Social Cognition [D] Flashcards
Define : Schemas ?
Schemas are metal frameworks centering on a specific theme that help organize social information.
- Situations
- People
- occupations
- Social roles
- Social groups
The Influences of Schemas ?
Schemas Influences :
- Attention [ What we notice ]
- Encoding [ What we store in memory ]
- Retrieval [ What we recover ]
Priming : which schemas guide our thoughts ?
A ] Priming ?
B ] Unpriming ?
A ] Priming = occurs when stimuli or events increase the availability in memory or consciousness.
B ] Unpriming = refers to the fact that the effects of the schemas will not decrease until they are somehow expressed in taught or behaviour.
Liabilities of schematic processing ?
- People are overly accepting of information that fits a schema.
- People fill in gaps with information that does not belong but is schema - consistent.
- People may ignore information which does belong but is schema - inconsistent.
Advantages of Schemas processing ?
- Schemas Add information.
- Schemas aid recall
- Schemas aid processing
- Schemas provide expectations
Define : Perseverance ?
Perseverance effect is the tendency for beliefs and schemas to remain unchanged even in the face of contradictory information.
Define : Heuristics ?
Heuristics are shortcuts for problem solving that reduce complex or ambiguous information to more simple judgmental operations.
Types of Heuristics ?
Types of Heuristics ?
Representativeness heuristic -> Availability heuristic -> Anchoring & adjustment heuristic.
Define : Representativeness ?
Representativeness = making judgement based on the extent to which current stimuli or events resemble other stimuli or categories.
The Representativeness Heuristic ?
The Representativeness heuristic selects a schema based on the similarity between the stimulus and the schema.
Anchoring & Adjustment ?
Anchoring & Adjustment =
- Judgements based on this rule can be wrong.
- Anchors often are arbitrary
- Personal experiences do not serve as good anchors.
Two Basic Modes of Social Thought ?
- Automatic Processing :
- Seemingly effortless
- Involves amygdala. - Controlled Processing :
- Involves prefrontal cortex.
Define : Automatic Processing ?
Automatic Processing occurs when, after extensive experience with a task or type of information.
- > seemingly effortless
- > unconscious manner
Example = Activation of Stereotypes
Five Potential Sources of Error in Social Cognition ?
Potential Errors =
- Negativity Bias
- Optimistic Bias
- Overconfidence Barrier
- Planning Fallacy
- Bracing for Loss
Potential Error :
- Negativity Bias ?
- Negativity Bias :
- People show greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive information.
- Bias may be explained by evolutionary factors.
Potential Bias :
- Optimistic Bias ?
- Optimistic Bias :
- Predisposition to expect most things to turn out well.
- > overconfidence barrier
- > Planning Fallacy
Potential Bias :
- Overconfidence barrier ?
- Overconfidence barrier = tendency to have more confidence in the accuracy of our own judgements than is reasonable.
Potential Bias :
- Planning fallacy ?
- Planning fallacy = is the tendency to believe that we can get more done in a given period of time than we actually can.
Define :
A ] Counterfactual thinking
B ] Thought suppression
C ] Magical thinking
A ] Counterfactual thinking - is the tendency to imagine alternative outcomes in a situation other than the ones that actually occurred.
B ] thought suppression - are efforts to prevent certain thoughts from entering consciousness.
C ] magical thinking - is based on irrational assumptions.
Affects and Cognition :
Moods affect how new stimuli are perceived.
Define :
- Mood congruent effects ?
& - Mood dependent memory effect ?
- Mood congruent effects current moods strongly determine which information in a given situation is noticed and entered into memory.
- Mood dependent memory effect determined what information is retrieved from memory.
Define :
- Logical thought
& - Affect or emotion
- Logical thought
- Forward thinking, accepting of delays. - Affect or emotion
- Impulsive, prefers immediate rewards
