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PYB2020 > Social Cognition and Attribution > Flashcards

Social Cognition and Attribution Flashcards

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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
Why is behaviour important in impression formation?
- Direct observation - Information about behaviour form other sources - -> Friends, family, news media, social media
26
Some assumptions for direct observation
Someone sitting quietly in the corner at a loud party = ‘shy’ Someone pushing in ahead of you at the supermarket = ‘rude’
27
Example of impression formation from other sources
Roma telling me that the old pharmacist stole - I have not met her and yet that would easily tarnish my impression
28
What are first impressions?
Generally automatic and intuitive
29
Are first impressions accurate
often yes, but depends on a range of factors
30
How can we form more considered impressions?
- With greater effort and motivation - seek out more detailed info about the person
31
What may considered impressions be?
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
32
What are stereotypes
Impressions of people are strongly influenced by widely shared assumptions based on personalities, attitudes and behaviour of people within a group
33
What is social judgeability?
perception of whether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target
34
How do we integrate impression formation?
Cognitive algebra
35
What is cognitive algebra?
How people combine attributes that have valence into an overall positive or negative impression
36
What is valence
The positivity or negativity of the information
37
What is default?
Positivity, however we are biased to negative information
38
What is negative information?
- can be unusual, novel or distinctive which attracts attention - indirectly signifies danger or threat
39
What is the weighted average?
Method of forming positive or negative impressions by first weighting and then averaging the valence of all the constituent person attributes
40
What is the primacy effect?
An order of presentation effect in which earlier presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition
41
What is the recency effect?
An order of presentation effect in which later presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition
42
What is a schema?
Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among those attributes
43
What is the order of social encoding/
Pre-attentive analysis --> Focal Attention --> Comprehension --> Elaborate Reasoning
44
What is mental representation?
Connecting nodes
45
What is a node
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
What do nodes form?
Over time - form networks that become schemas
47
Name some examples of schemas
- 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
What do social schemas do?
Organise our impressions and perceptions of people
49
How do social schemas work?
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
What are the two basic content dimensions?
Warm and Competence
51
What is warmth?
- intentions to help or harm - first judgement made | - 'negative' warmth (i.e. coldness and immorality) perceived as especially informative
52
What is competence?
Ability to enact intentions - People are biased towards seeing competence - Positive competence is more informative
53
What are the implications of social cognition?
- 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
What can we change people's impressions of us/
- Modify the schema | - Enhance the schema holder
55
One way we change a schema?
- Attach it - provide disconfirming or more nuanced information to change it
56
What are the three main ways schemas can change?
1. Bookkeeping 2. Conversion 3. Subtyping
57
What is bookkeeping?
Schema gradually changes as more evidence accumulates that overcome initial impressions
58
What is conversion?
People hold onto schema until the evidence against it is overwhelming, then abandon it for a new one
59
What is subtyping?
Place contextual boundaries around a schema, and build a different schema for other contexts
60
Give an example of subtyping
- Cameron is lazy - Cameron works hard on schoolwork - -> Cameron is lazy with housework, but works hard at school
61
Second way we can change a schema?
Enhance the schema holder - induce a positive mood in them as positive emotions can lead to more positive impressions
62
What can happen if overdone?
Backfire if overdone (sycophancy) as there are no clear rules for knowing how much is too much
63
What is attribution?
Cognition about the cause and effect of behaviours | - How we make inferences from behaviours to what a person is like
64
What are attributions based on?
Personal (internal) vs situational (external) attributions - Global vs Specific - Stable vs Unstable - Controllable vs Uncontrollable
65
What is the Covariation Model
That attribution is based on the combination of three types of information that co-varies the most with the behaviour
66
What are the three types of information from high to low?
- Consistency - Distinctiveness - Consensus
67
What is consistency?
How often does a particular behaviour accompany a particular stimulus?
68
What is distinctiveness?
How much does a particular behaviour 'belong' to a particular stimulus or many stimuli?
69
What is consensus?
How idiosynratic is the behaviour?
70
What would happen if the consistency is low, with no distinctivness and no consensus
Discount the information
71
High consistency, high distinctiveness and high consensus
External attribution
72
High consistency, low distinctiveness and low consensus
Internal attribution
73
What are correspondent inferences?
When we make an attribution from a behaviour to a characteristic
74
What are some cues to make correspondent inferences/
- 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
Explain correspondent influence
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
What is bias?
Systemic patterns of error in our perceptual and cognitive system
77
Give examples of bias
- 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
What is the fundamental attribution error
We tend to attribute behaviours of others relatively more to personal factors than to situational factors
79
What is actor observer bias?
We tend to attribute behaviours of others relatively more to personal factors, but our own behaviours relatively more than situational factors
80
What is self-enhancing bias?
We tend to attribute our own positive outcomes relatively more to personal factors, but our own negative outcomes relatively more to situational factors

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