L08 - Social cognition Flashcards
What are the two needs that people are motivated by?
- Form a coherent view of the world
2. Gain control over the environment
What is social cognition?
- Social cog encompasses all thought processes that involve ppl:
- “The process by which people think about and make sense of other people, themselves and social situations”
- “The perception of others, self and interpersonal knowledge”
Why is social cognition important in medicine?
- Med deals with ppl
- A lot of people’s decisions are influenced by social factors - Social cog is v important determinant of behaviour
- Prov understanding of how ppl think and behave, which can then help us influence how ppl think and behave
What is attribution theory?
- Explanation for the CAUSE of events/behaviours
- Based on locuses of causality
What are the different locuses of causality?
- Internal/ dispositional locus
- Cause = internal to the person (i.e. personality, mood, abilities, attitude and effort
- Controllable - External/ situational locus
- Cause = external to the person (i.e. circumstances, actions of others, nature of situation, social pressures, luck)
- Uncontrollable
How would you describe ‘ability’ in terms of locus of control (LoC) in the attribution theory?
- Internal LoC
- Stable
How would you describe ‘task difficulty’ in terms of locus of control (LoC) in the attribution theory?
- External LoC
- Stable
How would you describe ‘effort’ in terms of locus of control (LoC) in the attribution theory?
- Internal LoC
- Unstable
How would you describe ‘luck’ in terms of locus of control (LoC) in the attribution theory?
- External LoC
- Unstable
What is Kelley’s covariation theory?
- Causality is ascribed to the cause that co-varies with the behaviour (how cause co-varies with behaviour)
What are the three factors in Kelley’s theory?
- Consensus - do other people do the same in this situation?
- Consistency - does the behaviour occur in the same way on different OCCASIONS (i.e. personality, patient may do smth that is out of the ordinary as their personality would not suggest for them to do that) ?
- Distinctiveness - does the behaviour occur the same way in other SITUATIONS (behaviour usual or unusual for tha person across all situations)?
What are examples of some different biases that can affect how attributions are made?
- Actor-observer bias
- Self serving bias
- Fundamental attribution error
- Heuristics
- Culture - Individualist or collectivist
What is actor-observer bias?
Tendency to attribute other people’s behaviour to internal causes, and attribute our behaviour to external causes
(basically hypocrite and making up excuses)
What is self-serving bias/ hedonically biased attributions?
Tendency to:
- Take credit for successes (internal attribution)
- Deny responsibility for failures or negatives (external attribution)
What are some examples of heuristics?
- Representative heuristic
- Availability heuristic
- False consensus effect
- Anchoring heuristic
What is representative heuristic?
Tendency to allocate a set of attributions to someone if they match the prototype of a given category (tends to be stereotypical)
What is availability heuristic?
Tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind (recent cases will bias your thinking) - ‘med student syndrome’