Social Cognition Flashcards
define social psychology
- Scientific study of ‘how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others’. (Gordon Allport)
- Typically also included: influence by the self
define social cognition
- Structures and processes involved in perceiving, interpreting, and acting on social information.
- Focus on processes involved in people’s choices of which social events to pay attention to, how to interpret these events, and how to store these experiences in memory.
- Emphasis on personal subjective experience of the environment.
define impression formation
assigning characteristics to other people
Asch’s configural model
people tend to not simply add up impressions but rather make holistic judgements based on specific information
central traits: characteristics that are disproportionally influential in impression formation
useful for organising and summarising large amounts of diverse information about a person
Asch’s warm-cold study
- Rating scale: impressions in terms of 18 traits presented as bipolar pairs
- e.g., generous – ungenerous; humane – inhumane
Biases in impression formation
Primacy effect: earlier information has stronger influence than later information
Negativity Bias: negative information has stronger influence than positive information especially in the domains of sociability and morality
Halo effect: the assumption that someone with known positive qualities also possesses additional undisclosed positive qualities
what is a schema?
a set of expectations about the way the world works that effects the information we attend to and remember
it is a mental framework that organises and synthesises information
contains information about attributes and the relationship between attributes
influences our social perceptions by guiding our expectations
types of schemas
person schema
self schema
role schema
event schema
content-free schema
group schema
what is group schema?
prejudice: emotional aspect - a generalised attitude towards members of a social group
stereotype: cognitive aspect - a generalised belief about the members of the group
discrimination: behavioural aspect - behaviours directed towards others because of group membership
these can be positive and negative
Macrae et al 1994: stereotype specific study
based on older finding by Wegner et al 1987: ironic theory of thought suppression
participants asked to not think about white bears for 5 mins then asked to think about them for 5 mins
ring bell every time a thought of white bears occurred
suppress then express
express then suppress
Wegner et al. 1987: ironic thought suppression
- Rebound effect - in case of stereotypes: stereotype rebound effect:
- Suppressing stereotypical thoughts leads to stronger link between group and stereotype; thus those thoughts more easily come to mind
possible ways to acquire self-knowledge
self-fulfilling prophecies
self-perception theory
social-comparison theory
self-fulfilling prophecies
others’ expectations can cause us to ‘know ourselves’ and behave in a way that is confirming of those expectations
Example: Harris & Rosenthal (1985)
children randomly identified to teacher as bright led to these children performing better
differential treatment?
more interaction?
intentional?
self-perception theory
Bem 1972
we learn about ourselves by observing how we behave
E.g. observe yourself taking walks a lot, not being coerced to do so means you must be the kind of person who enjoys walking
social-comparison theory
Festinger 1954
people are driven to gain accurate self-evaluations (opinions, abilities, perceptions)
self-evaluation is often achieved by comparing ourselves to others e.g. in tests
attribution theory
an explanation of how people develop a causal understanding of human behaviour
different types of causes for behaviour
Heider 1958
situational factors - external causes: stimuli in the environment
dispositional factors - internal causes: individual personality characteristics
what is Kelley’s covariation theory?
attributions are made using 3 principles:
consensus
consistency
distinctiveness
four types of attributions
the person (internal or dispositional)
the stimulus (external or situational)
the circumstance
some combination of these factors
what are the 4 attributional biases?
actor-observer effect
fundamental attribution error
false consensus
self-serving bias
actor-observer effect
causes of behaviour depends on if you are the actor or observer
actor: perceive our behaviour as influenced by situation - variable
observer: perceive behaviour of others as due to personal dispositions - stable
fundamental attribution error
the tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and immutable properties of people
aka correspondence bias
Jones and Harris 1967:
- Participants read essays arguing pro-Castro or anti-Castro issues (independent variable)
- They are told that writer was (a) given a choice which side to debate or (b) given no choice (independent variable)
- Measured: How pro-Castro is the essay writer (i.e., what is their real attitude)? (dependent
variable)
false consensus
the tendency for people to believe that their own behaviour is widely shared and that their own views are consensual e.g. political views
we surround ourselves with similar people that have shared views
self anchoring and adjusting as cognitive shortcuts
self-serving bias
the tendency to attribute one’s success to dispositional characteristics and one’s failures to situational factors e.g. factors beyond one’s control
why are cognitive shortcuts used?
limited cognitive resources so shortcuts allow for less resources to be used to make a judgement
heuristics = mental shortcuts used to make judgements; past experience is used for a quick decision
fast but not always accurate
types of cognitive shortcuts
representativeness heuristic
availability heuristic
anchoring and adjusting heuristic
representativeness heuristic
classifying something as belonging to a certain category to the extent that it is similar to the typical case
comparison of a situation/ individual with prototypes we hold
problems: ignoring additional information e.g. base-rate
availability heuristic
estimate likelihood of event by ease with which instances of that event come to mind
higher probability assumed
e.g. Which is the more dangerous? Driving in a car or flying with a commercial airline?
anchoring and adjustment heuristic
estimates are made by starting with an initial value (anchor) that is adjusted to reach an answer
likely bias: anchor inaccurate (too low), adjustment too small
example: How many hours per week to study for a difficult course?
- Initial estimate: typical course
- Adjustment: more hours for difficult course
