Impression formation II Flashcards
examples of social categorization
The shopping precinct
Christy Brown – cerebral palsy – not a lot of treatment at the time – became successful artist (painted with feet) and author
The skinhead and the businessman – run by the guardian
categorizing
Assigning objects/ people to discrete groups on the basis of common characteristics
Consequences can be harmful, but…
We can’t always do otherwise
why do we categorise I
“Thinking is expensive. It requires brain activity, which takes energy, and energy is a limited resource. More important, thinking takes time and attention away from other tasks like finding food and mates and avoiding cliffs and sabre-toothed tigers” (Macknik & Martinez-Conde, 2011)
why do we categorise II
dislike chaos
Every person (object) unique Information overload
Categorization = simplification
Categorization is a fundamental cognitive ability
Wouldn’t have any reference points
Make sense of indv members of category – understand behaviour– predict what they might do
initially categorise others
…automatically
…unintentionally – can’t always help it – may be down to methods used to test this
…effortlessly – how much cog resources used? - can do so with little attentional capacity – not easily overcome by info overload situations
…without any conscious awareness
evidence of categorization
We encode (translate into digestible format to be stored in head) on the basis of physical cues... ... e.g., age, race and gender (again!) – sometimes we just stop there – we don’t always then stereotype – don’t always go further than that
And bring into play the knowledge contained, i.e., our schemas or stereotypes
Devine (1989 study 2)
Subliminal (below threshold of conscious awareness) presentation (AA words - e.g., lazy)
Ps read ambiguous passage (target doing amb. hostile behaviour)
Rated target in stereotype-congruent way (regardless of prej. level)
What does this mean?
Correll (2002) the weapons effect
Participants played a video game - photos of young men in a range of settings. Half were Black, half were White.
Additionally, half holding a gun, the other half holding harmless objects (mobile phone, camera).
‘Shooter Task’ or ‘Weapons-Identification Task:’ participants to press button labeled ‘Shoot’ if man in photo was carrying a gun, or another button labeled ‘Don’t shoot’ if he was not (gut reaction).
Participants most likely to hit ‘Shoot’ when the person was black, regardless of whether they were holding a gun.
This ‘Shooter Bias’ reveals how accessible schemas can bias the interpretation given to social events especially when time (and processing capacity) are in short supply
Macrae et al. (1995)
Phase 1: Parafoveal priming (Woman or Chinese)
Phase 2: Video (Chinese woman reading book)
Phase 3: LDT – measure of speed of response
We belong to multiple categories – what happens when different categories to be made
what is a LDT?
Categorize
activate words associated with category
responding in line with category activated
words consistent with category
should be quicker to respond
more accessible
Macrae predicitions and results
Prediction: priming influences LDT
(see table)
Quicker to respond to words associated with prime…so what?
Some kind of inhibition – inhibit less relevant category
study 3 - lipstick/chopsticks?
Phase 1: (Video)
Phase 2: LDT
Prediction: lipstick -> act. of woman (inhib. of Chinese); chopsticks -> act. of Chinese (inhib of woman)
Do categorizations differ based on situation/more realistic setting
results of lipstick study
see table
the categories we activate are influenced by what is salient; those that are less useful are inhibited
Pendry and Macrae (1996)
Role of motivation in categorization (superordinate and subordinate categories)
Video (woman at work) Processing goal (accountability, clarity, height)
LDT (women/business woman words)
results of Pendry and Macrae
see table
More involved categorised at a deeper (subordinate) level
what is a schema?
A cognitive structure within which attributes are organized and relations between them are readily perceived
types of schemas
Person schemas (e.g. student)
Self-schemas (vs. aschematic)
Role schemas (doctor)
Event schemas (restaurant)
what do schemas do for us?
Facilitate process of impression formation - how?
Affect how we:
- perceive, notice, interpret info
Schemas can bias encoding of social information
encoding
how we translate what we see into a digestible format to be stored in our minds
when do we rely on schemas?
- Strong visual component (age, race, gender)
- Categories used or primed frequently or recently (porn movie and gender)
- For information which sticks out as novel or unexpected - i.e., salience (race schema)
- Information which is present early - people use primacy (Asch again!)
- We use schemas congruent with our moods
- When time is short or processing capacity limited
