Social Cognition Flashcards
What is social psychology?
scientific study of thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals>influenced by actual, imagined or implied presence of others
Social cognition:
Structure, processes, perceiving and interpreting and acting on social information
>subjective experience of the environment
What is impression formation?
Assigning characteristics tot other people, often used for first impressions
describe Asch’s configural model: how information influences first impressions
What is central traits?
People make holistic judgements based on specific information and form a general impression and then integrate other characteristics.
> central traits are characteristics that are disproportionately influential in impression formation. it organises and summarizes large amounts of diverse information about a person
Biases:
Primacy effect:
halo:
negativity
1-Earlier information has stronger influence than later information
2-A person who possesses one positive or one negative characteristic will possess more positive characteristics.
3-Negative information has a stronger influence than positive. Negative information is seen as violating expectancy of positive information.
What is a schema:
Mental framework that organises and synthesizes information.
They contain information that attributes and the relationship between the attributes
>influence our
What is a prototype?
Schema are organised
prototypes are fuzzy set of attributes, no category member needs to possess all attributes.
What is an exemplar?
Specific instance of a category
schemas tend to be acquired through exposure to instances of category
>more exposure>less exemplar based and more prototype
Name the three grouped schemas/describe:
Prejudice: generalized attitude towards members of a social power
stereotype: A generalized belief about members of a group
discrimination: Behaviours directed towards others because of group membership
What is stereotype suppression, Macrae et al:
Think/dont think about write bears
rebound effect: Suppressing the stereotype leads to stronger links between the category and stereotype
Define the self schema, self concept
self schema: mental framework that represents and synthesizes information about who you are
self concept: your knowledge, feelings and ideas about yourself
What is the self fulfilling prophecy
It is a way to require self knowledge
>others expectations can cause us to behave in a way that confirms these expectations
What is the self perception theory
learn about ourselves by observing how we behave
What is the social comparison theory
people need to feel confident about the validity of their perceptions, attitudes and behaviours eg people similar agreeing to us
Higgins: multiple selves
two ways people achieve goals?
Actual self
ideal self>promotional goals
ought self>prevention goals
discrepancy actual self>ideal : absence of positive outcomes>objection
actual self>ought self:presence of negative outcomes>agitation
2-
promotion focus-ones hopes, aspirations
prevention focus-ones duties/obligations
Markus and Nurius-multiple selves
self: how we are
self: what we would like to be
Regulatory focus theory
Sassenberg et al
Pt’s with promotion or prevention focus assigned to positive or negative resources to either ingroup or outgroup
business majors: promotion
law students: prevention
ingroup/outgroup: they found they tended to have ingroup favouritism
pt’s decided payments:
positive resource: adding to the max
neg resource: subtracted from max payment
What are self motives?
name the three types of self motives
self knowledge has a motivation basis
2:self assessment>find out truth about ourselves
self verification> to confirm what we already know
self-enhancement > find out favourable things
What can be used for self enhancement?
Social comparison
1) downward: compare ourselves to someone less fortunate
2) upward: compare ourselves to someone better off. it only works if self is seen in same general image as those better off.
What is self esteem?
Evaluation we make about ourselves
high>associated with promotion focus orientation
low>associated with prevention focus orientation
What is the attribution theory?
How people develop a common sense causal understanding of human behaviour
situational factors>external
dis-positional factors>internal
Fundamental attribution effect (correspondence)
Tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and immutable properties of people and therefore is ignoring situational factors
What is false consensus?
Tendency to believe own behaviour is widely shared and that their views are consensual
What is self serving bias?
To attribute ones successes to dispositional and ones failures to situational
