Social cognition Flashcards
social cognition
we looking for the social world,our interactions with each other
theory of mind
the ability to think about mental states in ourselves and others,understanding that mental states influence behaviour
key points
- must understand that people have mental states
-must understand that other’s mental states can differ from your own
-must understand that mental states guide behaviour (regardless of weather those mental states are acurate)
false belif: sally -anne task
children fail this tesk
false belifs:smarties task
fail the test
theory of mind tests
children under4 years ‘‘fail’‘on traditional false belifs tasks
children 4-5+ pass tradional false belif tasks
questions
do children really not have a theory of mind until 4?
false belif tasks too hard?
many studies show resoning about mental states earlier in development (18 months)
baby seem to respond to false belif when seeing someone having true belif vs false belif
infants can suceed even at false belif tasks that us different methods(easier)-look more not languague
what causes developments in theory mind?
-Theory theory> change in thinking,#
-simulation theory> use imagination,role-taking etc.
-modular theory>brain maturation
-or,just explained by development of other skills(like being able to multifanction)/ exacutive fanction
influences on theory of mind
-individual differences
-number of siblings(having more and
older sibling)
-pretend play
-parenting
-languague(better languague skills and biolenguanism) seem to improve theory of mind
-autism:have some issues with theory of mind and false belif
social cognition
Understanding and
thinking about mental
states, and how
mental states guide
behaviour
Understanding and
thinking about social
groups
we group people
-to survive who is within and whithout my group
-to become less overwheld about new information
-to understand more our world
social groups
-race
-ethinicity
-age
-religion
-carrer
-major
-nationlity
-gender
-sexuality
understanding of race
infants: prefer familar race faces,respond to race as perceptual category
by 3-4 years:can explicity characterized race(people with that race),reason about skin color as stable characteristics
Later in development: start reasoning about race as a stable and informative features of identity(they are white so they are ….funny)- racialized children shows this understanding earlier on
attitudes towards race
explicit attitudes:attitudes a pearson consciously endorses and can report
in dominant racial group > in-group positivity + out-group negatively(it declines with development)-in dominant groups
when we get older
we express less in-group positivetly/preference
in marginilize racial groups?
-clarks doll study
-less in-group positivity
-increses with development
dominant bs non-dominant group
dominant-negatively related (the more they grow the less they are positive-ingroup belif)
non-dominant-positively releted(the more they grow better they see their in-group)
why is that-explicit bias
maybe dominant groups learned that it is not execeptable to say they prefer their own group
Explicit bias
-can be expressed directly
-aware of bias
-can delibertely acess
-easyli controled
ex:i say that i hate apples because they are bad
implicit bias
-belifs,attitudes that are activated in response to social cues
-may have less awarness
-may be more difficult to control
ex: i have a bow of fruit (apples and bananas) and decide to eat a banana
method of studying implicit biases(IAT)
-measures the strenghth of association between concepts(ex:race) and attribute(evaluation-good vs bad)
-response time: faster responses suggest a strong association
some worry of using this method
-Order effect- in proper use of IAT,should be counterbalance,ALSO typically found not to have an impact
-Reliablility-can be impacted by context scores do vary from one test to the next.BUT over several tests,farly reliable
-Meaningful? - is predictive pf behaviour in avarage for an overall group,BUT predictions are small(it predicts groups not individuals)
it is not a diagnose
in implicit bias
individuals from dominant racial groups> positive in-group bias
what happens across development?
-there is no difference between ages
-which is different from the explicit bias study that implied that as we get older we get less bias
what about individual from non-dominant groups?(implicit bias)
there is no in-group preferences, no out-group preference
no preference in general
what leads to biases/attitudes about race
ingroup bias(to survive) inbuilt bias + social norms:social/cultaral evaluation of dominance(media)-authority figures helps= attitudes about race
what about bi-multi-racial individual?
in adults: in between a bit of pro-whitness bias but not too huge or in the same levels as just whites-both implicit and explicit
minimal group paradime
a type of study where the difference between group is minimum and see if they have any in-group bias
Ex:blue shirt vs red shirt
happens so rapidly /automatic
-what work in adults to reduce intergroup biases:
-personal contact with out-group menber
-encountering positive examples of out-group menbers
gonzales study
reserch question
Can children’s implicit biases be
reduced through exposure to
counter-stereotypical examples?
participants:White and Asian children aged 5-
12
method
Exposed to positive examples of either White individuals, Black individuals, or flowers (control)
after they had to complete a IAT test
results:
all young kids :they showed pro-white bias regardless of examples
older kids: kids who were showed positive examples of black individual didnt show a pro-white bias, it also didnt show a pro-black bias either.they show no bias either way!
limitation
-it was only tested in a shor-term effect futher reserch should be made about long-term effect
-ethical concerns
-does this change behaviour?
ampplications of these findings and impplications
that racial bias can be minimized if we show to children in tv shows,films,shools positive eaxmples of children of the races that are seen negatively
are older children more malible maybe less egocentric?
