Lecture 2: Social Cognition Flashcards
1
Q
Social cognition
A
- Application of processes to social behaviour and interactions
- Brain like computer
- Automatic thought
2
Q
Impression formation
A
- How we form impressions of others
- Raw materials:
- -> Physical appearance
- -> Non verbal communication
- -> Attractives
- -> Familiarity
- -> Environment
3
Q
Impression formation: Raw materials = Physical appearance
A
-Halo effect = if display physical attractiveness, positive things associated with you
4
Q
Impression formation: Raw materials = non-verbal communication
A
-Draw info from non-verbal communication
- Ambady and Rosenthal (1993):
- -> Showed silent clips of lecture at 6, 15 and 30 secs
- -> Had to rate lecturer in terms of enthusiasm
- -> Found ones who watched smallest clips matched on to student evaluations at end of year
- -> No difference in accuracy between 6 and 30 secs
- -> Concluded those who saw small snippets of info can provide accurate info
5
Q
Impression formation: Raw materials = attractiveness
A
- Agthe et al (2010):
- -> looked at student scholarships and job appicants
- -> When applicant was opposite gender to person making decision, more likely to be let in
- -> Beauty privilege only world when opposite gender
- Parrett (2015):
- -> Criticises Agthe’s study
- -> Looked at tipping in restaurant
- -> Those more attractive earns $1200 more per year
- -> More pronounces when females giving to females
- -> Criticism = beauty premium doesn’t exist when control for ID = ID accounts for beauty premium
- Dossinger et al (2019):
- -> Don’t earn more, but given more opportunities that lead to higher earners as more visible in company
-Ugliness premium?
6
Q
Impression formation: Raw materials = familiarity
A
Moreland and Beach (1992):
- 4 women attended lectures
- Didn’t interact with others
- Took notes
- Other people in lecture asked to rate women on positive characteristics
- Found increased exposure meant people would rate them higher on more personal things
7
Q
Impression formation: Raw materials = environment
A
-How you display surroundings says something about personality
8
Q
Impression formation: Asch (1946)
A
- Presented list of traits to target population e.g. intelligence
- Was blank space = replaced with warm/cold (condition 1) or polite/blunt (condition 2)
- Asked ppts to evaluate target population e.g. happy/unhappy
- Found when added warm instead of cold, ratings went up for that person for positive characteristics
- Difference was less with polite/blunt
- Lacked ecological validity = re done by Kelley (1950)
9
Q
Impression formation: Kelley (1950)
A
- Introduced guest lecturer as someone who was either cold, warm, industrious etc.
- Students rater lecturer
- When described as warm, there were higher ratings, people asked more questions despite delivery of lecture not changing
10
Q
Configural model of impression formation
A
- Asch (1946)
- 2 qualifying series of traits:
- -> Central traits = main influence in impression formation
- -> Peripheral traits = less important
- BUT who decides what important central traits are
11
Q
Impression formation: titled introductions
A
Files et al (2017):
- Observed video archives about how professionals were introduced at conference
- Found females more likely to introduce speaker with titles
- Females introducing females = 97.8% used titles
- Males introducing females = 49.2% used titles
- Males more likely to be called by last name compared to females
12
Q
Biases in impression formation
A
Primacy effect:
- Early info has bigger effect
- Asch (1946)
- -> Presented positive and negative info over trials (counter-balanced),
- -> Info presented at beginning more important for IF
Personal construct:
- Have our own way of characterising and understanding people
- Butler (2007) = looked at US jurors, given tests and found they had prejudicial values
13
Q
Gender and racial stereotypes in impression formation: the workplace
A
Branscombe and Smith (1990):
- Students looked at photos and descriptions of candidates for job = manipulated for race or gender
- Gender = hiring choices based solely on photos
- Race = hiring choices based on photograph and trains
- Influenced by stereotype-guided processing
Rattan, Steele and Ambady (2019):
- Looked at competing stereotypes with student and employer sample
- Compared ratings of Asian American females
- Race or gender manipulated
- Both race or gender existed but one emphasised
- Found men rated women as more skilled and hireable when race was more important than gender
14
Q
Impression management
A
- Our concern about how we are seen by others
- Lyons et al (2018):
- -> How people with visible disabilities were acknowledged in interview setting
- -> Found intentionally managed impression of themselves to others by claiming positive aspect and downplaying disability (tone down negative aspect)
- Found cleaning positive aspects led to higher ratings of competence etc.
15
Q
Self promotion
A
- Form of impression management
- Talking positively about traits in order to achieve something e.g. promotion
- Most evident when not known to others/in competition
- Too much self promotion seen as negative
- When self promoting, other person needs to be cognitively perceptive
- High cognitive load means self promotion won’t work
- For women to self promote goes against stereotypes and not well perceived
