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Social Cognition Flashcards

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1
Q

Social psychology definition

A

The science of how human thought, feeling and behaviour is influenced by and have influence on other people

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2
Q

Thought

A

Internal language & symbols, often conscious

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3
Q

Cognition

A

Automatic, unaware of it

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4
Q

Social cognition

A

Approach that focuses on how cognition is affected by social contexts and how cognition affects our social behaviour

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5
Q

Impression formation - Asch’s (1946) configural model

· Intelligent 
· Skilful 
· Industrious 
· Warm or Cold 
· Determined 
· Practical 
· Cautious
A
  • We use personality traits to describe people, form impressions

> > Asch (1946) Conducted a study where pp’s had to read the list on the left, including personality traits e.g.

> > One group either saw the list including the word warm and the other group read the list which included the word cold

> > Participants were then asked to rate the target person on a list of bipolar evaluative dimensions:

  • Generous/ungenerous
  • Happy/unhappy
  • Reliable/unreliable
  • Wise/unwise
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6
Q

Impression formation

A

> > Spend a large amount of time thinking and talking about other people
We make impressions of other people and use this to decide what we think about other people and how we act towards them

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7
Q

Asch (1964) findings

A

> > Those who saw the word warm made much nicer impressions of the hypothetical person - more likely to rate them more favourably
This model suggests that the terms warm/cold are central traits, thus these traits influence the meaning of other traits

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8
Q

Replication of Asch – Kelley (1950)

· ‘People who know him consider him to be a rather cold (or warm) person, industrious, critical, practical and determined’

A
  • REPLICATION of Asch’s study
  • Introduced a guest lecture to students with the following statement:
  • ‘People who know him consider him to be a rather cold (or warm) person, industrious, critical, practical and determined’
  • Half of pp’s recevied the word warm and another half heard cold
  • After the lecture they were ask to rate the lecturer on a number of dimensions
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9
Q

Replication of Asch – Kelley (1950) findings

A 
>> Those who received a cold trait rated the lecture as these traits: 
- Unsociable
- Self-centred 
- Unpopular
- Ruthless
- Formal
>> Students were more likely to rate negatively when the word ‘cold’ was used 
- Less likely to ask questions as well
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10
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Primacy and recency effects

A
  • Primacy and recency effects highlight that the order in which things are presented too us is important and can have an effect
    » Primacy effects – traits were more favourable when the positive traits were described first
    » Recency effects – there was more concentration on the last traits when you don’t pay attention to the first ones
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11
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Primacy and recency effects - Asch (1946)

·

A
  • Asch (1946)
    » Used 6 traits to describe a hypothetical person
    » He changed the order of the traits presented
    » Positive words used first followed by negative, then this was reversed for other participants
    · Intelligent
    · Industrious
    · Impulsive
    · Critical
    · Stubborn
    · Envious
    Recency effect - when the later information has more impact than the earlier information
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12
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Positivity and negativity - (Sears, 1983)

A

Generally we assume the best of others and therefore form positive impressions of people

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13
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Positivity and negativity - (Fiske, 1980)

A

However, if there is any negative information about someone -> this attracts our attention and we are biased towards negativity (Fiske, 1980)
- Likely to form a negative impression

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14
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Positivity and negativity - (Hamilton & Zanna, 1974)

A

Once this negative impression is formed, it is much more difficult to change, more resistant to change (Hamilton & Zanna, 1974) - even if positive information comes to light
» This is because the negative information tends to be more unusual and distinctive so it draws more attention

Why?

  • Negative bias tends to be more unusual & distinctive – attracts attention - more likely to remeber this (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989)
  • Evolutionary explanation - negative information indirectly signifies potential danger
  • Detection of potential danger has survival value – evolutionary, detection value
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15
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Physical appearance

A

> > Research suggests that physical appearance sways our impressions of others
Helps us form impressions
Appearance is the first information we see - therefore very influential, primacy effects
Biases our impression formation

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16
Q

(Zebrowitz, & Collins, 1997) - Appearance-based impressions

A
  • Appearance-based impressions can be surprisingly accurate! (Zebrowitz, & Collins, 1997)
  • Observers’ ratings of people based purely on pictures of their offices and bedrooms demonstrated accuracy (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli & Morris, 2002)
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17
Q

Impression formation bias - Physical attractiveness - (Dion et al., 1972)

A
  • One of the earliest/most immediate appearance based judgments we make, is whether we find someone physically attractive
    » Research has found that physically attractive people are – warm, good, interesting, socially skilled (Dion et al., 1972)
  • Research suggests this can influence workplace/ someones chance of getting a job > more attractive people are more likely to get a job
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18
Q

Impression formation bias - Physical attractiveness - (Knapp, 1978)

A

Professional men who are taller than 1.88m - receive 10% higher starting salary than men under this height

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19
Q

(Heilman, & Stopeck, 1985)

A
  • Attractive male executives -> were considered more able than the less attractive male executives
    HOWEVER
  • Attractive female executives -> were considered less able that the less attractive executives > Participants suspected that the attractive female executives were promoted because of their appearance
    (Heilman, & Stopeck, 1985)
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20
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Stereotypes

A

> > Impressions we make of others are strongly influenced by certain stereotypes (shared assumptions) based on their group memberships e.g. ethnicity, sex, class
Stereotypes are - Widely shared and simplified images of a social group and its members
One of the salient characteristics of a person we meet is their category membership - this tends to engage in stereotype consistent information

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21
Q

Biases in forming impressions: Difficulty incorporating stereotype-inconsistent information (Haire, & Grunes, 1950)

A

> > Participants struggle to incorporate stereotype-inconsistent information (Haire, & Grunes, 1950)
People had NO difficulty writing a paragraph about a working man when they received stereotype consistent information
BUT &raquo_space; When having to write a paragraph about a person - and include a piece of inconsistent information (Word ‘intelligent’ that opposes a stereotype) they struggled to write the paragraph on a working man, when they had to include this information

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22
Q

Stereotypes - Gilbert & Hixon (1991) - Activation Phase

A

> > Investigated the effects of cognitive business on the activation and application of cognitive stereotypes
- Activation Phase
Participants performed a word fragmentation completion task - whilst being exposed to either Caucasian or Asian assistant who was turning over 19 cards
Cards included words that could be spelt out as stereotypical information or inconsistent stereotypical information

> > 14 neutral and 5 target words: e.g. S_Y, S_ORT, RI_E, POLI_E – (consistent or inconsistent information) e.g. (SHY not SPY)
DV: Number of stereotypically completed word fragments
Whilst completing the fragmentation task, half of the participants are cognitively busy (rehearse 8-digit number), other half were not

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23
Q

Stereotypes - Gilbert & Hixon (1991) - Application Phase

A

> > Did the same thing, a number reversal and a visual search task to be cognitively busy
Had to watch a video of the assistant describing a typical day in her life - half pp’s saw either caucasian / asian
- Half of the participants were again cognitively busy (visual search task)
DV: At the end they had to rate the assistant on stereotypical Asian traits (e.g., timid, intelligent, calm, etc.)

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24
Q

Stereotypes - Gilbert & Hixon (1991) - findings

A

> > Participants who were not busy during the first phase, but who were busy in the late phase made more stereotypical ratings of the asian assistant

> > Business of the application phase increased the subjects tendency to view the Asian assistant in a stereotypical term, but only if it the corresponding stereotypes had been activated previously in the first phase

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25
Q

Cognitive algebra - Impression formation is based on evaluation

A

> > Asked about your impression of someone you just met, e.g. friendly, entertaining, nice… this shows that impression formation is is based on evaluation and not description

> > Cognitive algebra is an approach to the study of impression formation that focuses on how we assign different positive and negative valence to attributes and how we combine these positives and negatives into a general evaluation of a person/event

  • Impression formation is a matter of evaluation, not description
  • Three principal models: summation, averaging, weighted averaging
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26
Q

Cognitive algebra - Summation

A

> > Summation refers to a process where the overall impression is simply the cumulative sum of each piece of information
It is a method of forming positive or negative impressions by adding all the positive and negative attributes of a person to come to a sum which if it is high is positive and low - negative impression
Therefore if someone wanted to make a particularly impressive/positive impression they would present all their positive attributes and conceal any potentially negative ones

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27
Q

Cognitive algebra - Averaging

A

> > Averaging refers to the process where the overall impression is the sum cumulative average of each piece of information
A method of forming positive or negative impressions by averaging the valence of all the constituent attributes
- If someone wanted to make a positive impression, they would be best to only present the very best/most positive attribute of themselves

28
Q

Cognitive algebra - Weighted Averaging

A
  • Research tends to favour the averaging model however there can be issues with this method
  • Context may also influence the relative importance of pieces of information and thus weigh them in different ways in the impression
    > These considerations lead to the development of a weighted averaging model
    » This is a method of forming positive or negative impressions by first weighting and then averaging the valence of all the constituent person attributes
29
Q

Schema

A

> A schema is a ‘Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among those attributes’ (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, p. 98)
Set of interrelated cognitions (thoughts, beliefs and attitudes) -> that allows us to quickly make sense of a person, situation etc. on the basis of the very limited information we have
A schema about a social group that is widely shared -> is a stereotype (we tend to fill in gaps with prior knowledge, preconceptions - forming schemas and impressions is a - Top-down, theory-driven processing (Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977)

30
Q

Types of schema

• Person schema

A
  • Many types of schemas which all influence the encoding (internalising and interpretation) of new information, memory formation and inferences about missing information

• Person schema – individualised knowledge structures about a person, specific people e.g. a schema you can have about a friend

31
Q

• Role schemas

A

– knowledge structures about role occupants e.g. airplane pilots - they fly the plane and should not be seen drinking whisky in the cabin etc

32
Q

• Scripts

A

– Schemas about events are generally called scripts e.g. script about going to the cinema etc
- E.g. a football fan might have a script about a football game, and very clear scripts for what happens on and off the pitch - this makes the entire event meaningful

33
Q

• Content-free schemas

A

– do not contain rich information about a specific category but rather contain a limited number of rules for processing information
- Content-free schemas might specify that if you like John and John likes Tom then you should also like Tom

34
Q

• Self-schemas

A

– stored information about the self

  • These schemas represent and store information about themselves in a similar but more complex and varied way than information about others.
  • Self-schemas form part of people’s concept of who they are, the self-concept
35
Q

Categories & prototypes

A

> To apply schematic knowledge, you first need to categorise a person, event or situation as fitting to a particular schema

> Cognitive psychologists believe that categories are collections of instances with a family resemblance - (Cantor & Mischel, 1977, 1979; Rosch, 1978) e.g. breeds of bird, same type of animal but different kinds

> Instances vary in terms of a range of attributes, with some instances seeming to have an overall better fit in one category than others - they are more prototypical of the category

> As instances within a category are not identical but differ from one another to varying degrees - categories can be considered FUZZY SETS of features centred around a prototype - they are similar but different

> The relationship of categories are hierarchical, with less inclusive categories beneath more inclusive categories e.g. categories with fewer members/attributes are nested beneath categories with more members/attributes
- People are more likely to rely on intermediate levels rather than those that are very inclusive or exclusive (e.g. we say a car is a car, not a BMW sports car)

>

36
Q

Prototypes

A

– cognitive representations of the typical/ideal defining features of a category

37
Q

FUZZY SETS

A
  • categories can be considered FUZZY SETS of features centred around a prototype
38
Q

Hierarchical relationship

A
  • organised by level of inclusiveness - less inclusive (smaller) are nested beneath more inclusive (larger) categories

More inclusive - European
↓
British / Italian
↓

English / Scottish / Welsh —- Sicilian / Neapolitan
(Less inclusive)

39
Q

Categorisation & stereotyping

A

> > Stereotypes and stereotyping are central aspects of prejudice and of inter-group behaviour as a whole
According to Lipman - stereotypes were treated as simplified mental images that act as templates to help interpret the bewildering diversity of the social world

40
Q

Categorisation & stereotyping - (Tajfel, & Wilkes, 1963)

A

> > Three conditions

1) First condition pp’s shown lines randomly labelled A or B
2) Second condition longer lines were labelled A and shorted lines were labelled B
3) Final condition there were no labels for the lines

  • People were asked to estimate the length of lines
41
Q

Categorisation & stereotyping - (Tajfel, & Wilkes, 1963) FINDINGS

A

> > Didn’t find any interesting results for the first or final condition
But in the second condition participants tended to underestimate the shorter lines and overestimate longer lines - so A lines were overestimated and B lines were underestimated
Categorisation responsible for stereotyping (Tajfel, & Wilkes, 1963) -> accentuation principle

42
Q

> > Years of research and stereotypes

A

> > Years of research have found a number of clear findings regarding stereotyping:

> People show an easy readiness to characterise large human groups in terms of a few fairly crude common attitudes
Stereotypes are slow to change
Stereotype change is generally in response to wider social, political or economic changes
Stereotypes are acquired at a young age, often before the child has any knowledge about the groups that are being stereotyped - although some research suggests stereotypes form later around 10 years old (Rutland)
Stereotypes become more pronounced and hostile when social tensions and conflict exist between groups - they are also very difficult to modify
Stereotypes are not inaccurate or wrong, they just serve to make sense of particular inter-group relations
Shared generalisations about members of a social group
Schemas of social groups
Simplified images based on visible differences
Often derogatory when applied to out-groups

43
Q

Social encoding

A
  • refers to the process where by the external social stimuli are represented in the mind of an individual : 4 stages (Bargh, 1984)
    1) Pre-attentive analysis – an automatic and non-conscious scanning of the environment
    2) Focal attention – once noticed, stimuli stimuli are consciously identified and categorised
    3) Comprehension – different stimuli are given different meanings
    4) Elaborative reasoning – the stimulus is linked to other knowledge to allow for complex inferences
44
Q

Salience

A
  • Our social encoding depends heavily on what captures our attention, in turn our attention is influenced by salience, vividness and accessibility
  • Salience refers to the property of a stimulus that makes it stand out in relation to other stimuli and attract our attention - therefore attention capturing stimuli are salient stimuli
  • e.g. A male is salient in an all female group although in a mixed gender group - he isn’t salient
45
Q

Why are people salient?

A

> People can be salient because they are novel - (i.e. a single man in a female group) or figural (e.g. a bright t-shirt at a funeral but not at a party)
Stimuli can be salient if the behaviour of a person/thing doesn’t fit with prior expectations of them as individuals
Someone could be salient if they are important to your specific or more general goals, they dominate your visual field or you have been asked to pay attention (Erber, & Fiske, 1984; Taylor, & Fiske, 1975)

46
Q

Why are people salient? Continued…

A

> > Salient people tend to attract more attention and compared to non-salient people they are often seen as more influential in a group
They are also more personally responsible for their behaviour and less influenced by the situation whilst they are also evaluated more extremely
Because we attend more to salient people, they dominate our thoughts and increase the coherence of impressions
People do not necessarily recall more about a salient person, however they just find it easier to access coherent impressions of them
- e.g. if you aren’t fond of tall men and you go to a party where there is a tall man that stands out, you may feel negative about him and feel as thought he dominated the conversation
- although you may not recall much accurate information about him, you will have formed a coherent impression of him as a person

47
Q 
Antecedents
• Novelty
• Figural
• Unusual behaviour for that
person
• Unusual behaviour for people
in general
• Unusual behaviour for people
in that category
• Person is important to your
goals
• Visual field dominance
• Being instructed to watch the
person
↓          ↓          ↓
 Salience
A

Salience
↓ ↓ ↓

Consequences
• Seen as more influential
• Behaviour reflects
dispositions
• Behaviour influenced by
situation
• More extreme evaluation
• Coherent impression
48
Q

Vividness definition

A

> Whilst salience is a property of a stimulus in relation to other stimuli, vividness is an intrinsic property of the stimulus itself. Vivid stimuli are ones that are:

o Emotionally interesting (e.g. violent crime)
o Concrete & image provoking, e.g. gory description of crime
o Close to you in time and place (e.g. a violent crime committed yesterday in your street)
·

49
Q

Vividness continued…

A

> > Vivid stimuli ought to attract your attention just like salient stimuli > and ought therefore to have similar social cognitive effects - although research has not confirmed this
Vividly presented information e.g. through colourful language accompanied by pictures/videos, may be more entertaining, though not more persuasive
Apparent effects of vividness can often be attributed to other factors that co-occur with vividness e.g. vivid stimuli may convey more information and thus it may be the information and not the vividness that influences social cognition

50
Q

Accessibility -

A

> Accessibility - Attention is often directed by the accessibility of categories or schemas that we already have in our heads (Higgins, 1996)
Accessible categories are readily and automatically primed by features of the stimulus domain to make sense of the intrinsically ambiguous nature of social information
Activation of accessible categories or schemas in memory that influence how we process new information

51
Q

Priming definition

A
  • Activation of accessible categories or schema in memory that influence how we process new information
52
Q

Priming – Williams, & Bargh, 2008

A

> Participants were either assigned to 1 of 2 temperature conditions, warm or cold
PPs were primed by either holding a cup of warm or cold coffee - researcher asked them to hold the coffee acting as though it was not part of the experiment
PPs were then asked to evaluate a hypothetical person on a series of traits: intelligent, skilful, industrious, determined, practical, cautious (Asch, 1946 traits)

53
Q

Priming – Williams, & Bargh, 2008 FINDINGS

A

> > PPs who experienced the physical warmth of the hot cup of coffee before evaluating someone - had increased feelings of interpersonal warmth so they evaluated the target person more favourably
Where as PPs who experienced the cold coffee, had increased feelings of interpersonal coldness - rated a person less favourbaly
The participants had no awareness of the influence of the hot/cold sensation on their judgements

54
Q

Priming – Williams, & Bargh, 2008 CONCLUSION

A
  • We learn that > Experiences of physical warmth (or coldness) increase feelings of interpersonal warmth (or coldness) – without the person’s awareness of this influence
55
Q

Social inference

A

Social inference is in many respects the core of social cognition
> It addresses the inferential processes (which can be quite normal or abstract, or intuitive and concrete) that we use to identify, sample and combine to form impressions and make judgements.

56
Q

Heuristics (Kahneman, & Tversky, 1974)

A

Kahneman and Tversky (1974) detail the sorts of cognitive short-cuts called heuristics that people use to reduce complex problem solving to simpler judgmental operations

> > Heuristics are quite, fairly accurate, cognitive short-cuts that provide adequately accurate inferences for most problems most of the time - but don’t provide the solution all of the time

57
Q

> There are 3 principle types of heuristic that have been researched

A

> Representativeness Heuristic
Availability heuristic
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

58
Q

Representativeness Heuristic

A
  • We assign instances to categories based on overall similarity or resemblance to the category
  • People often simply estimate the extent to which the instance superficially represents or is similar to a typical or average member of the category.
  • The more instance X looks like category Y, the more we think X belongs to Y
59
Q

Representativeness Heuristic - Linda example

A
  • ‘Linda is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues and she participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.’
  • Linda is a bank teller
  • Linda is a feminist and a bank teller

Which is more likely to be true?
Although it is statistically more likely that Linda will be a bank teller only rather than a bank teller and a feminist - PP’s largely chose the second one as more likely as they believe it is more representative of what Linda is like as a person

60
Q

Availability heuristic

A
  • We estimate the frequency or likelihood of an event based on how quickly/easily it comes to mind
  • Tversky & Kahneman - words beginning with R and words with R as their 3rd letter
  • People choose words begging with R as they are easier to bring to mind even though words in an english text more often have R as their 3rd letter
  • Ing words
  • Asthma/Tornado - Lichtenstien
  • Diseases in the Media/more severe - Young
61
Q

Anchoring & adjustment

A
  • A cognitive short-cut in which inferences are tied to initial standards or schemas
    > We base or judgments on first suggestions, ourselves or contextual anchors
    > In making a judgement we often need a starting point - an anchor - from which we can adjust subsequent inferences
    > e.g. inferences about other people are often anchored in beliefs about ourselves, we decide how artists, intelligent, sporty someone is in reference to our own self-schema
62
Q

Affect & emotion

A

Traditionally, social cognition research focused on thinking rather than feelings, but in more recent research there has been an ‘affective revolution’.
> Research has focused on how feelings, emotion, mood affect and are affected by social cognition
> Different situations (funeral/party) evoke different emotions (happy/sad)
> But also the same situation (examinations) have can evoke multiple emotions (fear, challenge) in different people (weak/strong student)

63
Q

Antecedents of affect

A

> Research suggests people process information about the situation and their hopes, desires, abilities - these are cognitive appraisals
These cognitive appraisals produce affective reactions and physiological responses
> Before the emotional response
• Appraisals produce a variety of emotions (Smith & Lazarus, 1990)

64
Q

Primary Appraisals

A

> Research has shown that primary appraisals related to whether something is good/bad, or perhaps harmless/dangerous, occur in the amygdala > related to automatic emotional reactions, these have survival value
e.g. How relevant / important is what is happening right now? Is this good or bad/safe or dangerous?
Primary appraisals generate emotions blindly and quickly, well before conscious recognition of the target of appraisal e.g. someone is shown images of a snake, so quickly that the images cannot be recognised but the person generate physiological symptoms
When a person is focused on negative stimulus rather than a positive one, brain activity may be even greater

65
Q

Secondary appraisals

A
  • More complex, relate to accountability and coping e.g. How responsible am I for what is happening?
  • Can I handle and adjust to this situation? Do I expect this situation to improve
66
Q

Consequences of affect

A

> After the emotional response
- Emotions & mood influence thought, judgment and behaviour
According to Forgas there are 4 distinct ways in which people process information about one another:

1 ) Direct access: they can directly access schemas or judgment stored in memory
2 ) Motivated processing: then can form a judgment based on specific motivation to achieve a goal, or repair a mood
3 ) Heuristic processing: they can rely on cognitive short-cuts or heuristics
4 ) Substantive processing: they can deliberately and carefully construct a judgment from a variety of sources

67
Q

> Affect–infusion model (Forgas, 1994, 1995, 2002)

A

> > Cognition is infused with affect such that social judgments reflect current mood
In this model it is argued affect infusion occurs only where people process information in an open and constructive manner that involves active elaboration of the stimulus details and information from memory

Social Psychology (7 decks)

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