social cognition

Question 1

social cognition

Answer 1

= cognitive processes & structures that influence & are influences by social behavior

Question 2

primacy effect

Answer 2

= traits presented first disproportionately influence the final impression
–> positive info. first –> better impression

Question 3

recency effect

Answer 3

= traits/info. about a person presented later has a greater impact on your impression of person (subsequently)

Question 4

primacy-recency effect

Answer 4

= order in which info. abut a person is presented can dramatically affect our subsequent impression

• -> primacy (first info. important)
• -> recency (last info. important)

Question 5

personal construct

Answer 5

= idiosyncratic (individual/ eigen-artig) & personal ways of characterizing other people
–> develop over time as adaptive forms of person prediction
(resist to change)

Question 6

implicit personality theories

Answer 6

= idiosyncratic & personal ways of characterizing others & explaining their behavior
–> can be based on personal experience
(resistance to change)

Question 7

appearance-based impression

Answer 7

= often first impression we get is very influential for us (usually physical appearance –> is what we first see)

e.g. physically attractiveness –> tend to assume `good´

Question 8

social judgebility

Answer 8

= perception of wether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target
–> people for impressions to make judgements

Question 9

schema

Answer 9

= cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept/ type of stimulus, including it’s attributes & the relations among those attributes
–> rich repertoire of knowledge (highly organized)

• helps interpret events & make choices how to behave
• we tend to fill in gaps with prior knowledge & preconception, rather than seek info.
• saves all influence according new-, memory of old info & inferences about missing info.

Question 10

person schema

Answer 10

= knowledge structure about a specific individual

Question 11

person schemas

Answer 11

= knowledge structure about a specific individual

Question 12

role schemas

Answer 12

= role occupants/ specific criteria that you personal feel apply to specific role
(also understood as schemas about social group; & if widely shared –> social stereotypes)

Question 13

scripts

Answer 13

= event schema
–> lack of relevant scripts often cause feeling of disorientation, frustration, lack of efficiency (e.g. encountered by people from foreign cultures)

Question 14

content-free schemas

Answer 14

= no rich info. about specific category

–> rather limited number of rules for processing info.

Question 15

self-schema

Answer 15

= represent & store info. about oneself in more complex & varied way
–> form part of peoples concepts of who they are (–> self-concept)

Question 16

fuzzy sets

Answer 16

= fuzzy, not well organized features that first come to mind when thinking about a person

Question 17

1. prototype

2. stereotype

Answer 17

1. = certain ideas that you have about a person/ group of persons (personal view)
2. = certain ideas about a person/ role, a group that is shared by a big group of people/ is cultural excepted

Question 18

sometimes to many features –> not immediately obvious which features will be used as basis of categorizing & which schema will apply

1. data-driven cognition
2. theory-driven cognition

Answer 18

1. = when costs of being wrong are to high –> we probe more info. & attend more closely to (more carefully)
2. when costs of being indecisive are to high –> we tend to quick decisions & form a quick impression

Question 19

salience (stimuli)

Answer 19

= attention-capturing stimuli (stand out in relation to other stimuli)

• more salient people attract attention & tend to be considered more influential in a group; more personal responsible & less influenced by situation & generally evaluated more extremely

Question 20

vividness (stimuli)

Answer 20

= emotionally attention-grabbing, concrete & imagine-provoking stimuli (close to you in time & space)

vividness = Lebendigkeit, Eindringlichkeit, Bildhaftigkeit

Question 21

priming

Answer 21

= activation of accessible categories or schemas in memory that influence how we process new infos

–> categories that we often use & recently used are consistent with our goals, needs & expectations –> rapidly primed & used to interpret the social world

Question 22

organization on person memory

1. person-based memory
2. group-based person memory

Answer 22

1. = ordination (in schema) by person is likely when people are significant to us (e.g. familiar, expect to interact with them)
2. = organization by group memberships, likely in with encounters with strangers (in a group) –> may change overtime

Question 23

social inferences

core of social cognition

Answer 23

= addressed inferential processes we use to identify, to sample infos, to form impressions & to make judgements

2 distinctive ways to process infos:

• -> rely automatically on general schemas or stereotypes
• -> deliberately rely on specific instances

Question 24

Achs’s configural model

making impressions

Answer 24

central traits –> certain pieces of info. that have significant influence on forming our first impression of someone

peripheral traits –> insignificant influence on configuration of our final impression of a person

–> certain traits are for us personal central or peripheral (e.g. certain characteristics of a person that more/less important for us to make a decision what we think of a person)

Question 25

regression

Answer 25

= tendency to make your impression (on the first time meeting someone) often more extreme than it really is - need to control your impression to not be overall negative because of just one negative characteristic - -> be aware of regression, e conservative & cautious in making inferences from limited information

Question 26

base-rate information

Answer 26

``` = general information, usually factual & statistical, about an entire class of events --> chronically under use such infos in making inferences (thus we often fail to see the relevance) ```

Question 27

covariation

Answer 27

= correlated variation of two or more variables | --> judgments of covariation are judgments of how strongly two things are related

Question 28

illusory correlation 1. associative meaning 2. paired distinctiveness

Answer 28

= tendenz to overestimate the the degree of correlation or see one where non exists 1. = items are seen as belong together on basis of prior expectations 2. = items are seen to go together because they share some unusual feature

Question 29

heuristics 1. representativeness heuristic 2. availability heuristic 3. anchoring & adjustment

Answer 29

= cognitive short-cuts that reduce complex problem-solving to simpler judgmental operations 1. = relevance judgement that disregards/ ignores base-rate info, sample size, quality of info & other normative principles - -> is fast, effective & produces inferences that are mostly accurate enough for our purpose - -> cognitive short-cuts in which instances are assigned to categories or types on the basis of overall similarity or resemblance to the category 2. = cognitive short-cuts in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is based on how quickly instances/ associations come to mind 3. = cognitive short-cuts in which inferences are tied to initial standards or schemas

Question 30

consequence of effect --> emotion & mood influence thought, action & affects judgement, behavior affect-infusion model 4ways to process information about another 1. direct access 2. motivated processing 3. heuristic processing 4. substantive processing

Answer 30

= cognition is infused with affects such that social judgments reflect current mood (only occurs where there is info processing in an open & constructive manner) 1. - directly access schema/ judgement stored in memory 2. - form judgement on basis of specific info to achieve a goal/ repair an existing mood 2. - rely on various cognitive short-cuts/ heuristics 3. - deliberate & carefully construct a judgement from variety informational sources --> current mood states affect judgements involving heuristic- & substantive processing

Question 31

attribution

Answer 31

= process of assigning a cause to our own behavior & that of others

Question 32

``` naive psychologists (theory) (Heider 1958) ```

Answer 32

= model of social cognition that characterizes people as using rational, scientific-like, cause-effect analyses to understand their world

Question 33

1. internal (dispositional) attribution | 2. external (situational) attribution

Answer 33

= process of assigning the cause of own or others behavior to internal or dispositional factors (personality) 2. = assigning the cause of own or others behavior to external or environmental factors

Question 34

why are we seeking the cause of behavior?

Answer 34

- since we feel that our own behavior is motivated, we look for cause & resins for other people's behavior - people want to understand the world, make it orderly & meaningful enough for adaptive actions --> we tend to look for stable & enduring properties of the world around us

Question 35

``` covariation model (ANOVA model) (Harold Kelley) ```

Answer 35

= people assign the cause of behavior to the factor that covers most closely with the behavior (decide wether to attribute behavior to internal dispositions (e.g. personality) or to external environmental factors (e.g. social pressure) --> need to consider if there is a high/low consistency, -distinctiveness, consensus

Question 36

attribution style questionary (ASQ) attribution complexity scale (ACS)

Answer 36

= measures sorts of explanations people give for unpleasant events (on 3 dimensions) --> internal/external; stable/unstable; global/specific = measures individual differences in the complexity of the attributions people make for events

Question 37

self-perception theory (Bem)

Answer 37

= we gain knowledge of ourselves only by making self-attributions; we infer our own attributions from our own behavior --> people make more general attributions for their own behavior

Question 38

task performance attributions 1. locus 2. stability 3. controllability

Answer 38

= cause & consequences of the sorts of attributions made for peoples success or failure 1. = performance caused by actor (internal)/ by situation(external) 2. = is the cause sable/ unstable 3. to what extend is future task performance under the actors control --> determines what kind of emotion people feel towards someones success/ failure

Question 39

attributional baises 1. cognitive misers 2. motivated tacticians

Answer 39

- attraction process can be based by personality, interpersonal dynamics or based to meet communication needs 1. = model of social cognition that characterized people as using the least complex & demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviors 2. = characterizes people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, which they choose among on the basis of personal goals, motives & needs

Question 40

correspondence bias (originally called fundamental attribution error) 1. fundamental attribution error - -> ultimate attribution error 2. outcome bias 3. essentialism

Answer 40

= tendency for people to over-attribute behavior to stable underlying personality dispositions 1. = bias in attributing another behavior more to internal than to external causes - -> slightly different in intergroup context; groups are making attributions about in- & out-group behavior 2. = assumption that person behaving in some particular way intended to all the outcomes of that behavior 3. = behavior is considered to reflect underlying & immutable, often innate, properties of people or the group they belong to

Question 41

actor-observer effect

Answer 41

= tendency to attribute our own behaviors externally (environmental factors) & others’ internally (dispositional factors/ personality) --> tend to consider others behavior more stable, predictable than our own

Question 42

false consensus effect

Answer 42

- seeing our behavior as more typical than it is & assume that under similar circumstance others would behave the same - we usually seek out similar others our own opinions are very salient to us - we are mitigated to ground our opinions --> build a stable world

Question 43

self-serving biases 1. self-enhancing biases 2. self-protecting biases 3. self-handicapping biases 4. illusion of control 5. belief in a just world

Answer 43

- our attribution is influenced by our desire for favorable image of ourselves —> we make attributions that satisfy our self, protect or enhance our self-esteem/ self-concept 1. = we take credit for our own success (internally) 2. = explain away our negative behavior & failures (externally) 3. = publicly making advance external attributions for our anticipated failure or poor performance in a forthcoming event 4. = belive that we have more control over our world than we actually do 5. = belief that the world is a just & predictable place where good things happen to `good people´ & versa vice (`people get what they deserve´)