Social Cognition 1 Flashcards
What is social cognition?
The study of how people come to believe what they do
Inner processes serve what interpersonal functions? (2)
Social acceptance, relationship formation, and maintenance
Competing against others for our goals
What is introspection? How often do we do this?
What do we use instead to help us know why things happen?
Looking inward to examine own thoughts, feelings, and motives
We don’t do this often bcuz we tend to stick to a process once it works for us, even if it’s not the best
Temporal info and learning/conditioning from our culture/upbringing
- We use heuristics to match our present situation to past situations even tho they aren’t exactly the same
What is the self-perception theory by Bem? How do people gain insight when internal cues are difficult to interpret?
We learn about others by observing their behav
By observing their own behav (typically in past to understand why they behaved that way)
Why do we have built in biases?
Helpful in keeping us accurate
But may also end up keeping the illusion that we’re accurate just to keep our self-esteem up
What is bias blind spot?
Why do we tend to do this?
Bias that we’re more objective and less biased than others
We know the context of our own behav and can make excuses when we’re not introspective enough
But we miss the full context when we see others
What is naive realism?
Belief that we see the world as it is, viewing it objectively
And that ppl who disagree must be misinformed
What is confirmation bias?
Belief perseverance bias?
Tendency to seek evidence that supports our hypothesis while neglecting/distorting contradicting evidence
- Usually by focusing on extremes instead of avgs
Even if shown something contradicting to your belief, you will continue to think your belief is the correct one
What is the ego-centric bias? What is the self-referential effect?
What is the difference between the spotlight effect and the cloak of invisibility?
Tendency to place ourselves in the center of our own universe
You know the most about yourself, so it’s easier to remember things related to ourselves
Perception that ppl are paying more attention to you than they actually are
Belief that we observe/notice others more than they do us
What is the negativity bias?
Why is this an evolutionary adaptation?
What is loss aversion?
Bias towards negative things bcuz they’re more attention grabbing and memorable
Made us more attentive over things that may harm us
When given a choice, pol will try to avoid loss more than achieving gains
What is belonging?
(Central social motives)
Desire for stable meaningful connections with others
- The most important social motive
What is accuracy?
(Central social motives)
The desire to optimize our relationships because we like it when we can predict what’s going to happen
What is control over our lives? Why do we want this?
(Central social motives)
The desire to feel that we have control over our destinies
- It makes us feel competent and can make things happen, leading to happiness
What is a need to matter? How much we admire ourselves is directly related to what?
(Central social motives)
Worthiness, social status, and positive reputations lead to self-enhancement motivation
Directly related to our perception of how we are valued by others
What is trust? What do we want from this?
(Central social motives)
The motivation to trust that the world is safe, benevolent and fair
- Want to trust that others won’t harm us, especially those like ourselves
What is the attribution theory and its two types?
What are dispositions?
Process by which we explain causes of people’s behavs
- Personal (disposition)
- Situational (Secondary; make situational excuses if disposition doesn’t match what we know)
Stable characteristics (personality traits, attitudes, abilities)
- Determined by inferring indirectly
What 3 factors do ppl make assumptions about others’ disposition from?
Target’s degree of choice
- If person chose to do it, we think it’s related to their personality
Expectedness of behav
- If not close to social norm, it’s related to their personality
- The fewer the non-common effects, the more certain the attribution of intent
Effects or consequences
What is the covariation principle? What 3 kinds of info are important (consensus, distinctiveness, consistency)?
(kelley attribution theory)
Ppl attribute behav to factors that are present when a behav occurs and absent when it does not
Consensus info: Do all/few ppl respond to stimulus in same way as target?
Distinctiveness info: Does target respond in same way to other stimuli too?
Consistency info: Does target always respond in same way to this stimulus?
Is it personal or stimulus attribution when:
- Low consensus, low distinctiveness, high consistency
- High consensus, high distinctiveness, high consistency
- Low consensus, high distinctiveness, low consistency
Personal
- Something about the target caused the behav
Stimulus
- Something about the stimulus caused the behav
Attribution to something else
What are the three attribution biases?
- Heuristics
- Fundamental attribution error
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
Use of cognitive heuristics
- Shortcuts that enable us to make judgments that are quick but often incorrect
We commit the fundamental attribution error
- Tendency to overestimate the personal factors and underestimate the impact of situations
Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Ppl have an expectation about what another person is like, influencing how they act towards them, causing that person to behave in a way that confirms to those ppl’s original expectations
“All individuals attempt to do their best to he right, to hold correct beliefs, and to maximize their pleasure while minimizing their pain.”
View of Jeremy Bentham that inspired this?
People decide the moral status of their behav/choices by creating a happiness calculation
Why does Benjamin Franklin’s strategy of using pros and cons to make decisions not efficient?
What are cognitive misers?
1) No one knows everything about the world without bias
2) Too many cognitive resources and time taken to do full research on every decision
Idea that ppl look for ways to conserve energy by simplifying complex problems and only using more energy for complex decisions
What is the barnum effect?
When ppl are given vague, all-purpose descriptions of themselves that could apply to almost anyone, they usually think it’s a description of them
What is the difference between automatic and controlled processing?
Automatic:
Unconscious (implicit) and involuntary operations that guide most of our behav
- Usually well-learned, habitual
Controlled:
Conscious (explicit) effort to deal with novel or complex problems, more slower and sequential
