Social Cognition and Attribution Flashcards

1
Q

What is Social Cognition?

A

Cognition processes and structures that influence and are influenced by social behaviour

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2
Q

How do we understand what people are like?

A

Impression formation, mental representation and social schemas

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3
Q

What is attribution

A

how we explain other people’s behaviours

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4
Q

What is thought?

A

The internal symbols and language that we use which is (or potentially can be) conscious (i.e. controllable)

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5
Q

What is cognition?

A

‘conscious’ thinking plus underlying nonconscious processes that are automatic (e.g memory, executive functions)

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6
Q

What is the order of social cognition?

A

Perceptions Mental representations Cognitions, emotions and behaviours (goes back to perceptions)

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7
Q

What is impression formation?

A
  • What we notice about a person
  • What we take in subconsciously about a person
  • What aspects of these are most influential
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8
Q

Social Schema

A
  • Organise and categorise information about people
  • Direct future cognition, emotions and behaviours about and towards other people
  • Influence future perceptions about people
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9
Q

Classical and Operant Conditioning

A

Cause and effect associations
Rewards (e.g. group affiliation)
Punishment (e.g. isolation)

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10
Q

What influences impression formation?

A
  • Physical Features
  • Non-verbal communication
  • Observation of behaviours
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11
Q

What does it mean to form an impression based on physical features? Give one example.

A
  • Individual and cultural associations between physical features and psychological, personality and social characteristics
    e. g. asian students are good at maths?
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12
Q

What is the configurable model

A

Asch - central traits play a disproportional role in configuring the final impression

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13
Q

Central traits

A

traits that have a disproportionate influence on the configuration of final impressions

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14
Q

Peripheral traits

A

traits that have an insignificant influence on the configuration of final impressions

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15
Q

What are the consequences of judging by appearance?

A

Think that what is beautiful is good
People prefer to meet attractive strangers more than intelligent strangers (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams & Rottman, 1966)
People are more likely to help attractive strangers (Benson, Karabenick & Lerner, 1976)

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16
Q

How can physical features work with competing associations?

A

“Baby-faced” people are often seen as:
Honest, kind and warm
BUT ALSO
Less competent, childlike, or submissive

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17
Q

What other things do people look for in physical features other than biological appearance?

A

Clothing - individuals have a great amount of control

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18
Q

Why do people place emphasis on clothing in impression formation?

A

Cultural and historically bounded connotations
Status, wealth or power
Authority
Credibility
Enhance/attenuate other factors in impression formation

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19
Q

What is important in non-verbal communication?

A
  • Eye contact
  • Facial expression
  • Body language
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20
Q

Why is eye contact important?

A

Provides a lot of useful social information (e.g. gaze direction and duration, fixation length, fixation frequency, fixation direction)

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21
Q

Why are facial expressions important?

A

Smiling or frowning - emotions

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22
Q

Why is body language important?

A

Analyse for body angle, body movements, personal space ect

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23
Q

What is an example of non-verbal communication?

A

Mindblindness’ theory of Autism*
Those with Autism experience significant deficiencies in social-communication alongside extremely narrow interests and high levels or resistance to change
Deficiencies in ‘theory of mind’ (or ‘mentalizing’ or ‘cognitive empathy’) – they are ‘mindblind’

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24
Q

What is involved in eye tracking studies?

A

Individuals with autism are significantly less likely to look at the eyes of other people than healthy controls and as we have noted, eye contact is a particularly informative type of non-verbal communication

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25
Q

Why is behaviour important in impression formation?

A
  • Direct observation
  • Information about behaviour form other sources
  • -> Friends, family, news media, social media
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26
Q

Some assumptions for direct observation

A

Someone sitting quietly in the corner at a loud party = ‘shy’
Someone pushing in ahead of you at the supermarket = ‘rude’

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27
Q

Example of impression formation from other sources

A

Roma telling me that the old pharmacist stole - I have not met her and yet that would easily tarnish my impression

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28
Q

What are first impressions?

A

Generally automatic and intuitive

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29
Q

Are first impressions accurate

A

often yes, but depends on a range of factors

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30
Q

How can we form more considered impressions?

A
  • With greater effort and motivation - seek out more detailed info about the person
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31
Q

What may considered impressions be?

A

More accurate: e.g., when we think being correct is important
Less accurate: e.g., when we have a desired judgement, we seek out information that supports this

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32
Q

What are stereotypes

A

Impressions of people are strongly influenced by widely shared assumptions based on personalities, attitudes and behaviour of people within a group

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33
Q

What is social judgeability?

A

perception of whether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target

34
Q

How do we integrate impression formation?

A

Cognitive algebra

35
Q

What is cognitive algebra?

A

How people combine attributes that have valence into an overall positive or negative impression

36
Q

What is valence

A

The positivity or negativity of the information

37
Q

What is default?

A

Positivity, however we are biased to negative information

38
Q

What is negative information?

A
  • can be unusual, novel or distinctive which attracts attention
  • indirectly signifies danger or threat
39
Q

What is the weighted average?

A

Method of forming positive or negative impressions by first weighting and then averaging the valence of all the constituent person attributes

40
Q

What is the primacy effect?

A

An order of presentation effect in which earlier presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition

41
Q

What is the recency effect?

A

An order of presentation effect in which later presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition

42
Q

What is a schema?

A

Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among those attributes

43
Q

What is the order of social encoding/

A

Pre-attentive analysis –> Focal Attention –> Comprehension –> Elaborate Reasoning

44
Q

What is mental representation?

A

Connecting nodes

45
Q

What is a node

A

a piece of information (e.g. perception, impression, emotion).
- When we perceive 2 things together, the stronger the connection between them in our brains

46
Q

What do nodes form?

A

Over time - form networks that become schemas

47
Q

Name some examples of schemas

A
  • Person - specific individuals
  • Trait - characteristics
  • Behaviour - types of behaviour
  • Group/role - types of groups or prescribed occupants in a group
  • Events (‘scripts’) - situations or contexts
  • Self
48
Q

What do social schemas do?

A

Organise our impressions and perceptions of people

49
Q

How do social schemas work?

A

Allow us to quickly categorise a person on some universal dimension

  • Infer why they performed a behaviour (defined broadly)
  • Predict what type of behaviour they are likely to perform in future
  • Formulate our own behaviours and responses towards the person
50
Q

What are the two basic content dimensions?

A

Warm and Competence

51
Q

What is warmth?

A
  • intentions to help or harm - first judgement made

- ‘negative’ warmth (i.e. coldness and immorality) perceived as especially informative

52
Q

What is competence?

A

Ability to enact intentions

  • People are biased towards seeing competence
  • Positive competence is more informative
53
Q

What are the implications of social cognition?

A
  • Impressions form the basis for how we interact with people
  • How we behave towards a person influences how they behave towards us
    (creates a loop)
54
Q

What can we change people’s impressions of us/

A
  • Modify the schema

- Enhance the schema holder

55
Q

One way we change a schema?

A
  • Attach it - provide disconfirming or more nuanced information to change it
56
Q

What are the three main ways schemas can change?

A
  1. Bookkeeping
  2. Conversion
  3. Subtyping
57
Q

What is bookkeeping?

A

Schema gradually changes as more evidence accumulates that overcome initial impressions

58
Q

What is conversion?

A

People hold onto schema until the evidence against it is overwhelming, then abandon it for a new one

59
Q

What is subtyping?

A

Place contextual boundaries around a schema, and build a different schema for other contexts

60
Q

Give an example of subtyping

A
  • Cameron is lazy
  • Cameron works hard on schoolwork
  • -> Cameron is lazy with housework, but works hard at school
61
Q

Second way we can change a schema?

A

Enhance the schema holder - induce a positive mood in them as positive emotions can lead to more positive impressions

62
Q

What can happen if overdone?

A

Backfire if overdone (sycophancy) as there are no clear rules for knowing how much is too much

63
Q

What is attribution?

A

Cognition about the cause and effect of behaviours

- How we make inferences from behaviours to what a person is like

64
Q

What are attributions based on?

A

Personal (internal) vs situational (external) attributions

  • Global vs Specific
  • Stable vs Unstable
  • Controllable vs Uncontrollable
65
Q

What is the Covariation Model

A

That attribution is based on the combination of three types of information that co-varies the most with the behaviour

66
Q

What are the three types of information from high to low?

A
  • Consistency
  • Distinctiveness
  • Consensus
67
Q

What is consistency?

A

How often does a particular behaviour accompany a particular stimulus?

68
Q

What is distinctiveness?

A

How much does a particular behaviour ‘belong’ to a particular stimulus or many stimuli?

69
Q

What is consensus?

A

How idiosynratic is the behaviour?

70
Q

What would happen if the consistency is low, with no distinctivness and no consensus

A

Discount the information

71
Q

High consistency, high distinctiveness and high consensus

A

External attribution

72
Q

High consistency, low distinctiveness and low consensus

A

Internal attribution

73
Q

What are correspondent inferences?

A

When we make an attribution from a behaviour to a characteristic

74
Q

What are some cues to make correspondent inferences/

A
  • Freely chosen behaviour (not coerced)
  • Unique or specified effects (non-common)
  • Was not sociall desirable behaviour (non-normative)
  • Personally impactful (hedonic relevance)
  • Directed to or at us (personal ism)
75
Q

Explain correspondent influence

A

Dis positional causes are stable, so they make other’s behaviour predictable and therefore increase the sense of control we have over our world

76
Q

What is bias?

A

Systemic patterns of error in our perceptual and cognitive system

77
Q

Give examples of bias

A
  • Mistakes in explaining someone else’s behaviours
  • Mistakes in explanations of our own behaviours
  • Mistakes in explaining our own behaviour outcomes in relation to other’s behaviours
78
Q

What is the fundamental attribution error

A

We tend to attribute behaviours of others relatively more to personal factors than to situational factors

79
Q

What is actor observer bias?

A

We tend to attribute behaviours of others relatively more to personal factors, but our own behaviours relatively more than situational factors

80
Q

What is self-enhancing bias?

A

We tend to attribute our own positive outcomes relatively more to personal factors, but our own negative outcomes relatively more to situational factors