Social Cognition and Attributions

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

“the process by which people think about and make sense of other people, themselves and social situations”
Fiske & Taylor, 1991

• integration of social psychology and cognitive psychology
• how we interact with the world around us

Question 2

What does social cognition include?

Answer 2

attribution theory 
attitudes 
group behaviours
conformity / obedience - stereotyping 
prejudice 
stigma

Question 3

What is an attitude?

Answer 3

a learned evaluative response, directed at specific objects, which is relatively enduring and influences behaviour towards these objects - doesn’t really change over time

Objects=people, things, behaviour or ideas

Question 4

What are the 3 components of an attitude?

Answer 4

• cognitive (beliefs and expectations)
• affective (feelings and emotions)
• cognitive (behaviours)

Attitudes should be internally consistent within us and mutually consistent with other attitudes (tend to fit in with things around us and within us)

Question 5

What is prejudice?

Answer 5

extreme form of attitude

• with cognitive, affective and behavioural components
• discrimination occurs as the behavioural component of prejudice

Question 6

How are attitudes formed?

Answer 6

1) Classical conditioning -learned by association, through school for example
2) Operant conditioning - learned by reward or punishment - learn social constructs around you e.g. rewarded for good behaviour
3) Social Learning Theory - learning by modelling other peoples behaviours -e.g your elders- observing others and behaving as them
4) Direct experience - experience of critical events - an individual will interpret an event based on all those things- we all respond differently due to all our other attitudes we have formed over time

Question 7

Why is social cognition important in medicine?

Answer 7

Medicine deals with people - people are not “information processors without social influence and they are not influenced by society without thinking

• it is an important determinant of behaviour
• gain a better understanding of why somebody isn’t getting better even though the treatment they are taking should be helping - using someones attitudes can help us influence a patients behaviour for the positive

Question 8

What is the attribution theory?

Answer 8

causal explanations for behaviour, or events

• as humans we want to know the cause of events especially if something unexpected, disruptive or threatening happens (Eg.illness)
• based on our views of the world we make assumptions and attribute things

Question 9

How does the attribution theory link to patients whom as ill?

Answer 9

in illness people try to make sense of why somethings happened, especially when it is unexpected

Question 10

How does the attribution theory help a doctor?

Answer 10

helps us to understand how people behave when they are unwell, helping us to know how best to treat them

Question 11

What is Kelley’s covariation theory divided into?

Answer 11

Dispositional attributions: due to INTERNAL factors or personal factors e.g. motivation, ability, effort

Situational attributions: Due to EXTERNAL factors or the environment e.g. resources

Question 12

What are the 3 dimensions of Kelley’s theory?

Answer 12

1. consensus - do other people do the same in this situation?
2. consistency - does the behaviour occur reliably in this situation?
3. Distinctiveness - does the behaviour one occur in this situation? is it unique?

Question 13

Using the attribution theory relate “Jim being absent to both the dispositional and situational contexts”

Answer 13

Dispositional:
- Consensus: nobody else is absent today
- consistency: Jim is often absent from lectures
- distinctiveness: Jim is generally unreliable
“it’s Jim’s fault, he can’t be bothered”

Situational:
- consensus: lots of people are absent today
- consistency: Jim isn’t usually absent
- distinctiveness: Jim is generally reliable
“ not Jim’s fault, the traffic must be bad”

Question 14

How are Kelley’s covariation theory and locus of control related?

Answer 14

Dispositional causes- controllable (internal locus of control) - “it’s my fault

Situational causes - uncontrollable - external locus of control - “its not my fault”

Question 15

Why is the locus of control important in medicine?

Answer 15

because someone who has an external locus of control can be more challenging in terms of a doctor trying to convince them to change their lifestyle;e

Question 16

What does it mean by stability of the causal factor?

Answer 16

whether it is a static constant of a person or changeable e.g. your level of intelligence is static but your effort is changeable

Question 17

What is the health locus of control?

Answer 17

Multidimensional health locus of control scale (MHLC)

• Internal health LoC= “I am responsible for my own health”
• External health LoC = chance- “whether I am well or not is a matter of luck
• External health LoC/powerful others- “I can only do what my doctor tells me to do”

Question 18

What is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 18

Tendency to overestimate the importance of personality relative to environmental influences explaining OTHERS’ behaviour

Question 19

What is actor-observer bias?

Answer 19

Tendency to overestimate the importance of environmental influences relative to personality in explaining OUR OWN behaviour

Question 20

What is egocentric though?

Answer 20

Tendency to believe that our own views are widely shared and consensual

Question 21

What is self-serving bias?

Answer 21

Tendency for individualist make dispositional attributions for their successes and situational attributions for their failures - tend to blame things around us

Question 22

What is the just world hypothesis?

Answer 22

(Just world fallacy)
- Tendency to believe that people get what they deserve in life (be it good or bad)
- e.g. STDs an unsafe sexual practice
- associated with wealth and high social status - in bias to destitute or unemployed
= idea of believing people get what the deserve for doing something wrong

Question 23

What is self-effacing bias?

Answer 23

• opposite of self-serving bias
• in some collectivist cultures (e.g. Japanese) people tend to have a self-efficacy bias when making attributions
• that is, they tend to attribute their successes to situational factors rather than to personal attributes and when they fail they blame themselves for not trying hard enough

Question 24

Why are attributions important to doctors?

Answer 24

Understanding the causes of health/illness behaviour of patients means you may be better able to predict and influence their behaviour

Understanding your own attributional processes and cognitive bias’ means you will be able to commit fewer errors

Question 25

What are the types of illness attributions by patients?

Answer 25

About symptoms- disease or normal?
About cause- virus, genetics, smoking
About illness management responsibility - doctor or self ?

Question 26

What % of people have hypotheses for the cause of their illness and what types of hypotheses can these be?

Answer 26

95%

- biological, emotional, psychological, self-inflicted by others

Question 27

Why is the cause of an illness important to the patient?

Answer 27

it is one of the most important pieces of information that people want from the doctor

• affects patients decision about controllability
• affects coping and adaptation

Question 28

What are some conditions which others make attributions about the cause?

Answer 28

lung cancer - smoking
obesity - eating too much
HIV
Anorexia

Question 29

What is an issue with people that have an internal LoC in terms of the cause of an illness?

Answer 29

high levels of internal control lead to personal blame if illness is uncontrollable

Question 30

What is self-management training?

Answer 30

• helps patients to gain control over their illness
• increases sense of internal LoC
• aims to maximise QOL
• structured, progressive training skills
• usually group sessions
• can be online (interactive programmes, videos)
  e. g for arthritis it is an adjunct therapy as it is more effective than drug therapy alone

Question 31

What is the association of unrealistic optimism and people practicing unhealthy behaviours?

Answer 31

1. lack of personal experience with the problem
2. belief that the problem is preventable by individual action
3. belief that as the problem has not yet appeared it will not appear in the future
4. belief that the problem is infrequent
   Perception of own risk is not a rational process

Question 32

What is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 32

state of tension occurs when an individual simultaneously holds 2 cognitions that are inconsistent - e.g. continuing to smoke cigarettes knowing that cigarettes can kill
- the human mind tends to adopt thoughts / beliefs / attitudes to minimise the amount of conflict between cognitions

Therefore you can change behaviour, change belief or create a new belief

Question 33

What are the 4 distinct stages of reattribution model?

Answer 33

1. feeling understood
2. broadening the agenda
3. making the link
4. negotiating treatment