Social Cognition and Attitudes Flashcards
Personality attributes that seem to be the most representative of a person are called….
Central traits
As we encounter more instances of a category, our schema is likely to become _____ and ______
Less exemplar-based; more prototype-based
The way in which we attribute specific characteristics and traits to people is called?
Impression formation
Benny dislikes the police. He thinks they are all stupid. He often throws rocks at them. In this example, disliking the police reflects the _____ component of attitudes, thinking that the police are stupid reflects the ______ component, and throwing rocks at them reflects the ______ component.
Affective; cognitive; behavioural
Attitudes that are developed toward persons, places and things on the basis of their association with the positive or negative experiences that we have of them reflects the role of ______ in the development of social interactions.
Classical conditioning
According to the elaboration likelihood model, ______ is/are to a central route of persuasion as ______ is/are to a peripheral route of persuasion.
Critical thinking; association with celebrities
Angela is a vegetarian who works in a local fast-food restaurant whose main fare is hamburgers and hotdogs. Although she feels that working at the restaurant is a bit of a contradiction, she says that it was the only job that she could find, and now that she has received two pay rises, she is making more money there than she could if she were to find another job. In this example, Angela….
Reduced dissonance by justifying her behaviour
Suppose that you are at the supermarket. A salesperson in the frozen food section gives you a free sample of a new dinner that her company is marketing. You taste it. You now feel a little pressure to buy at least one of the dinners, just to be nice. The obligation you feel to buy one of the dinners is the result of the salesperson’s exploitation of which social psychological principles?
Reciprocity
Milgram’s research is noteworthy because it demonstrated the power of __________ in influencing important forms of social behaviour
Obedience to authority
Whenever David practices the piano privately he plays very well, however, when his parents or one of his sisters listen to him, he always makes a few mistakes. According to Zajonc, this is an example of….
The effects of arousal on performance
People like to think their perceptions and attitudes are accurate, so if they are uncertain or find that others disagree with them, they may feel a need to change their perceptions and attitudes in line with those of other people. This type of influence is called….
Informational influence
Dr Flowers likes to assign her class group projects. Typically, she will organise students into groups of three and assign each group a different co-operative project. The students are assigned group grades; whatever grade the group earns is what each member of the group will receive, regardless of his or her individual effort on the project. One drawback of this assignment is the possibility that it could produce ____________________
Social loafing
The configural model of impression formation was developed by?
Asch
In general, the most accessible social categories are ______________ categories.
Representational
Laura is in her first semester of college. She has only encountered three professors but already she thinks that they are rude and arrogant. Her attitude towards professors reflects…
Prejudice
After making what you thought was a great deal on a new car, the salesperson tells you that there has been a mistake in his addition and that the car is really going to cost you considerably more than you had originally agreed to. The salesperson is using a technique that is called?
Low-balling
Which ways do social representation framework develop?
- Mass communication
- Informal conversation
- Adherence to prescriptions of scientific and religious movements and other group ideologies
Fiske and Taylor have characterised the individual as a _______
Motivated tactician
Who proposed the configural model of impression formation?
Asch
Describe the configural model of impression formation
Our impressions of others are formed by more complex rules than just a simple sum of the characteristics that we use to describe people - some perceptual information may have more influence than others in our final impression depending on the type of relationship
Characteristics which are disproportionately influential in impression formation are called _______
Central traits
Personal constructs are…
The idiosyncratic views of what is most important in characterising people, according to Kelly
What is a schema?
A mental framework or body of knowledge that organises and synthesises information about something
What is a prototype?
An abstract set of attributes that define a category, where no instance may actually embody the attributes
What is an exemplar?
A specific instance of a category
Many social psychologists believe that attitudes have three different components: ______, _______ and _______
Affect; behavioural intention; cognition
The attraction for the familiar is called the what?
Mere exposure effect
Someone’s intention to behave in a certain way is strengthened if they…
- Have a positive attitude towards the behaviour
- Believe that people that matter to them also have a positive view towards the behaviour
- Have resources and opportunity to engage in the behaviour
- The intention is very specific to the certain behaviour
If the audience either knows very little about the issue or already has a strong position with respect to it, ____ sided arguments are the most effective
One
If the audience is well informed about the issue, _______ sided arguments seem to be the most effective
Two
What is the elaboration likelihood model?
Persuasion can take either a central route or a peripheral route
What is the central route of persuasion?
Requires a person to think critically about the argument being presented, weigh its strengths and weaknesses and to elaborate on the relevant themes
What is the peripheral route of persuasion?
The change is associated with a positive stimuli, e.g. An attractive model, which may have nothing to do with the subject of the argument
What are the 3 major factors which cause persuasion to fail?
- Reactance
- Forewarning
- Inoculation
What is cognitive dissonance theory?
When we perceive a discrepancy between our attitudes and behaviour, our behaviour and self-image, or between one attitude and another, we experience and unpleasant state of anxiety, or dissonance.
A person can reduce dissonance by…
- Reducing the importance of one of the dissonant elements
- Adding consonant elements
- Changing one of the dissonant elements
Social norms could influence behaviour when the situation itself….
- Provides no clear cue as to how to behave
- Is unambiguous
- Is ambiguous
You are taking part in an experiment in which you are asked to read a list of traits of a hypothetical person. When the list includes the trait _____, you are most likely to rate this person as being generous, happy and altruistic
Warm
Suppose you have a lot of friends who do not drink alcoholic beverages. Suppose further that you are asked in class to answer the following question: ‘How many people do you think drink alcoholic beverages?’ You reply, ‘Not many’, based on the number of your friends who imbibe. In this case you have made and error based on your use of the ______ heuristic
Availability
What is the availability heuristic?
When attempting to assess the importance or frequency of an event, people are guided by their own experiences that come to mind
What is a heuristic?
A cognitive short-cut or inferential rule to make inferences about people
What is the representativeness heuristic?
We classify an object into a category which we believe it is most similar to
What is the base-rate fallacy?
We overlook statistical information about the relative size of categories and therefore the probability that someone will belong to that category
Children have a more favourable view of their own “in-group” - and therefore view it more positively - than they do “out-groups”. This notion is proposed in which theory?
Social identity theory
Most people are likely to attribute the causes of people’s behaviour being due to _____ rather than ______
Dispositional factors; situational factors
______ seem to be designed to protect or enhance our self-esteem
Self-serving biases
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used by social psychologists to assess which of the following?
Implicit prejudice
According to Fiske and Taylor (1991), the individual may be characterised as a
Motivated tactician
