Lecture 1 Flashcards
What is Social Psychology?
The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others
What is a Schema?
A cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or stimulus, including its attributes and relations among those attributes
What are Central Traits?
Concepts that have disproportionate influence on the impressions of others
Describe the Configural Model
By Solomon Asch
He described the professor to the students as either warm or cold, followed by other descriptive words. The Trait Schema of the students influenced their impression of the teacher to be more negative (cold) or more positive (warm).
There are 7 Schema Types, what are they?
- Trait
- Self
- Person
- Role
- Event
- Group
- Content Free
Describe a Trait Schema
e.g. warm or cold
Gives an idea about what someone is like
Describe a Person Schema
e.g. Tom, Laura
Idea of what an individual is like
Describe a Self Schema
e.g. student, future self
We see ourselves as different people at different itmes
Describe a Role Schema
e.g. lecturer
What we expect from people at different times
Describe an Event Schema
e.g. restaurant script
What we expect at different events
Describe a Group Schema
e.g. “American”
Stereotypes and Prejudice
Describe a Content-Free Schema
e.g. casual schema
Ideas about the way the world works
What are the three ways in which we know which Schema to use?
- Salience
- Priming
- Accessibility
Define Saliency in relation to Schemas
A property of the target that attracts attention e.g. depending on the orientation of the duck/rabbit image influences where the ears of the rabbit are and eye of the duck are positioned
Define Priming in relation to Schemas
A feature of the situation,. When stimulus exposure makes subsequent mental processes more likely and efficient.
e. g. depending on time of year (easter vs November) influenced whether children would record a rabbit or duck
e. g. Donald paragraph
