Social Cognition

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

Applying cognitive methods and theories to social psychology

Investigates how people select, interpret, learn, represent and react to social information

Question 2

Examples of studies of social cognition

Answer 2

Ketay et al., (seeing yourself in friends)

IAT

MODE model (Fazio)

Question 3

What is social categorisation?

What can be the result of this?

Answer 3

The tendency to group people into discrete groups based upon shared characteristics common to them

This can lead to ingroup vs outgroup categorisation.

Some examples: 
Race
Gender 
Age 
Occupation 
Body size

Question 4

What are the two kinds of social cognition?

Answer 4

Automatic thinking: fast, nonconscious, unintentional, uncontrollable, effortless

Controlled thinking: slow, conscious, intentional, controlled, and effortful

Question 5

What are schemas?

What are schemas beneficial?

Why can they lead to bias?

Answer 5

mental structures that people use to organise their knowledge about the world e.g., people, social roles, social events

Schemas help us organise knowledge about the world and communicate concepts

Schemas can result in us only noticing information that fits with our preexisitng schemas

Question 6

Why can schemas be problematic?

Define stereotype

Answer 6

Schemas can be dangerous when incorrect
when applied to a social group schemas are called stereotypes

Stereotypes - a generalisation about a group of people, in which certain traits are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members

Positive stereotypes can be dangerous as well

Question 7

Where do stereotypes come from?

What happens in illusionary correlations?

Answer 7

cultural learning
illusionary correlations:

two statistically infrequent events co-occur
distinctive events grab attention
observers overestimate the co-occurrence of these events

example:
Muslims are often portrayed in the media as dangerous/connected to terror attacks

Question 8

The police officer’s dilemma (Correll et al., 2002)

Answer 8

inspired by police shootings in America
Simulation where participants were shown pictures of men (either white or black) with either a harmless object or a weapon in their hand - decide whether or not to shoot the target

response times measured

the hypothesis was that people would be quicker to shoot when they saw a black man vs a white man regardless of the object he was holding

Question 9

What did Correll et al find?

Answer 9

Participants were faster to decide to shoot a black person

participants were more likely not to shoot if the person was white

participants were slower to not shoot an unarmed black target

participants made more mistakes when a white person was armed e.g., they did not shoot when they should have done

Overall finding - more likely to be shot if you are black

This is a finding in the US, not the UK

Strongly suggests a stereotype that black people are dangerous

Question 10

Social cognition as research methods

What do social cognitive methods allow us to study?

Answer 10

how people react when social information cannot be processed in depth
how people react when their responses cannot be controlled

it enables us to measure real-life behaviour when the participant is not holding back

Question 11

Are schemas always activated?

What did Correll et al (2014) find?

Answer 11

Two conditions (goal vs no goal)
goal condition - participants had to react when the frame is green
control condition - no goal

DV - do black faces (presented for 100 ms) attract attention?

Results - black faces only grab attention in the no-goal condition

Conclusion - stereotypes are not always activated as when participants were attending to the coloured frame they were not distracted by the stimulus

Question 12

How can we determine which schema will be activated?

Answer 12

Saliency

Schemas are chronically accessible - e.g., a strong and frequently used stereotype

Schemas can be temporarily accessible due to motivations, goals etc

Schemas can become temporarily accessible due to priming

Question 13

Are activated schemas always applied?

What did Schwartz et al., (1991) find?

Answer 13

two conditions

think of examples of when they have been assertive vs unassertive

one group asked to think of 12 examples, the other 6

when asked to think of 12 participants struggled to come up with 12 examples therefore, concluded they must not be very assertive

Question 14

Priming

What did Mcrae and Johnstone (1998) find?

What are the limits of priming?

Answer 14

Priming - activating an idea in a person’s mind

They primed the concept of helpfulness (experimental condition) or neutral (control)

When this experiment was repeated with a leaking pen only 6.2% of people helped pick the pen up

conclusion - priming does not work in all circumstances

Priming also only works if it is automatic e.g., priming does not work if we suspect we are being manipulated as we resist this

DV - do they help pick up the pen?

help condition - 97%
control - 69%

Question 15

What does priming depend on?

Answer 15

Context e.g., what is most salient in the context?

Observer e.g., memory structure and the fit of the prime with cognitive, affective and motivational memory state

Question 16

Daniel Kahnemann (2002)

Answer 16

dual-process theory of thought

system 1 - fast/automatic, emotional, impulsiveness, drives habits and beliefs

system 2 - slow/effortful, logical, involves reflection, planning and problem solving

Question 17

Individual differences in social cognition

addiction

threat

Answer 17

addiction is associated with a bias towards the respective drug (Field, et al, 2009)

anxiety and depression are related to attentional biases towards threat and negativity (Bar-Haim et al., 2006)

Question 18

Retraining implicit bias

Answer 18

Wiers et al., (2011)

patients see frequent pairings of pictures of alcohol with negative images or perform avoidance movements towards pictures of alcohol in multiple sessions

lower relapse rates one year after treatment in the training group

Question 19

Understanding individual differences with implicit measures

Vogt et al., (2013)

Wiers et al., (2020)

Answer 19

Vogt - attentional bias to threat stronger for anxious individuals

Wiers - system 1 and system 2 influence each other e.g., biases to threat in anxiety might be caused by conscious reflective goals or beliefs that the world is dangerous

Question 20

Yzerbyt, Rocher and Schardron (1997)

Answer 20

showed participants a video of a girl called Hannah.

One group were told she came from an upper-middle-class background and had parents with white collar careers, the other were told she came from a poor neighbourhood and had parents with blue-collar careers.

They were then asked to judge Hannah’s academic potential.

On the videotape Hannah displayed average performance

Those who thought Hannah came from a poor background rated her as having less ability

Illustrates how our perceptions about social class can bias the way we perceive other people’s behaviour

Question 21

(Kawakami et al., 2000)

Answer 21

Making judgements based on stereotypes is not inevitable and can be avoided through practise

Question 22

Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM) (Petty and Cacioppo)

Answer 22

Two routes to persuasion

Central route – when people think carefully about the message and are influenced because they find arguments compelling

Peripheral route – when people are influenced mostly by other factors such as the attractiveness or expertise of the person who endorses the product or a messages emotional appeal

Question 23

How does the communicator affect the persuasiveness of the message?

Answer 23

How effective we believe the communicator to be is key to effective persuasion (O’Keefe, 1990)

Credibility has two major components: expertise and trustworthiness (Hovland et al., 1953)

Sometimes external factors such as a white lab coat is enough to confer credibility (Cialdini, 2009)

We are especially likely to perceive communicators as trustworthy when they advocate a point of view that is contrary to their own self-interest (Petty et al., 2001)

Communicators who are physically attractive, likable, and similar to us may also gain a persuasive edge (Reeves, 2012)

Question 24

What affects the persuasiveness of the message?

Answer 24

Two sided refutational approach is most effective (Allen, 1991) as it will be perceived as less biased.

Fear arousal seems to work best when the message evokes moderate levels of fear (Kok et al., 2018)

High levels of fear lead people to focus only on regulating the fear response, forgetting most of the information communicated in the message

Message needs to provide people with effective and feasible way to reduce the threat (Dillard and Anderson, 2004)

Question 25

What is the norm of reciprocity

Answer 25

– Pressure of reciprocity is highest between friends or within groups that are important to us. It is much less strong or even absent across group boundaries (Tanis and Postmes, 2005)

Question 26

What is the

door in the face technique

Foot in the door technique

Answer 26

Door in the face technique: persuader makes a large request, when you refuse a smaller one is presented instead

Refusing the first request may produce guilt and complying with the smaller request helps us reduce that guilt or feel socially responsible (Tusting and Dillard, 2000)

Foot in the door technique: a persuader gets you to comply with a small request first and later presents a larger request

Question 27

What is lowballing?

Answer 27

Lowballing: persuader gets you to commit to some action and then, before you perform the action, increases the cost of that same behaviour

Question 28

Factors that may influence obedience (Milgram, 1974):

Answer 28

Remoteness of the victim – obedience was greatest when the learner was out of site, when the teacher and learner were in the same room obedience dropped to 40%, 30% when the teacher had to force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate

Closeness and legitimacy of authority figure: when the experimenter left or when a confederate took over the orders, obedience dropped to 20%

Diffusion of responsibility: when another participant flipped the shock switch and the real participants only had to perform another part of the task 93% obeyed.

When Tilker (1970) made participants feel fully responsible for the learner’s welfare not a single participant obeyed to the end

Personal characteristics: differences varying on political opinions, religious beliefs, affiliations, occupations, education, military service were non existent

Question 29

Types of conformity

Answer 29

Informational social influence: following the opinions or behaviours of other people because we believe that they have accurate knowledge and that what they are doing is right

Normative social influence: conforming to obtain the rewards that come from being accepted by other people while at the same time avoiding their rejection

Question 30

Asch (1951, 1956)

Answer 30

Students were asked to judge which three of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line. They performed this task for multiple trials, using a different set of standard and comparison lines each time.

Participants conformed to the confederates’ wrong answers 37% of the time

People reported they went along with the decision of the group even though they thought it was wrong to avoid suffering possible rejection and ridicule

Question 31

What factors increased participants’ independence?

Answer 31

Smaller group size

A dissenter
Turner (1991) developed a third reason why people might conform to others based on assumptions made in social identity theory (Tajifel and Turner, 1979)

Question 32

What is referent informational influence?

Evidence for this?

Why are people vulnerable to this?

Answer 32

Referent informational influence: individuals will be influenced primarily by members of the groups they identify with (i.e., reference groups)

Individuals are more susceptible to social influence when information is provided by fellow in-group members as compared to outgroup members (van Knippenberg and Wilke, 1988)

Expectation of agreement between ingroup members

Agreement with similar others should produce a sense of subjective validity of one’s own thoughts and behaviours as being correct or appropriate

Question 33

Define implicit and explicit prejudice

How are they measured?

Examples of these studies

When has bias been shown to exist?

Answer 33

Explicit prejudice: prejudiced attitudes that are measured using self-report instruments such as questionnaires

Implicit prejudice: prejudiced attitudes that are measured using reaction-time-based measures

Example: IAT (implicit association test)
Studies have found the IAT can reveal many types of unconscious prejudice (Greenwald et al., 2011)

Even in children as young as 4 (Cvencek et al., 2011)

Shooter bias – both white and non-white participants in some studies are quicker to shoot armed black targets and slower to shoot unarmed white targets (Mekawi and Bresin, 2015)

Question 34

How does prejudice confirm itself?

Answer 34

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Word et al., (1974) – white participants who were interviewing black African American participants sat further away, conducted shorter interviews, and made more speech errors when the applicants were African American.

In the second experiment white male undergraduates served as job applicants, half were treated as the African American participants were treated and half treated as white participants.

The participants who were treated like the African American participants performed worse in the job interview, were less composed, made more speech errors and rated the interviewer as less friendly.

Question 35

Steele (1997)

Answer 35

looked at female and male college students graduating in the traditionally male fields of mathematics, science and engineering.

Female students were more likely to feel that they had been targets of sex discrimination and that because of their gender other people (including their professors) expected them to have less ability and do more poorly relative to men (Steele et al., 2002)

People who complain about prejudice and discrimination are often disliked, irrespective of the validity of their comments (Garcia et al., 2010)

Question 36

Reducing prejudice

What is the most effective method?

Example

Answer 36

The most effective approach to prejudice is intergroup contact:
Prejudice between people is most likely to be reduced when…

They engage in sustained, personal, close contact

Have equal status

Work to achieve a common goal that requires cooperation

They are supported by broader social norms

Lemmer and Wagner (2015) found that after contact 61% of participants had positive attitudes towards the outgroup compared to 50% of participants with no contact

They had positive effects on participants attitudes towards outgroups as a whole

These persisted over time

Question 37

How might conformity affect therapy?

Answer 37

Clients may overestimate how much practise they have done as they know this is expected

Peripheral route of persuasion – motivated by the person delivering the message

Central route of persuasion – understanding the message

you want to ensure as much as possible clients are using the central route of persuasion