Social Cognition Flashcards
Impression formation
People combine info about others to make overall judgements about them
3 models of algebraic model of impression
- Summative: we arrive at an overall impression by adding all of our reactions or likability ratings up
- Averaging model: averaging likability rating
- Weighted averaging model: Each rating has a weight that represents how important it is in that context and is then averaged
2 main models of impression formation:
- Algebraic
- Configurational
Algebraic model of impression formation
Were formed on the basis of mechanical combination of information we know about person
3 ways the information could be combined:
1. Summative model
2. Averaging model
3. Weighted averaging model
Configurational model of impression
Based on Gestalt principles:
People combine info about someone into an overall impression that is quite different from the simple sum of reactions to individual items of information about that person.
Asch thought there were 2 main types of traits:
- Central (give meaning to other traits)
- Peripheral (these other traits)
What are schemas
Cognitive structures that represent our knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus based on past experience
Event schemas
Scripts
Generalised representations of activities and events e.g. at a restaurant, you know someone should come get your order.
Role schemas
Scripts.
Where people are expected to play a certain role
Person schema
Knowledge about groups of people i.e. stereotypes.
Implicit personality theory
Person schema about particular type of person - how certain behaviours shape personality e.g. dancing on table, assume person is extroverted.
Self-schema
Manage info about ourselves in the same way that we manage info about other people
Heuristics
Shortcuts that we use to get a quick solution to a problem
Availability Heuristics
Judging an events frequency by the ease with which we can bring examples of the event to mind e.g. is it more likely to have words that start with R or have R in the 3rd position - people say start with R since its easier to come up with words that start with R.
Representativeness Heuristic
How we know if someone belongs to a group.
Estimates likelihood that somebody belongs to a group by comparing features of that person to the prototype of a group (e.g. engineer liking maths)
When a persons behaviour is different to what is expected in a schema, we attribute it to
internal (dispositional) factors
Covariation model
Attribute behaviour with the cause with which it co-varies over time. We pay attention to:
1. Consensus information - whether other people perform the same behaviour
2. Distinctiveness information: behaviour is only performed towards particular target
3. Consistency information: behaviour is performed all the time or not
If there is low consensus, then we attribute the behaviour to?
person attribution
If there is high distinctiveness, we attribute the behaviour to
target attribution
If there is low consistency, we attribute the behaviour to
Situation attribution
Fundamental attribution error
Tendency to attribute another persons behaviour to their dispositional factors but attribute our own to external factors
Actor observer bias
Describes the difference in how we think about our own behaviours by comparing them to others.
We attribute our own behaviours to external causes and other behaviours to internal causes.
Self-serving bias
Tendency to attribute success to stable, internal factors and failures to temporary, external factors e.g. doing well on quiz is because i studied hard. Doing bad on quiz was because it was hard.
