Social Cognition Flashcards
define social cognition
Structures and processes involved in interpreting, and acting on social information.
Emphasis on personal subjective experience of the environment.
define social psychology
Scientific study of ‘how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others’.
what is impression formation
assigning characteristics to others
what are the 3 ways of acquiring knowledge
nativism, empiricism, Kantian synthesis
what is the nativist view
knowledge is innate with an emphasis on evolution / genes
what is the empiricist view
All knowledge through senses and emphasis on experience/ reflection based on experience
what is Kantian synthesis
Knowledge acquired through experience
Experience structured through innate schemata
What is Asch’s configuration model
People make holistic judgments based on specific information
what are central traits and what are their uses
characteristics disproportionally influential in impression formation.
Useful for organising large amounts diverse information about a person
give 3 biases in impression formation
primacy effect, negativity bias, halo effect
what is the primacy effect
earlier information has stronger influence than later
information
what is a negativity bias
neg information has stronger influence than
pos information – especially for sociability and morality issues
what is the halo effect
assumption that person possessing some positive
(or neg) characteristics, will also possess further but unknown positive (or negative) qualities.
Define schema
mental framework that organises and synthesises information
contain info about attributes and the relationship between attributes.
how do schemas influence our social perception
by guiding our expectations
how are schemas categorised
into prototypes and exemplars
what is a prototype
abstract fuzzy set of attributes- no category member needs to possess all attributes
what is an exemplar
specific instance of category
what are the 3 types of group schema
prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination
what is prejudice
emotional aspect of group schema; generalised attitude towards members of a social group
what is stereotyping
cognitive aspect of group schema ;generalised belief about the members of the group
what is discrimination
behavioural aspect of group schema; behaviours directed toward others because of group membership
what is stereotype suppression; give a study example
Macrae et al. (1994).
Based on ironic theory of thought suppression (Wegner, et al., 1987).
participants asked to not think about white bears for 5 minutes, then asked to think about them for 5 minutes- suppress then express
what is the rebound effect, incl. case of stereotypes
suppressing the stereotype leads to stronger link between category and stereotype, thus higher automaticity in mind
define self knowledge
Possible ways to acquire self-knowledge
what are the 3 types of self knowledge
SFP; self perception theory; social comparison theory
what is an SFP
Others’ expectations can cause us to behave in a way that is confirming those expectations
what is the self perception theory and who proposed it
Bem, 1972
Learn about ourselves by observing how we behave
what is the social comparison theory and who was it proposed by
Festinger, 1954
people need to feel confident about the validity
of their perceptions, etc.
achieved when people similar to us agree with us.
what is the attribution theory
explanation of how develop a common- sense causal understanding of human behaviour
Give 2 different causes for behaviour by Heider (1958)
Situational factors of external stimuli in the environment
Dispositional factors of internal, individual personality characs
What is Kelley’s covariation theory
attributions made using principles of consistency, consensus and distinctiveness
What is internal attribution
high consistency+low consensus+low distinctivenses
what is external attribution
high consistency+high consensus+high distinctiveness
what is circumstances attribution .
low consistency+low consensus+high distinctiveness
What are the 4 attributional biases
actor observer effect
fundamental attribution error
false consensus
self serving bias
What is the actor observer effect and why does it occur
As actor: perceive our behaviour as influenced by our situation (variable)
vs
As observer: perceive behaviour of others as due to their dispositions (stable)
Depends on information available to us when we consider what we are looking at
what is the fundamental attribution error
tendency to consider behaviour to reflect underlying and often innate properties of people
what is the fundamental attribution error also known as
LE correspondence bias
define false consensus and why it occurs
tendency for people to believe that their own
behaviour is widely shared and that their own views are
consensual as surround ourselves with similar others
define a self serving bias
tendency to attribute one’s success to dispositional characteristics and failures to situational factors
what is a cognitive shortcut and why are they used
allow for less resources to be used to make a judgment by using heuristics
use when have limited cognitive resources,
what are the 3 types of cognitive shortcuts
Representativeness Heuristic
Availability Heuristic
Anchoring and adjusting
what is a heuristic
mental shortcuts used to make judgments, past
experience used for a quick decision
define representativeness heuristic
Classifying something as belonging to a certain
category to the extent that it is similar to the typical case
or
Comparison of a situation/individual with prototypes we hold
define availability heuristic
estimated likelihood of event by ease event comes to mind
what is anchoring and adjusting
estimates are made by starting with an initial value, adjusted to reach an answer.
what is the likely bias resulting from anchoring and adjusting
anchor inaccurate/ too low so adjustment too small
what are the types of schema
Person Self Role Event (script) Content-free
why do we categorise schemas
to active the related schema
how are schemas acquired
through exposure to instances of the category
what is interaction attribution
high consistency+low consensus+high distinctiveness
what are the advantages/disadvantages of cognitive shortcuts
Speed but Not always accurate
what does high or low consistency mean
high means self nearly always behaves like this
low means self seldom behaves like this
what does high or low consensus mean
high means most others behave in this way
low means not many others behave in this way
what does high or low distinctiveness mean
high means self does not behave like this in most other situations
low means self does behave like this in most other situations
what is ironic thought suppression
When instructed to EXPRESS or think of white bears after suppression; number of “white bear” thoughts remains high (and even increases with time).
When instructed to think of white bears first the number of “white bear” thoughts diminishes over time
Regardless of when suppression occurs, intruding thoughts do come up
what is a problem with representativeness heuristic
ignores additional info e.g. base-rate
