Lecture 1 - Social Cognition Flashcards
Define Social Psychology
“The scientific study of the way individuals think, feel and behave in social situations”
What are the stages of the scientific method employed by social psychologists?
1) Hunches based of background knowledge/ previous experience
2) theory about social behaviour
3) Predictions derived from theory (hypothesis)
4) Empirical research to test predictions
5) Predictions either confirmed/ disconfirmed
6) Confidence in theory increased/reduced
7) Theory is rejected/ modified (if modified go back to stage 3)
What concept was invented by Gustave LeBon, and what year?
The group mind (1896)
What year was Wund’ts lab established?
1879
What school of psychology did Freud pioneer?
The Psychoanalytic School of Psychology
What book did Freud publish in 1899?
The interpretation of Dreams? - looking at the science of unconcious
What did early classical psychology shift to? In terms of looking at social psychology?
Cognitive approahces
Who proposed ordinary peoples ideas about causality?
Jones and Davis, 1965
Who proposed a cognitive model of how people interpret emergency situations?
Latane and Darley (1965)
Who proposed a cognitive model of persuasion?
Petty and Cacioppo (1986)
What method did JAnis (1972) use when studying group decision making during the Bay of Pigs disaster?
Archival research - biographical/ autobiographical media accounts
Define Social Cognition
The study of the cognitive processes and structures that influence and are influenced by social behaviour
What invention led to the creation of a new paradigm, exploring information processing?
The computer
What is the basis of cognitive categorisation
Schemas
Define the availability heuristic
The more available information is, the higher our estimations of its frequency are. E.g. the more crime we see on the tv, the more dangerous we think our neighbourhood is
Who came up with the concepts of cognitive shortcuts/ heuristics whilst thinking under uncertainty
Tversky and Kahneman (1974)
According to Festinger and Carlsmith (1959), what do we strive to achieve?
Cognitive balance and reduce discrepancies
Define cognitive balance
Where there is congruency between expectancy and outcome
What is meant by the term: The Naive psychologist/ scientist
People need to find causes/ explanations of their behaviour/events to make the world a meaningful place in which to act
Who suggested that people are intuitve psychologists?
Fritz Heider
Define intuitve psychologists
We look for causal and factual reasons for things
1) Our behaviour is motivated, not random
2) We try to discover stable and enduring properties of people and situations
3) We attribute causes for behaviour:
personal vs situational factors
Who invented the False Consensus Effect?
Ross, Greene and House (1977)
Define the false consensus effect
People see their own behaviour as typical, and assume that others would behave in similar ways to them under similar circumstances.
Outline Ross, Green and House (1977)
P’s asked to walk around campus for 30 mins wearing a sandwich board saying: Eat at Joes.
Those who agreed said 62% of peers would agree
Those who disagreed said 67% would also refuse
Who suggested that people are Cognitive Misers?
Nisbett and Ross (1980)
Define cognitive misers
People are limited in their capacity to process information, so they take cognitive shortcuts
Define the Gamblers Fallacy
If an event is happening less frequently, e.g. a coin landing heads up, we expect it to happen more frequently in the future - misconceptions of chance
What is meant by social thinkers being a ‘motivated tactican’
Individuals have multiple cognitive strategies available
- they choose based on goals, motivations and needs
