.
What were the results of the Implicit Associaation Test?
People of all ages were faster to respond to young-pleasant and old-unpleasant trials than old-pleasant and young-unpleasant trials. All individuals unconsciously favored the young over the old.
What intervention stragety did Crisp and Turner create to help people change their implicit stereotyping? How do you do it?
Imagined intergroup contact. You imagine yourself having a positive interaction with a member of the group you have negative stereotypes of.
How has Crisp and Turner’s intervention stragety affected people? In what scenerios have there been greater results?
- People who use this strategy have been reported to have reduced bias towards those who they negatively stereotyped.
- Greater results can be seen in children and people who elaborate more on the details of the context their imagined interaction took place.
What is stereotype threat?
An evoked fear of being judged by a negative stereotype about a group that you belong in.
What were the results of Levy and Langer’s study on memory performance and attitudes of aging?
The results were that Chinese older adults (who have positive attitudes towards aging) outperformed hearing and deaf American older adults.
Why was Levy and Langer’s study controversial?
There were issues concerning the direction in which memory performance and positive attitudes were related, the possible education differences between the two cultural groups, and the language translation of the test from American to Chinese (hard to tell if it is the same test).
What were the details of Levy’s second study?
Levy primed younger and older adults with either negative or positive stereotypes of an older adult.
What were the results of Levy’s second study?
Older adults who were primed with negative stereotypes did worse on memory tests than older adults who were primed with positive stereotypes.
Self-perception of aging
Individual’s perceptions of their own age and aging
True or False. Middle-aged adults can be susceptible to older adult stereotypes.
True. If a middle-aged adult identify themselves with older adults then they may be susceptible to negative stereotypes and poorer performance.
True or False. Holding positive views of aging leads to bad outcomes
False. Holding positive views leads to many good outcomes like better health, well-being, and longer life.
What are the two frameworks that explain how having a postive view influences use?
Labeling Theory and Resilience Theory
What is Labeling Theory?
When older adults confront an age-related stereotype, they are more likely to integrate it into their self perception.
What is Resilience Theory?
When an older adult confronts a negative stereotype, they will choose to reject it in favor of a more positive self perception.
What were the details of Kotter-Gruhn’s study on self perceptions of aging and the effects of stereotypes on self perceptions?
Adults from a variety of ages were asked to indicate their felt age, desired age, and perceived age. Next, their physical health was then assessed by a health survey. Lastly, age related stereotypes were activated through a priming approach of rating faces with positive, negative, or neutral terms.
What were the results of Kotter Gruhn’s study before the priming task?
Older adults felt, wanted to be, and looked younger than they actually were. Younger adults wanted to be older than they were and older adults wanted to be younger.
What were the results of Kotter Gruhn’s study after the priming task?
- Older adults felt older regardless of positive or negative priming.
- Participants at all ages who were in bad health wanted to be younger after experiencing negative priming.
- All participants who were in bad health reported looking older after receiving a negative priming task.
What did investigators conclude in Kotter Gruhn’s study?
Negative images of aging have more powerful effects than positive ones in determining self perceptions of aging.
Emotional Intelligence
A person’s ability to recognize their own and other’s emotions, differentiate between emotions, and use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.
Emotional intelligence (increases/decreases) with age
Increases
Impression Formation
The way we form and revise first impressions of others
What is a common way for studying impression formation discussed in the textbook?
A common way for studying impression formation is to present information about a person to two groups of adults. One group gets positive info first while the other group gets negative information first. Then each group gets the opposite information and researchers see how older adults modified their impressions.
What were the results of the impression formation study for older adults?
When negative information was presented after initial positive portrayal, older adults changed their first impression from positive to negative. When positive information was shown after initial negative portrayal then there was less change in older adult’s impression.