Social Cognition

Question 1

Social Cognition (list some examples)

Answer 1

Study of the thinking structures and processes that determine the way we understand the social world
ex. schema, stereotypes

Question 2

Social Perception (list some examples)

Answer 2

Concerned with the impressions we form and make in our immediate encounters with others
ex. facial expressions and gestures

Question 3

2 Levels of processing, continuous or not?

Answer 3

Automatic and Controlled, they fall along a continuum.

Question 4

What are Schemas/Schemata?

What do they determine?

Answer 4

• Mental representations formed of stored information about objects or individuals in specific categories (a subset of categorization proper)
• They determine our expectancies about objects or groups and what defines them.

Question 5

What are the 2 dynamics of Schemas/stereotypes

Answer 5

1. Spreading activation- priming a given stimulus facilitates the processing of related stimuli (think Derrida’s concept of word relations)
2. Chronically accessible concepts- concepts that are regularly more accessible and sensitive to triggers

Question 6

What is the temporal threshold for conscious perception of a stimulus?

Answer 6

around 500ms

Question 7

What is a Lexical decision task?

Answer 7

A method of studying the priming of stimuli, relating an image to a set of letters that may or may not be related. If the individual responds faster to the words when they’re associated with the image (despite it not being consciously perceived) there is an association priming.

Question 8

Who developed the Continuum model of impression formation, and what does it stipulate?

Answer 8

1. Fiske and Neuberg

2. That impressions of others occur along a continuum from stereotype/ group classification to individual traits.

Question 9

What does impression formation depend on? (4 items, 3 variables)

Answer 9

1. Knowledge of the individual’s categorical membership
2. Details of the individual’s character
   (falls along a continuum of the 2)
3. Categorical membership has priority
4. Any movement along the continuum is a function of 3 variables:
   i. Interpretational
   ii. Motivational
   iii. Attentional

Question 10

Which take longer and are more effortful, Categorical membership impressions or individual impressions

Answer 10

Attribute oriented impression takes longer and requires greater attentional resources

Question 11

What are the 3 motivation influences on climbing the continuum towards attribute oriented impressions

Answer 11

1. Outcome dependency (the belief that the perceiver will work in close proximity to the subject eventually)
2. Perceiver accountability (belief the impressions will need to be justified)
3. Accuracy-set instructions (perceiver is asked to be as accurate as possible)

Question 12

What are stereotypes?

Answer 12

Schema applied to people, occurring when an individual characteristic is applied to a while identified group, all of whom are said to possess the stereotype.
-after the fact justifications and self-stereotyping

Question 13

What are the 4 conditions of a reliable schema/stereotype

Answer 13

1. Salience (attract our attention)
2. Accessibility (have previously been primed)
3. Mood/Affect (are consistent with our current feelings)
4. Power (are relevant to controlling outcomes)

Question 14

Two-Process Dissociation model of stereotyping

1. Creator
2. Presuppositions

Answer 14

1. Devine

2. Proposes a dissociation between automatic and controlled stereotyping processing

Question 15

3 Requirements for stereotyping control in the Dissociation model

Answer 15

1. Awareness of the possibility of automatic prejudicial influence
2. Sufficiently motivated
3. Have the required time/mental resources available

Question 16

What are the two-factors in the Dissociation model of stereotyping?)
What is the resulting distinction?

Answer 16

1. Stereotype activation (uncontrolled, inevitable)
2. Stereotype use (controlled, deliberate)
   - Cultural stereotypes vs. personal beliefs as potentially different cognitive structures

Question 17

What are the 4 determining factors in the individuals rapid, ‘cognitive miserly’ judgment making?

Answer 17

1. Availability (how well-primed)
2. Representativeness (how similar to information already in our possession)
3. Anchoring (starting from a point highlighted in a given conversation or text)
4. Optimism (motivated by anticipation)

Question 18

Where is the major difference between low and high prejudiced people outline?

Answer 18

In their motivational state, low prejudiced people are motivated to actively deactivate cultural stereotypes.
Low prej. people have large distinctions between personal beliefs and cultural stereotypes

Question 19

Outline Devines three studies

Answer 19

1. Both high and low prej. people have knowledge of cultural stereotypes
2. Automatic stereotype activation is equal in both high and low prej. people
3. Controlled processes can inhibit the effects of auto. processing if the autoprocessing competes with goals of maintaining a non-prejudicial identity.

Question 20

Outline Devines secondary experiment

Why is priming relevant to this experiment?

Answer 20

People were asked to form an impression of an ambiguously hostile event (as hostility is a feature of the black stereotype). Those who received ethnic primes rated the occurrence as more hostile.
Because of the lack of semantically ‘hostile’ priming words removes the potential of the correlation being due to this priming.

Question 21

Outline Correll, Judd and Park’s ‘Police officer Dilemma”

Answer 21

Ethnicity shoot/dont shoot:
Study 1: White ppl shot an armed target faster if he was black as opposed to white
2: used a shorter time window to force the test into error rates
3. Replicated 1’s effects, further demonstrating that the degree of the bias is correlated to the perceptions of cultural stereotypes and levels of contact, but not with personal racial prej.
4. Revealed equivalent levels of bias in both black and white participants

Question 22

Outline Duncans’s “Differential Social Perception and Attribution of Intergroup Violence: Testing the Lower Limits of Stereotyping of Blacks”

Answer 22

4x4 factorial design

1. White subjects labelled an ambiguous shove as more aggressive when enacted by a black
   - situational attributions dominant in whites, dispositional for blacks.

Question 23

Outline Bargh, Chen and Burrows “Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action” (3)

Answer 23

Ex 1: Primed rudeness, participants increase rates of interrupting
Ex2: Primed elderly/old semantics: walked slower when leaving the study than non-primed
Ex3: Primed African American stereotypes: More hostility when responding to a frustrating question.