Social Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
Processes by which people come to understand others; includes categories people belong to and the things they do and say
Stereotyping
Process by which people draw inferences about others based on their knowledge of the categories to which others belong
- Inaccurate
- Overused
- Self-perpetuating
- Unconscious and automatic
Inaccurate stereotyping
- Acquiring an ability means either seeing something for ourselves or taking others word for it - we develop them even we’ve never been exposed to that group
- Majority groups overestimate rare things that happen to rare groups (i.e. crimes and minority groups)
Overused stereotyping
- Humans are variable; stereotypes only give clues as to human characteristics
- Underestimate the differences within groups
- Overestimate the differences between groups
Self-perpetuating stereotypes (why are stereotypes so hard to change?)
- Self-fulling prophecy
- Perpetual confirmation
- Subtyping
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Tendency for people to behave as they are expected to behave; stereotype threat!!
Perceptual confirmation
Tendency for people to look for/see what they expect to see; leads us to believe individuals confirm stereotypes (even when they haven’t)
Subtyping
People who receive disconfirming evidence to modify their stereotypes rather than abandon them; exceptions to the rule
Unconscious and automatic stereotyping
- Unconscious (unaware) and automatic (no control)
- Trying not to use stereotypes can make it worse
- Not inevitable - with training, can prevent stereotypes from influencing behaviour
- Most effective method: read a story of those who defy stereotypes
Attributions
Inferences about causes of people’s behaviours
- Situational or dispositional (aka personal characteristic)
Deciding which attribution to make
Covariation model
- Consistency (does the person always do this?)
- Consensuality (are other people doing it?)
- Distinctiveness (does the person perform similar actions?)
What levels of the covariation model indicate situational attribution?
Low consistency + high consensus + high distinctiveness (don’t do it in any other contexts)
What levels of the covariation model indicates dispositional distribution?
High consistency + low consensus + low distinctiveness (do it in other contexts)
Correspondence bias
Tendency to make a dispositional attribution when we should instead make a situation attribution - AKA the fundamental attribution error
Actor-observer effect
Special type of correspondence bias. Tendency to give situational attributions for OUR behaviour and dispositional behaviours for identical behaviour of OTHERS
