Social Cognition Flashcards

1
Q

According to Heider, what two needs are people motivated by?

A

1 - To form a coherent view of the world.

2 - To gain control over the environment.

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2
Q

What is Fiske and Taylor’s definition of social cognition?

A

The process by which people think about, and make sense of, other people, themselves and social situations.

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3
Q

What is an attribution?

A

An explanation for the cause of behaviour.

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4
Q

What is a locus of causality?

A

A person’s perception of whether the cause of their success or failure is internal or external.

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5
Q

What is an internal locus?

A

An explanation of behaviour or an event that attributes a person’s internal characteristics to the outcome.

Generally controllable: ‘It’s my fault’.

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6
Q

What is an external locus?

A

An explanation of behaviour or an event that attributes external factors to the outcome.

Generally uncontrollable: ‘It’s not my fault’.

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7
Q

What are the 4 dimensions of attribution?

A

1 - Internal and external.

2 - Stable and unstable.

3 - Global and specific.

4 - Controllable and uncontrollable.

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8
Q

What is a stable attribution?

What about an unstable attribution?

A

An attribution that infers that an event or behavior is due to stable, unchanging factors.

Unstable -> temporary factors.

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9
Q

What is a global attribution?

What about a specific attribution?

A

Global: An attribution that infers that an event or behaviour is due to a global characteristic of a person’s personality.

‘I’m hopeless at everything’.

Specific: Due to a specific characteristic.

‘I’m hopeless at icing cakes’.

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10
Q

What is Kelley’s covariation theory?

A

A model for judging whether behaviour should be attributed to a characteristic of the person (internal) or the environment (external)

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11
Q

In Kelley’s covariation theory, what are the three types of information needed to arrive at internal or external attribution?

A

1 - Consensus.
Do other people do the same in this situation?

2 - Consistency.
Does the behaviour occur in the same way on different occasions in the same situation?

3 - Distinctiveness.
Does the behaviour occur in the same way in other situations?

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12
Q

What is a fundamental attribution error?

A

The tendency to:

attribute behaviours to a person’s internal qualities,

whilst

underestimating situational influences.

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13
Q

What is actor-observer bias?

A

The tendency to:

attribute other people’s behaviour to internal causes,

whilst

attributing our own behaviour to external causes.

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14
Q

What is self-serving bias?

AKA hedonically-biased attributions.

A

The tendency to:

take credit for success (internal attribution),

whilst

denying responsibility for failures (external attribution).

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15
Q

What is a representative heuristic?

A

The tendency to allocate a set of attributions to someone / something if they match the prototype of a given category (usually stereotypical).

e.g. see a black cab -> assume it’s a taxi.

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16
Q

What is an availability heuristic?

A

The tendency to judge the frequency of a probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind (recent cases bias your thinking).

17
Q

What is a false consensus effect?

A

The tendency to see one’s own behaviour as typical, and to assume that under the same circumstances others would react the same way.

18
Q

What is an anchoring heuristic?

A

The tendency to be biased towards initial information.

19
Q

What is a heuristic?

A

A short-cut for thinking.

20
Q

What attributions for negative events are characteristic of a pessimistic attributional style?

A

Negative events are internal, stable and global.