Social Cognition 2 Flashcards
What is the default mode network?
Set of interacting brain regions that are active when not directed to a task, focused in the outside world, or thinking about ppl
What is the social identity theory?
What are the ingroup and outgroup?
The most important memberships in religious/political/regional/national/occupational groups feed a sense of belonging and self-worth + shape our thinking about people in and beyond our group
Ingroup - People in our group; tend to see them as unique individuals
Outgroup - Group we don’t identify with; tend to see them as all being the same
What is the ingroup bias?
Why is coalition formation (grouping of individuals into teams) evolutionarily significant?
We see ppl in the ingroup as being better and more deserving than those in the outgroup
Grouping helps find individuals w/ same goal and distinguishes them from outsiders/attackers
What is the contrast effect?
What is the social comparison theory? How does the growth mindset help with this? When do we do this and with who?
An object seems better it worse than it is, depending on the quality of the objects it’s compared to
We evaluate our abilities, achievements, attitudes, and other attributes by comparing ourselves to others
- Helps reduce painful comparisons by believing that we have the ability to grow and commit to self-improvement
- When there is no objective standard for you to measure yourself against + experience uncertainty about yourself in a particular area; Compare to someone similar to us
What is priming?
(Deviations)
Ideas recently/frequently encountered are more likely to cone to mind + will affect how we interpret social events
- Can change schemas (mental models of the world - ex: stereotypes, categories, expectations, attitudes, mindsets)
What is the primacy effect?
(Deviations)
Occurs when info encountered first has more impact on our impressions/beliefs than later info
What is constructive prediction and why do we mispredict (2)?
Predicting how certain outcomes will make us feel determines the goals we set and the risks we’re willing to take
- We fail to see that we can adjust to situations when we already imagine the future
- We focus only on the imagined future and don’t think about other possible events
Why are reconstructive memory and autobiographical memory prone to error?
Prone to alter to what ppl tell us about an event
Prone to believing a memory not about them is about them + confirmation bias tends to recall memories only confirming to their belief about themselves
Explain the two types of availability heuristics:
False-consensus effect
Base-rate fallacy
Tendency to overestimate how similar in opinions, attributes, and behavs are of others to themselves
- Usually common in ingroups
Neglecting base rates, instead basing it off what we think or tend to hear
What is counterfactual thinking?
Tendency to imagine alt events/outcomes that might’ve occurred but didn’t
- “If something else was done, this other thing could’ve happened”
Where do the two steps of attribution occur?
Behav -> Personal attribution +/- Situational attribution = Dispositional inference
Automatic step = Behav -> Personal attribution
Effortful step = Personal attribution +/- Situational attribution
What are the 2 motivational biases?
Self-esteem can bias social perceptions
We tend to believe that the world is just (ppl get what they deserve)
Downward vs Upward social comparison
- Wilson and Ross (2002) study
- Lockwood (2002) study
- Lockwood and Kunda (2000) study
Downward - Compare ourselves w/ ppl worse than we are on a particular ability to feel good about ourselves
- Comparing with our old selves gives us a self-esteem boost and pushes us to behave better (Wilson and Ross)
- …but only if we don’t feel vulnerable to that person’t negative outcomes (Lockwood); students doing well compared to struggling student causes self-enhancement effect, compared to a recent graduate causes negative effect
Upward - Compare ourselves w/ ppl who’re better than we are on a particular trait/ability
- Participants imagined peak academic exp that made them proud or what they had done the day before, then exposed to superstar student
- When imagined “best self”, felt had about themselves and motivation to study decreased
- When imagined their “usual self”, found superstar inspiring + imagined they could also achieve greatness
The impressions we form are usually based on what?
What is impression formation?
A weighted avg of a person’s traits, not a summation
Process of integrating info about a person to form a coherent impression
What is the information integration theory?
Integrations formed of others are based on:
- Perceiver dispositions
- Weights avg of a target person’s traits (also depending on perceiver)
