Social Cognition Flashcards
What did Banaji find was a necessity for priming effect?
The prime must be appropriate/stereotypically associated with the target
E.g. Donald-aggressive or Donna-dependent can prime higher ratings, but not other way around
Describe the two studies that look at how perceiving women as sexual objects can be primed
McKenzie-Mohr ~
• 30 macho and 30 andro men (Bem Sex Role Inventory) watched soft porn or control
• Interview + memory study + experimenter rating
• Results:
o On rating of sexual motivation, interpersonal distance and recall measures, porn did not affect ando men, but affected macho men
(Rudman)
• Macho and andro men watched sexualised or non-sexualised ads
• Performed lexical decision task ~ 2 subcategories: “babe-bimbo”/”sister” ~ tested RT
• Results:
o Faster time for “babe-bimbo” words when watched sexualised video, with no difference between macho and andro men.
o Sexualised ads → more sexualised behaviour, remembered more appearance, interviewer less competent
Describe the study on power-sex associations
(Bargh)
• Men high or low in “Likelihood to Sexually Harass”
• Word pronunciation task with subliminal primes (power primes and sex targets)
• Power words → sex words, but not other way around ~ automatic association between power and sex
• Power primes increased attraction towards female confederate, more likely to want to see her again.
• Men not aware of association, attraction due to association, unaware inappropriate
How is self-regulation predictive?
o Delay of gratification in preschool predicts social/intellectual performance in high school
o Adults show more positive social relationships, academics, less likely to binge-eat or overdrink
Describe IRONIC PROCESS THEORY
Wegner
Successful self-regulation requires cognitive capacity
• Mental control achieved through two processes, initiated by intention to suppress + requires full capacity
• Intentional Operating Process
o Look for distracters to replace unwanted thought
o Conscious, effortful (full capacity), interruptible
• Ironic Monitoring Process
o Monitors consciousness for sign of unwanted thought, if detected, IOP provides distracters
o Unconscious, less effortful, uninterruptible
• If under cognitive load, IOP weakened, IMP continues feeding IOP → thoughts recur, hypersensitivity, rebound effects
• “Putt and the Pendulum”
o Study 1: “don’t overshoot the target” / Study 2: “don’t swing pendulum sideways”
o Not doing something whilst under cognitive load → participants did it more (rebound)
- Who came up with Strength Model?
- Another name for it
- Describe it.
- Examples
- How to exercise it?
• A.k.a. Ego Depletion Model
• Self-regulation consumes energy, creates state of Ego Depletion, ability to self-regulate depletes and less energy for subsequent tasks
• Self-regulation like a muscle, becomes fatigued, can be strengthened with exercise
Ego Depletion
• One energy source, not domain-specific ~ depletion of resources in one area affects unrelated areas
Examples
• Hungry participants refraining from eating cookies/radishes/control ~ less persistence at unsolvable puzzle
• ‘White bear’ → more alcohol consumption
• Making choices → consuming less of healthy but bad-tasting drink, even though being paid by the gram
• Uni students choosing courses chose to read magazines, play video games instead of cognitive task
• Dogs made to sit still for 6 minutes, gave up more easily at food-in-ball and more risk-taking (approaching aggressive dogs)
Exercising Self-regulation
• Not domain specific ~ therefore, practice need not be related to self-regulation tasks
• Longitudinal study: exercise program (aerobics, free weights) vs. control
o DV: performance on visual tracking task + self-reported self-reg behaviours
o Measured at baseline, 1 month, 2 months
o Results: ~ not only more healthy eating, less junk food, ALSO less impulse spending, losing temper (not domain specific!), improvements in visual tracking
