social cognition Flashcards
social cognition
= cognitive processes & structures that influence & are influences by social behavior
primacy effect
= traits presented first disproportionately influence the final impression
–> positive info. first –> better impression
recency effect
= traits/info. about a person presented later has a greater impact on your impression of person (subsequently)
primacy-recency effect
= order in which info. abut a person is presented can dramatically affect our subsequent impression
- -> primacy (first info. important)
- -> recency (last info. important)
personal construct
= idiosyncratic (individual/ eigen-artig) & personal ways of characterizing other people
–> develop over time as adaptive forms of person prediction
(resist to change)
implicit personality theories
= idiosyncratic & personal ways of characterizing others & explaining their behavior
–> can be based on personal experience
(resistance to change)
appearance-based impression
= 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´
social judgebility
= perception of wether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target
–> people for impressions to make judgements
schema
= 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.
person schema
= knowledge structure about a specific individual
person schemas
= knowledge structure about a specific individual
role schemas
= role occupants/ specific criteria that you personal feel apply to specific role
(also understood as schemas about social group; & if widely shared –> social stereotypes)
scripts
= event schema
–> lack of relevant scripts often cause feeling of disorientation, frustration, lack of efficiency (e.g. encountered by people from foreign cultures)
content-free schemas
= no rich info. about specific category
–> rather limited number of rules for processing info.
self-schema
= represent & store info. about oneself in more complex & varied way
–> form part of peoples concepts of who they are (–> self-concept)
fuzzy sets
= fuzzy, not well organized features that first come to mind when thinking about a person
- prototype
2. stereotype
- = certain ideas that you have about a person/ group of persons (personal view)
- = certain ideas about a person/ role, a group that is shared by a big group of people/ is cultural excepted
sometimes to many features –> not immediately obvious which features will be used as basis of categorizing & which schema will apply
- data-driven cognition
- theory-driven cognition
- = when costs of being wrong are to high –> we probe more info. & attend more closely to (more carefully)
- when costs of being indecisive are to high –> we tend to quick decisions & form a quick impression
salience (stimuli)
= 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
vividness (stimuli)
= emotionally attention-grabbing, concrete & imagine-provoking stimuli (close to you in time & space)
vividness = Lebendigkeit, Eindringlichkeit, Bildhaftigkeit
priming
= 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
organization on person memory
- person-based memory
- group-based person memory
- = ordination (in schema) by person is likely when people are significant to us (e.g. familiar, expect to interact with them)
- = organization by group memberships, likely in with encounters with strangers (in a group) –> may change overtime
social inferences
core of social cognition
= 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
Achs’s configural model
making impressions
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)
regression
= 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
base-rate information
= 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)
covariation
= correlated variation of two or more variables
–> judgments of covariation are judgments of how strongly two things are related
illusory correlation
- associative meaning
- paired distinctiveness
= tendenz to overestimate the the degree of correlation or see one where non exists
- = items are seen as belong together on basis of prior expectations
- = items are seen to go together because they share some unusual feature
heuristics
- representativeness heuristic
- availability heuristic
- anchoring & adjustment
= cognitive short-cuts that reduce complex problem-solving to simpler judgmental operations
- = 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 - = cognitive short-cuts in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is based on how quickly instances/ associations come to mind
- = cognitive short-cuts in which inferences are tied to initial standards or schemas
consequence of effect –> emotion & mood influence thought, action & affects judgement, behavior
affect-infusion model
4ways to process information about another
- direct access
- motivated processing
- heuristic processing
- substantive processing
= cognition is infused with affects such that social judgments reflect current mood (only occurs where there is info processing in an open & constructive manner)
- directly access schema/ judgement stored in memory
- form judgement on basis of specific info to achieve a goal/ repair an existing mood
- rely on various cognitive short-cuts/ heuristics
- deliberate & carefully construct a judgement from variety informational sources
–> current mood states affect judgements involving heuristic- & substantive processing
attribution
= process of assigning a cause to our own behavior & that of others
naive psychologists (theory) (Heider 1958)
= model of social cognition that characterizes people as using rational, scientific-like, cause-effect analyses to understand their world
- internal (dispositional) attribution
2. external (situational) attribution
= process of assigning the cause of own or others behavior to internal or dispositional factors (personality)
- = assigning the cause of own or others behavior to external or environmental factors
why are we seeking the cause of behavior?
- 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
covariation model (ANOVA model) (Harold Kelley)
= 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
attribution style questionary (ASQ)
attribution complexity scale (ACS)
= 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
self-perception theory (Bem)
= 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
task performance attributions
- locus
- stability
- controllability
= cause & consequences of the sorts of attributions made for peoples success or failure
- = performance caused by actor (internal)/ by situation(external)
- = is the cause sable/ unstable
- to what extend is future task performance under the actors control
–> determines what kind of emotion people feel towards someones success/ failure
attributional baises
- cognitive misers
- motivated tacticians
- 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
correspondence bias (originally called fundamental attribution error)
- fundamental attribution error
- -> ultimate attribution error - outcome bias
- essentialism
= tendency for people to over-attribute behavior to stable underlying personality dispositions
- = 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 - = assumption that person behaving in some particular way intended to all the outcomes of that behavior
- = behavior is considered to reflect underlying & immutable, often innate, properties of people or the group they belong to
actor-observer effect
= 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
false consensus effect
- 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
self-serving biases
- self-enhancing biases
- self-protecting biases
- self-handicapping biases
- illusion of control
- belief in a just world
- 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
- = we take credit for our own success (internally)
- = explain away our negative behavior & failures (externally)
- = publicly making advance external attributions for our anticipated failure or poor performance in a forthcoming event
- = belive that we have more control over our world than we actually do
- = belief that the world is a just & predictable place where good things happen to
good people´ & versa vice (people get what they deserve´)
