social cognition

Question 1

what is social cognition

Answer 1

-how our thoughts, feelings and behaviours influence and are influenced by others (Hogg and Vaughan 2014)
-also known as thinking, can occur rapidly and automatically without cognition
-how social info is acquired, organised and used

Question 2

what is a metaphor for social cognition

Answer 2

computer model- there are things happening in our brains/cognition that we are not aware of, alike being unaware of the processes used by a computer

Question 3

is social cog. conscious or unconscious

Answer 3

• our thoughts are usually conscious
• whether it’s conscious or unconscious, cog. allows us to acquire, organise and use information

Question 4

how are we able to adapt our behaviour to meet the demands and social expectations of the environment

Answer 4

our brains infer and prime us to behave in a way appropriate to the situation we are in e.g cafe vs restaurant

Question 5

what happens if our STM is overloaded

Answer 5

we attend to salient (most important) features and categorise the info

Question 6

categorisation

Answer 6

-we categorise stimuli based on their salient features meaning we can infer info without processing the full info (Rumelhart and Otorny 1977)
-cognitivists state categories are instances grouped as they share a family resemblance (Mervis and Rosch 1981, Rosch 1978)
-we rely on prototypes for categorisation

Question 7

prototypes

Answer 7

-cog. representations of a category
-average in a set of stimuli (sometimes people view the extreme versions)
-categories are hierarchical, most rely on middling level

Question 8

what is another term for category

Answer 8

fuzzy set (varying instances centred on a prototype)

Question 9

exemplars

Answer 9

representing categories with a specific instance they encounter (real life experience)

Question 10

Brewer 1988

Answer 10

the more familiar we are with the category, we shift from representing with prototypes to exemplars

Question 11

Judd and Park 1988

Answer 11

we use prototypes and exemplars for representing in-groups but only exemplars for out-groups

Question 12

schemas

Answer 12

-set of related categories or cog. allowing us to make sense of a person/situation/place based on limited info
-fill in the blanks and use generalisations

Question 13

what type of processing are schemas used for

Answer 13

top down (Rumelhart and Otorny 1977)
-use of cog. short cuts by filling gaps with preconceptions and prior knowledge, no need to reconstruct relationships

Question 14

what are the schema types

Answer 14

person schemas
role schemas
scripts

Question 15

what are person schemas and who supports it

Answer 15

-knowledge on specific individuals e.g family
-Asch’s configural model: is a kind of person schema where we categorise info according to a central trait and inferences are made about the rest

Question 16

what are role schemas

Answer 16

-knowledge structures about role occupants and what they do, roles are socially defined and shared between people
-e.g accepting medication from a doctor or an academic

Question 17

what are scripts

Answer 17

-a type of schema for events
-gives us a shortcut for how to behave in certain situations
-schemas are different for each event e.g cafe vs cinema
-without schemas it is difficult to know how to behave

Question 18

weakness of schemas

Answer 18

-we can be led astray due to stereotypes

Question 19

what are stereotypes

Answer 19

widely shared simple generalisations about members of a social group

Question 20

schemas of social groups are…

Answer 20

-slow to change
-readily available
-more pronounced/ derogatory with group hostility

Question 21

how do stereotypes arise and describe study

Answer 21

-perceptual accentuation theory (Tajfel)
-when making a judgement on a focal dimension we recruit any peripheral dimensions that may be helpful

-pp shown A lines (longer) and B line (shorter)
-asked to estimate length of line and told if it’s A or B
-pp tended to overestimate length of A lines and underestimate B lines
-categorisation into A or B led to accentuation of similarities within groups, also emphasised differences between groups

Question 22

support for tajfel accentuation theory

Answer 22

corneille 2002: accentuation effect greater when encountering unfamiliar stimuli

Question 23

what are the social cog. models of info processing

Answer 23

consistency seeker
naive scientist
heider’s attribution theory
cognitive misers
motivated tacticians

Question 24

consistency seeker (rationalising mind)

Answer 24

-cog. dissonance (Festinger 1957)
-we are motivated to avoid discrepancies in cognitions
-people can hold two opposing cog. but this causes distress, they want to reduce tensions by rejecting or changing one cog.

Question 25

naive scientist

Answer 25

-we are ok with opposing cog.
-people hold theories about how the world works and we fit info into this theory

Question 26

Heider’s attribution theory 1958

Answer 26

1. our own behaviour is motivated so we look for motivations in behaviour of other people
2. we make causal theories to predict the environment
3. we attribute causality based on internal (trait) factors or external (situational) factors

Question 27

cognitive misers

Answer 27

-people use heuristics to solve problems e.g low effort
-even in ideal conditions we use of such broad shortcuts
-features which stand out are attended to and processed, less salient info is ignored

Question 28

motivated tacticians

Answer 28

-Fiske and Taylor 1991
-people have multiple cog. strategies and they choose which one depending on personal goals (Hogg and Vaughan 2014)
-when we have time/motivation we process info according to our own motivations
-when time/cog. resources do not permit, we resort to heuristics

Question 29

what are the criticisms of social cog.

Answer 29

reductionist
-just cog. in social situations
-little focus on lang. and communication
-most of field now focuses on social neuroscience

neglect of developmental approaches
-assumes behaviour learnt through observations and reinforcement
-behavioural patterns can and do change through life with little environment change

ignores biology
-ignores hormonal or genetic influences

completely un-unified
-vast series pf explanations e.g categories, prototypes, exemplars
-Occam’s razor: there should be a unifying theme that explains these behaviours

Question 30

evolutionary social psych.

Answer 30

-cog. must show adaptive benefit to be selected
-Schaller 2010 suggests ancestrally outgroups pose a danger so we associate them w. danger
-Hutchinson and Martin 2015 suggest stereotypes are adaptive (energy saving)