Social cognition and perception Flashcards
what is social cognition?
- how attitudes etc. influence our beliefs, intentions and behaviour
- comprises a set of cognitive structures and processes that are affected by social context
- ‘cognitive ministers’ e.g. adopt cognitive short-cuts, preserve ‘cognititve economy - stereotypes’
what is categorisation?
-a way that people devise short-cut strategies to simplify nature of incoming information
why is categorisation known as a rule based approach?
As every category is represented by a set of frames
what are some issues with categorisation?
- can be hard to define rules e.g not all unmarried men are bachelors
- people can disagree on the rules e.g. camel as a vehicle
- doesn’t account for poor category fit
what is a prototypical approach to categorisation?
- Members share something in common not completely identical for membership.
- Prototype often average but sometimes most extreme, e.g. environmentalist.
- Categories considered fuzzy sets centring around a prototype
what are associative networks of categorisation?
Network of linked attributes activated through spreading activation.
what is a schema?
- a cognitive representation
- they are highly organised and specify features and relationships.
- People generalise in time and in space about objects characteristics and properties:
Dependent on individual’s personal experiences
give some examples of schemas?
- Role schema.
- Person schema (individualised).
- Scripts (schemas about events).
what type of process is a schema?
- Conceptually driven processing.
what are the 3 types of alertness schemata?
- Scanning & search:
Persistent and unconventional in investigating new ideas. - Association & connection:
Processing information in creative ways to make extensions in logic, consider possibilities and make unique connections. - Evaluation & judgement:
Is new information absorbed in a way that is relevant to the individuals own interests.
what is the breadth of cross-cultural experience?
Frequency or diversity of cultures experienced
what is the depth of cross-cultural experience?
Extensive knowledge of specific (or a few) cultural contexts
what is a cognitive miser?
- cognitive laziness
- rely on heuristics for decision making and interpersonal perception.
- Process salient information
what is the availability of information heuristic?
Judging frequency of event based on number of instances brought to ‘mind’ of that event
what is the representativeness heuristic?
Whether person is an example of a particular stored schema (e.g., Stereotype)
what is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?
Using information about initial standards or schemas
what is the naive scientist?
How people think about other people – common-sense theories
why do people causes from observable behaviour or other information?
To predict and control our environment
what are dispositions?
- stable traits
e.g. Personality characteristics, beliefs
what are situations?
- changeable
e.g. Weather, other people.
what is the covariation model (Kelly 1967, 1973)?
explains how we use social perception to attribute behaviour to internal or external factors
what 3 factors do we use to make an attribution?
- Distinctiveness: Does this person behave this way in other situations?
- Consistency: Does the person regularly behave this way in this situation?
- Consensus: Do other people regularly behave this way in this?
what are some limitations of covariation model?
- availability of information
*Multiple observations needed.
*Tendency to under use consensus info.
*False consensus bias – everyone is like us!
*Time and motivation? - People are poor at assessing covariation
- Covariation is not causation
what is attribution bias?
the tendency to explain a person’s behaviour by referring to their character rather than any situational factor
what is the actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1971)
- Tendency to make dispositional attributions for others and situational attributions for ourselves.
*Differences in salience (the quality of being particularly noticeable or important; prominence)
*Differences in historical information about actor.
*Can be reversed by perspective taking.
what is the attribution, blame and forgiveness study?
- Differences in attribution of victims and transgressors.
- Participants offered a choice of tasks:
*Choosing an attractive task means next participant has to complete a boring task.
*Information provided on consent form – often not read carefully.
So participant would choose the desirable task not realising consequences.
*Subsequent participant knows initial participants choice has resulted in their boring task.
what are the results of the Attribution, blame & forgiveness?
- Victims – see transgression as intentional:
Believe transgressors feel less guilty then they actually do.
Underestimate how much transgressors want to be forgiven. - Perspective taking – victims asked to take the perspective of the transgressor reduce effects
what self-serving bias?
- Tendency to take credit (make dispositional attributions) for successes but not for failures (make situational attributions).
*Protects self esteem.
*Also cognitive reasons – focus on own efforts and information.
what is Ethnocentrism – in group serving bias?
- Ultimate Attribution Error.
- Cognitive reasons – activates schemas, don’t think further.
- Motivational reasons – social identity theory.
what is the public deficit model?
- Relationships between perceptions and knowledge
- Deficit in knowledge about the topic?
- People don’t understand and fall back on irrational beliefs.
- If people knew more then they’d change their minds.
what are risk perceptions?
- Risks more acceptable if natural and familiar
what are the 2 dimensions risk perception is organised into?
- dread risk = uncontrollable, severe consequences, involuntary
- unknown risk = Unobservable, Unfamiliar, delayed effects
what are Risks that are both unknown and dreaded called?
Signal potential – the idea that a risk occurring would have further impacts beyond immediate shocks.
what is the affect heuristic?
Judgements of risk and benefit theorised to stem from an overall affective feeling about the behaviour.
What is construal level theory?
- Psychologically close = low level construct = concrete unstructured, contextualised
- Psychologically distant = high level construal = abstract schematic, decontextualised
how do we process psychological distance?
- evolution - development of human capacity for abstract mental representation
- Commonality in way psychological distance is traversed
- Guide predictions, evaluations and planning for near and
distant situations - Considering distance (e.g. thinking about the future, taking another persons perspective) activates the same neural substrates (prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe)
Processing psychological distance using the word stroop task?
- Picture – Word Stroop Task
- Classify spatial distance of words presented
- Irrelevant stimuli can slow or speed responses.
Words either: - Close or Distant Spatially
- Low or High Uncertainty (e.g. Sure / Maybe)
- Close or Distant Socially (e.g. Friend/ Enemy)
- Close or Distant Temporally (e.g. Tomorrow or Year).
what are the core concepts of processing psychological distance?
- Temporal, Spatial, Social Distance and Uncertainty are related.
– One gets activated, all get activated (automatically).
– Words were irrelevant to the task but still interfered with task
performance.
– Manipulating one aspect of distance can influence other aspects of
distance.
how does climate change have some characteristics of psychological distance?
- Geographical distance – actually seen as affecting both local and
distant áreas. - Social distance – perceived that disproportionate effects on developing countries.
- Temporally – primarily seen as happening now.
- Some uncertainty around CC, primarily over extent of effects.
what are the implications of processing psychological distance?
- Objects considered at a distance will be considered in more abstract terms and will be formed into fewer groups
- We will be more confident about events in the distant future
-Desirability concerns should be valued more with distance (Desirability concerns are a high level construal whereas feasibility concerns are a low level construal)
