Social Cognition and Perception

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

How attitudes, perceptions, judgments and expectations influence our beliefs, intentions and behaviour.

Question 2

What is one assumption of social cognition?

Answer 2

People are rational and our thinking adopts an information processing perspective.

Question 3

People are thought to be cognitive misers and take cognitive shortcuts. Why is this?

Answer 3

To simplify all the incoming information. One way of doing this is categorisation.

Question 4

How do we categorise? Who suggested the rule based approach.

Answer 4

Bruner et al 1956

Question 5

Other than the rule based approach, what are 3 other approaches to categorisation?

Answer 5

1. Prototypical approach- members share something in common centring around a prototype.
2. Exemplar approach-specific instances of a category
3. Associative networks- network of linked attributes centring around an exemplar

Question 6

Once categorisation occurs, a schema is invoked. What is a schema?

Answer 6

A cognitive representation.

Question 7

What is the name for a schema about events?

Answer 7

Scripts

Question 8

Schemas can be activated implicitly and affect judgement and behaviour. What factors affect which schemas are activated?

Answer 8

Salience, relevance and personal importance.

Question 9

What are the 3 types of heuristics? Tversky and Kahneman (1974)

Answer 9

Availability,
Representativeness,
Anchoring and adjustment

Question 10

Define attribution.

Answer 10

Attribution is the process of assigning causes for our own behaviour to that of others.

Question 11

Most people are described as naïve scientists (Heider, 1958). What does this mean relating to attribution?

Answer 11

People tend to infer causes for the behaviour of others in order to predict and control our behaviour. Dispositions and situations are compared.

Question 12

Kelley’s Covariation Model is the most influential of all models of…?

Answer 12

attribution

Question 13

According to Kelley’s Covariation Model, people use the covariation principle to decide what?

Answer 13

Whether the cause is internal or external. Situational attribution vs personality attribution.

Question 14

What are 3 key factors in a given situation according the Covariation Model?

Answer 14

1. Consistency- does the person regularly behave this way in this situation?
2. Consensus- Do other people regularly behave this way?
3. Distinctiveness- Does this person behave this way in other situations?

Question 15

Tendency to overestimate dispositional and underestimate situational factors. What type of error is this?

Answer 15

Fundamental attribution error

Question 16

Tendency to make dispositional attributions for others and situational attributions for ourselves. What type of effect is this?

Answer 16

Actor-observer effect

Question 17

Tendency to take credit for dispositional attributions for successes but not for failures (make situational attributions). What is this called?

Answer 17

Self-serving bias

Question 18

What is the relationship between knowledge and attitudes (Evans and Durant, 1995)?

Answer 18

Knowledge positively correlates with attitudes for useful research (R=0.30).

Question 19

As well as knowledge, what else affects public perception?

Answer 19

Social mistrust

Question 20

There are 2 main dimensions of risk perceptions. What are they?

Answer 20

Dread and Unknown.

Question 21

Dread risks correlated highly with overall perceived risk.

Describe dread risks.

Answer 21

Dread risks are uncontrollable, have severe consequences and are involuntary.

Question 22

Describe unknown risks.

Answer 22

Unobservable, unfamiliar and have delayed effects.

Question 23

Risks that are both unknown and dreaded have ‘high signal potential’.

What is signal potential?

Answer 23

the idea that a risk occurring would have further impacts beyond immediate shocks.

Question 24

Finucane et al., 2000 Affect heuristic states that judgements of risk and benefit stem from what?

Answer 24

An affective feeling about the behaviour.

Question 25

What are the 4 interrelated dimensions of Construal level theory?

Answer 25

Uncertainty
Social distance
Geographic distance
Temporal distance

Question 26

The more psychologically close something is, the more concrete and contextualised our thinking is. What level of construal is this?

Answer 26

Low level construal

Question 27

Manipulating one aspect of distance can influence other aspects of distance. Give an example.

Answer 27

Compare meeting a roommate tomorrow compared to in 6 months. They will feel more familiar if they are tomorrow.

Stephan et al 2006

Question 28

Psychological distance is related to…?

Answer 28

abstract and schematic thinking.