Social Cognition

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

scientific study of thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals>influenced by actual, imagined or implied presence of others

Question 2

Social cognition:

Answer 2

Structure, processes, perceiving and interpreting and acting on social information
>subjective experience of the environment

Question 3

What is impression formation?

Answer 3

Assigning characteristics tot other people, often used for first impressions

Question 4

describe Asch’s configural model: how information influences first impressions
What is central traits?

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Biases:
Primacy effect:
halo:
negativity

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

What is a schema:

Answer 6

Mental framework that organises and synthesizes information.
They contain information that attributes and the relationship between the attributes
>influence our

Question 7

What is a prototype?

Answer 7

Schema are organised

prototypes are fuzzy set of attributes, no category member needs to possess all attributes.

Question 8

What is an exemplar?

Answer 8

Specific instance of a category
schemas tend to be acquired through exposure to instances of category
>more exposure>less exemplar based and more prototype

Question 9

Name the three grouped schemas/describe:

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What is stereotype suppression, Macrae et al:

Answer 10

Think/dont think about write bears

rebound effect: Suppressing the stereotype leads to stronger links between the category and stereotype

Question 11

Define the self schema, self concept

Answer 11

self schema: mental framework that represents and synthesizes information about who you are
self concept: your knowledge, feelings and ideas about yourself

Question 12

What is the self fulfilling prophecy

Answer 12

It is a way to require self knowledge

>others expectations can cause us to behave in a way that confirms these expectations

Question 13

What is the self perception theory

Answer 13

learn about ourselves by observing how we behave

Question 14

What is the social comparison theory

Answer 14

people need to feel confident about the validity of their perceptions, attitudes and behaviours eg people similar agreeing to us

Question 15

Higgins: multiple selves

two ways people achieve goals?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Markus and Nurius-multiple selves

Answer 16

self: how we are
self: what we would like to be

Question 17

Regulatory focus theory

Sassenberg et al

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What are self motives?

name the three types of self motives

Answer 18

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

Question 19

What can be used for self enhancement?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

What is self esteem?

Answer 20

Evaluation we make about ourselves
high>associated with promotion focus orientation
low>associated with prevention focus orientation

Question 21

What is the attribution theory?

Answer 21

How people develop a common sense causal understanding of human behaviour
situational factors>external
dis-positional factors>internal

Question 22

Fundamental attribution effect (correspondence)

Answer 22

Tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and immutable properties of people and therefore is ignoring situational factors

Question 23

What is false consensus?

Answer 23

Tendency to believe own behaviour is widely shared and that their views are consensual

Question 24

What is self serving bias?

Answer 24

To attribute ones successes to dispositional and ones failures to situational

Question 25

What is cognitive short cuts?

name the two types

Answer 25

Limited cognitive resources and shortcuts allow for less resources to be used to make a judgement
1: Representativeness heuristic> classifying something as beloning to a certain category to the extent that is similar to the typical case
2-availability heuristic> est likelihood of event by ease with which instances of that event come to mind
easily-higher probability

Question 26

What is Kellys co-variation theory

Answer 26

Attributions are made using three principles
1- consistency> do they act this way on every occasion
2-consensus>do others act the same
3-distinctiveness>do they enact the behaviour in response to similar entities

Question 27

Name the attribution bias?

Answer 27

Actor observer effect
when we look for causes of behaviour it matters if we are the actor or the observer
actor: perceive our behaviour as influenced by situation
observer: behaviour due to personal disposition