Soc-Psyc Chapt 3 Flashcards
What is social perception?
Social perception is the process of observing others, collecting information to form impressions and judgments (inferences), and using those judgments to guide attitudes and behaviors. Social perception also includes managing the information we reveal to others (Impression Management)
What is the cognitive confirmation effect?
The cognitive confirmation effect is when a perceiver selectively interprets, attributes, or recalls information about a person to fit their expectations about that person. This occurs even if there is no interaction between the perceiver and the person they’re observing.
How did Darley and Gross (1983) study the cognitive confirmation effect?
Participants watched videos of a fourth-grade girl and were given information suggesting she was from a high or low socioeconomic background. Half of the participants watched a second video of her academic performance. Participants then rated the child’s ability.
What were the results and implications of Darley and Gross (1983)?
Those who watched the performance video rated the girl’s ability higher if they believed she came from a high socioeconomic background. This showed that pre-existing biases can influence how we interpret information
What is a cognitive miser?
The idea of a “cognitive miser” reflects the fact that thinking requires effort, and we have a limited capacity for attention and complex thought at one time. This motivates us to save mental effort.
What are three goals/motives that influence social cognition?
○ The need to be accurate, especially when being wrong has negative consequences
○ The need to reach closure quickly, especially when under time pressure or when the stakes are low
○ The need to confirm what we already believe, especially when beliefs, values, or personal worth are threatened
What are the two systems of thinking in dual-process theory?
○ System 1: fast, automatic, uses heuristics, efficient, prone to bias
○ System 2: slow, controlled, effortful, limited capacity
What is a schema?
A schema is a knowledge structure that represents information about a concept. They are organized packets of information stored in memory that act like templates to integrate new information
Give some examples of schemas.
○ Self-schema: beliefs about ourselves
○ Person schema: beliefs about other people, their traits
○ Role schema: beliefs about expected behaviors in social situations or roles
○ Event schema/script: beliefs about the typical sequence of events in a situation
What is priming?
Priming is the activation of certain associations in memory, making a concept or schema more accessible due to a prior experience.
Describe the study by Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996)
Participants unscrambled words that primed them to think of rudeness, politeness, or a neutral condition. Then, they encountered an experimenter engaged in a long conversation. The dependent variables were whether the participant interrupted and how long it took them to interrupt
What were the results of Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996)
Participants primed with rude words were more likely and faster to interrupt the conversation.
What did Wenzel (2004) find about scripts in people with social anxiety?
Socially anxious participants generated scripts for social events that contained more negative emotions and cognitions than non-anxious participants. (effective tone)
What is a heuristic?
A heuristic is a mental shortcut used to make judgments or decisions. It’s not always biased, but it introduces the possibility of bias because it simplifies thinking
What is the availability heuristic?
The availability heuristic is the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event by how easily examples come to mind. (form of bias)
How did Schwarz et al. (1991) study the availability heuristic?
Participants were asked to describe either 6 or 12 examples of assertive or unassertive behaviors. Later, they rated their overall assertiveness
What were the results of Schwarz et al. (1991)?
Participants who described 6 assertive behaviors rated themselves as more assertive than those who described 12, and those who described 6 unassertive behaviors rated themselves as less assertive than those who described 12. This is because it’s easier to recall 6 examples, leading to judgments based on ease of recall.
What is the representativeness heuristic?
The tendency to judge the likelihood of something belonging to a category based on how much it resembles a typical case, even if it ignores base rate information. (a form of bias)
What is the base rate fallacy?
The tendency to ignore statistical information (base rates) when making judgments, favoring representativeness information instead.
Describe the study by Fischhoff and Bar-Hillel (1984).
Participants read a description of “James” that sounded like a stereotypical lawyer, even though the base rate suggested he was more likely to be an engineer. Most participants judged him to be a lawyer.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a perceiver’s expectations about a person lead them to behave in a way that elicits expectancy-confirming behaviors from that person. Essentially, initially false expectations become true due to the perceiver’s actions.
How did Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1966) demonstrate the self-fulfilling prophecy?
Teachers were told that certain students were “bloomers” who would show intellectual growth. These students, randomly selected, performed better on IQ tests later, likely due to teachers’ expectations and behavior toward them.
What is embodied cognition?
Embodied cognition refers to the link between our physical sensations and our thoughts and feelings.
Describe a study that supports the concept of embodied cognition.
One study found that participants holding an ice pack felt lonelier than those holding a warm pack (Bargh & Shalev, 2012).. Another found that nodding while listening to a message led to greater agreement than shaking one’s head (Wells & Petty,
1980).
How did Forest et al. (2015) connect embodied cognition to romantic relationships?
Participants in physically unstable situations (wobbly chair, standing on one foot, etc.) rated their relationships as less stable, satisfying, and committed
Overconfidence
Overestimation of one’s abilities, often leading to planning fallacies.
What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?
The Dunning-Kruger effect is the tendency for people who are unskilled or unknowledgeable in an area to overestimate their abilities. This is because they lack the knowledge to recognize their own incompetence
What did Anderson et al. (2012) and Kennedy et al. (2013) find about overconfidence in groups?
They found that even unjustified confidence led group members to perceive overconfident individuals as more competent and gave them higher social status, even after their overconfidence was revealed.
How do attributions affect our attitudes toward others, according to Weiner and Kukla (1970)?
Participants acting as teachers gave more rewards when they believed a student’s success was due to effort and more punishment when they believed failure was due to lack of effort.
How do emotions communicate attributions, as found by Graham (1984; 1991)?
When teachers expressed sympathy after a student’s failure, students attributed it to low ability. Anger led students to attribute failure to lack of effort. These attributions affected students’ self-efficacy (expectations that they could accomplish this task successfully).
Describe Dweck’s theory of intelligence (entity vs. incremental).
○ Entity theory: Belief that intelligence is fixed and unchangeable
- We can have a curtain capacity to learn/know (can’t exceed that capacity)
○ Incremental theory: Belief that intelligence can be developed and increased through effort
- We can build up our capacities – growing our ability to learn / know.
What were the findings of Blackwell et al. (2007) regarding theories of intelligence?
Students with an incremental theory showed improvement in math grades, while those with an entity theory did not. An intervention teaching the incremental theory led to improvement, especially for those who initially held an entity theory
What is the actor-observer effect?
The tendency to attribute other people’s behavior to dispositional factors (their personality) while attributing our own behavior to situational factors.
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to overestimate the role of personal causes and underestimate the role of situational causes when explaining behaviour
What is Fundamental Attribution Error also called?
Also referred to as the Correspondence Bias – because we tend to believe that a person’s behaviour corresponds to their personality (their behaviour is a reflection of their nature)
How did Schütz (1999) study the actor-observer effect in married couples?
In interviews, each partner in a couple was more likely to blame the other person’s personality for conflicts and to justify their own behavior based on the situation.
What is the belief in a just world (BJW)?
Defensive attribution
● Style of attribution caused by our motivation to avoid feelings of vulnerability, mortality, risk, blame. Etc.
“Just World Hypothesis”
The belief that the world is fair and people get what they deserve.
Positives: Holding this belief is motivational.
■ Helps us hope for a positive future.
● Motivates future planning.
■ Helps us maintain a positive self-view
Consequences: Holding this belief can lead to also believing that fortunate people are naturally good people.
■ Unfortunate people (the poor, victims of a crime) are either bad people, or somehow at fault for their situation.
■ Blame the victim, in doing so we maintain our BJW.
What happens to BJW when threatened?
If we hear something bad has happened to an innocent person (something nice happened to a bad person) –threatens our belief that the world is fair.
■ As a consequence of this threat to our BJW we may…
● Derogate the victim
○ Believe they have some bad quality
● Believe something else will happen in the future to ‘even the score’.
Three functions of BJW
● Motive
○ Belief in a contract between self and social environment – we behave justly because we are motivated by the social contract.
● Trust
○ Anticipation that we will be treated justly by others in the future (interpersonal trust).
● Assimilation
○ Provides a conceptual framework that facilitates the interpretation of new experiences (predictable)
What did Ucar, Hasta, and Malatyali (2019) find about BJW?
BJW was positively related to life satisfaction and perceived control, and negatively related to hopelessness.
