Social Cognition

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

Social cognition is the processses involved in percieivig, interpretting, storing and acting on social information.

Question 2

What is cognitive algebra?

Answer 2

Cognitive algebra is how we see certain traits as having certain degrees of desirabilityand we intergrate all the values of all ofa persons traits to come to an overall evalution.

Question 3

What ways can we intergrate information in terms of cognitive algebra?

Answer 3

• Summation
• Averaging
• Wegithed averaging

Question 4

Weighted averaging

Answer 4

-Wegithed averaging where how much we value certain triats is dependent on the context we are in and how much these traits give us insight to another persons behaviour

Question 5

Summation

Answer 5

-Summation where we calculate whether there is more god or more bad traits

Question 6

Averaging (cognitive algebra)

Answer 6

-Averaging where some traits hold more value than others, some are marginal

Question 7

Briefly describe Asch’s confiural model

Answer 7

Asch configuaral model 1946
We make holisitic judgements of people using context, value, presence of other traits
Central traits are charactersitics which are disportioantly valuable in imopression formation (warm versus cold is one, Asch 1946)

Question 8

What are kelly’s personal constructs?

Answer 8

Personal constrcuts are indiosycratic and personal ways of charactersing behaviour

Question 9

What is the primacy effect?

Answer 9

primacy effect by asch 1946 is how we deem the information we receive first about a person as most important

Question 10

First impressions are the most ….. and …….

Answer 10

First impressions are most enduring and impactful (Jones and Goethals 1972)

Question 11

What is negativity bias?

Answer 11

Negativity bias in impression formation is that our impressions are disporiontalty infleunced by nagative information as we tend to pay more attention to it

Question 12

What si the reason for negativty bias accodring to carlson and skowronski 1989?

Answer 12

Negativity bias occurs because negative traits are threatening and signify potential harm or danger so we are more sensitive to it

Question 13

What is social judgeability?

Answer 13

Social judgeability is when people are maming an assessment as to whetgher there is a legitimate and adequate reason for judging someone before you form an actual impression

Question 14

Society…. us from making ..,.. of people before we meet them (…… and racism)

Answer 14

Discourages
judgements
sexism

Question 15

Is appearance important in impression formation?

Answer 15

Yes appearance is oten used to judge character as it is the first thign we see as we dont have any other inforimation about a persons character yet

Question 16

Define schema

Answer 16

Schema are mental frameworks that organise and synthesises information about something. Containing infotation about attributes and relationships between them. They can be for others, ourselves, events, groups, objects.

Question 17

Why are schema useful?

Answer 17

Schema aid our interpreation of the world

Question 18

Why can schema be bad?

Answer 18

Schema make assumptions and can be wrong thereofre leading to biases and possibly even prejudice.

Question 19

What are prototype schema?

Answer 19

prototype schema are abstract, fuzzy sets of attributes that deine a category when we dont actuallt know anything from this category (assumptions about a russian even though we have never met one)

Question 20

What are exemplar schema?

Answer 20

Exemplar schema are when we have specific instances of a category to use as an example.

Question 21

Which is better exemplar schema or prototype schema?

Answer 21

Neither is better as neither is a true desciption of a whole category as they use either imagined ideas of infer te behaviour of whole groups from one person

Question 22

What is social categorisation?

Answer 22

We perceive the world in categories; we assign people into groups based on their features and once we categorise them schema for that group is activated

Question 23

What type of schema is very resistant to chnage?

Answer 23

Prototype schema are very resitant to change as there are rapidly activated by cues (fiske and neuberg 1990)

Question 24

Discuss inclusiveness of categories and what this can mean

Answer 24

highly inclusive categories may overshadow important diffeeences
basic level categories ae neither too little or too inclusive so we use these . These are default

Question 25

Leigh and Susilo 2009 research

Answer 25

When inclduing candidates pictures in ballot papers, it was found darker skinned candidates did better in areas where more indiginous people lived and vice versa.

Question 26

What are stereotypes?

Answer 26

Stereotypes are shared schemata of social groups. They categorise people by a small number of properties, ignoring invidual differences

Question 27

What is prejudice?

Answer 27

Prejudice is a persons negative views towards memebrs of a certain group that differs from their own. Often including the thought that the out group is dissimilar to our in group.

Question 28

What are heuristics?

Answer 28

heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that provide adequately accurate inferneces for most of us most of the time.

Question 29

Define availiabilty heurtic

Answer 29

Avaliability heuristic is when people assess the importance or frequency of an event by how easily something comes to mind or how easily we can iagien them. We oversteimate how often catastrophic evnets happen as they are so massive in the news..

Question 30

Define Represnativeness heuristic

Answer 30

Representaotve heuristic classifys objects into the catefory of which it appears to be the most similar. We are taught or tend to observe certain charctersics going together, sp when we see one of these we assume all the others will be present aswell.

Question 31

Relying on the representative heuristic means we often subscribe to the ….. where we …..

Answer 31

Relying on this heuristic means we often subsrcibe to the base rate fallacy, where we ignore statsitical information about the size of a category and therefore someones likelihood of belonging to that category.

Question 32

Research supoorting base rate fallacy?

Answer 32

Tversky and Kahneman 1974 desribed someone as shy, helpful, withdrwn, tidy and little interest in people. They also said 80% of the village are farmers…is he a farmer or a librarian? Most people saiod librarian therefore showing base rate fallacy, it would be far more logical to assume he is a farmer.