Social Cognition Flashcards
1
Q
What is social cognition and why is it studied?
A
- Social cognition is how people make sense of the social world with emphasis on cognitive processes
- Cognitive processes lay basis for social psychology research
- Understanding social cognition allows us to anticipate and combat negative social behaviour
- Eg Conspiracy theories (moon landing, Barak Obama birth)
- Understanding social cognition allows us to anticipate and combat negative social behaviour
- Lessons from social cognition
- People create their own reality
- Situational cues can have powerful effects on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour
2
Q
What are the three models of social thinkers?
A
-
The Naive Scientist: we go around the world gathering evidence to test our hypotheses
- Eg Obama: Where’s the birth certificate, is it real, is there corroborating evidence, where can more information be found?
- But this is effortful and time consuming (uncommon)
-
The Cognitive Miser: lack of time for scientist approach - do as little thinking as possible and use heuristics instead
- Eg Obama: experts say he is born in US, my friends believe X
-
The Motivated Tactician: choose cognitive strategies (eg above 2) based on motivations/goals
- Motivated scepticism: only sceptical of evidence when the conclusion is unpalatable
3
Q
What factors separate automatic and controlled processes?
A
- Original criteria for automaticity:
- Intentionality: Is an act of will necessary to set the process in motion?
- Awareness: Is one consciously aware of the process?
- Controllability: Is one able to stop the process once it is operating?
-
Efficiency: How much attentional resources does the process take?
- Eg Reading text in front of you, as illustrated by stroop task
- Current definition
- behaviours can be partially automatic, or only automatic in certain situations
- Not all four criteria need to be met
- eg Driving
4
Q
What are the Priming effect and Priming techniques?
A
- Priming effect: The unintended influence of prior experience on judgment, thought, or behaviour
-
Priming Technique: The presentation of a stimulus that activates a concept in memory
- Awareness is important: people cannot be aware of the priming technique. can be avoided by using subliminal messaging
- Not all people are affected by priming: the stimulus must be relevant to the individual, and stereotypical of the target
- Example Rating Donald
- Priming subjects with passages related to “reckless” or “adventurous”
- Participants primed with “reckless” rated Donald more negatively than participants primed with “adventurous”
5
Q
How did Banaji et al. demonstrate that primes must be stereotypically related to the target to be effective?
A
- Rating Donald or Donna:
- Experiment A (aggression)
- Priming “aggression” or neutral (via gender ambivalent sentence scramble).
- Then read passage about either man (donald) or woman (donna)
- No difference in female rating, effect of prime present in male rating
- Experiment B (dependance)
- Priming dependence or neutral, otherwise same design
- Prime only had effect for Donna
- Experiment A (aggression)
6
Q
What was the experiment conducted by Mckenzie-Mohr and Zanna on the effect of pornography priming?
A
- Effect of Pornography: McKenzie-Mohr & Zanna Only certain men are effected by the priming.
- Men completed BEM sex; 30 androgenous, 30 macho
- Priming watched either (non-violent) porno or parliament question time
- Subsequent interview with attractive women
- Rating of sexual motivation: prime/macho higher, no other effect
- Interpersonal distance: androgenous no effect, macho high prime effect
- Given time to recount interview
- Primed macho men recalled significantly more information about the physical appearance of interviewer. No effect on androgenous
7
Q
What did the experiment by Rudman and Borgida show about the effect of sexist ads on social priming?
A
- Macho or androgynous men watched sexualised or non-sexualised ads
- Completed a Lexical decision task:
- Reaction time to responses eg “babe” vs “sister”
- Sexualised prime: slower response to non-sex object words. Those primed non-sexual: reverse effect
- No effect of androgenous or macho
- Interviewed a woman,
- had to choose between pairs of questions to ask the woman
- Sexualised prime: sat closer to interviewee, asked sexual questions, rated employee as less competent
- consistent across androgenou & macho
- Completed a Lexical decision task:
- Androgenousmacho men react the same
8
Q
What did Yao et al find about the effect of sexualised video games on social behaviour?
A
- Lexical decision task on sexual vs non-sexual female words
- Leisure Suit Larry: strong effect
- Sims2, Pacman: no effect
- Note: didnt look at subtypes of men
9
Q
What is self-regulation and how is it helpful?
A
- Bringing behaviour, thoughts, emotions into line with desired outcomes
- requires monitoring, resisting alternatives, keeping focus
- Localisation in brain? Prefrontal cortex (Phineas Gage)
- Self-regulation promotes Delay of gratification
- Delayed gratification in kids predicts success in schooling
- Adult self-rated self control associated with success
10
Q
What is Wegner’s Ironic Process Theory?
A
- Proposed by Wegner to explain the effect of thinking more about something you dont want to think about
- Mental control is achieved through two processes which work hand in hand
-
Intentional operating process: searches for distracters
- conscious, effortful, and interruptible
- Can be affected by depleted resources (tiredness)
-
Ironic monitoring process: used to monitor whether the to-be-suppressed thought is resurfacing
- unconscious, less effortful, and uninterruptible
-
Intentional operating process: searches for distracters
- Ironic monitoring continuous regardless of fatigue, but intentional operating will be affected and not block it out - continued resurfacing
11
Q
How did Wegner’s “Putt and the Pendulum” studies support the Ironic Processes Theory?
A
- Study 1: Putt putt golf challenge
- Cognitive load condition: need to remember 8 digit number
- Study 2: Don’t let the pendulum swing sideways
- Cognitive load condition: count back from 1000 in 3s
- Findings:
-
Rebound effects for cognitive load
- ended up doing it even more - overshoot target or swing in sideways motion
-
Rebound effects for cognitive load
12
Q
What is the Ego-depletion/Strength Model of Self-regulation?
A
- Self regulation is like a muscle:
- Relies on a limited energy source
- Consumed by use (ego depletion)
- Can be strengthened with “exercise”
- Ego depletion is NOT domain specific (use of resources in one area will affect other “unrelated” areas)
13
Q
What is some empirical evidence for Ego depletion?
A
- Baumeister et al. Hungry participants (instructed to skip a meal):
- 3 conditions: Resist chocolate cookie, resist radishes, control
- Then told to do an unsolvable puzzle measured persistence time
- Results: chocolate chip (8mins) less than other two groups (20mins)
- Muraven Effects of suppressing thoughts of a white bear
- subsequent driving task effected
- Vohs effects of decision making
- Participants who made many choices drank less of a bad tasting “health drink” they were being paid to consume
14
Q
What is some evidence that exercising can increase self control?
A
- Oaten and Cheng longitudinal study of university students
- Control phase (2 months) then exercise program phase (2 months) (not already physically active)
- Measured DVs at baseline, 1month and 2months
- Performance on a visual tracking task while ignoring video
- Self-reported self-regulatory behaviours
- Results:
- Self report: self reported better healthy behaviours (junk food, healthy eating) also reported increases in no health related behaviours (impulse spending, temper, procrastination)
- Visual tracking: performance 2m >1m>baseline
15
Q
What is affect and and its effects on behaviours?
A
- Affect is our current emotions and moods
- reciprocally related with cognition (thought shapes feelings, feelings shape thought)
- Affect can effect memory, judgments/inferences, and information processing strategies
