Social Perception Flashcards
How do we Make Sense of the Social World?
- social info continuously bombards our senses
- research focus on how we perceive, understand, store and remember info
Scheme Theory
- social info simplified and organised into cog structure called schemas
- knowledge structures containing general expectations and knowledge of the world
- help to select and process incoming info
- essential for wellbeing
- simplify reality and make it easier to cope with social situations
- maladaptive schemas can affect wellbeing (schema therapy - Young, 2003)
Schema Types
Person
Self
Role
Event
Role of Schemas
Mental representation
- mental structures organise knowledge, evaluation and expectations
Attention
- attention selective
- schemas and expectations guide what we attend to any situation
Categorisation
- understand what something is based on what it’s similar/ different to (McGarty, 1999)
- applied auto and impose order
- use flexible - not all category the same
- prototypes act as cog reference points, most typical example
Why do we Categorise?
- impose organisation on experience
- ultimate heuristic (mental shortcut)
- allow to be cog miser
- S provide info about groups in society (Gilbert and Hixon, 1991)
- clarifies perception of the world
- allows to predict social behaviour (Bargh, Chen and Burrows, 1996)
Effects of Stereotype
- some automatically activated (Casper, Rothermund and Ventura, 2010)
- race, age, gender
- consciously trying to suppress can increase unconscious use
Macrae et al (1994)
Study one - write about male skinhead - conditions: suppression and control - describe second male skin head - suppression result in higher later Study two - write about male skinhead - same conditions - taken to other room to meet - row of chairs with belongings on first - suppression resulted in sitting further away
Bargh, Chen and Burrows (1996)
Behavioural assimilation
- complete scrambled sentence task
- conditions: elderly and control
- directed to lift after task
- confederate times how long
- elderly condition took longer
Stereotype Threat
- risk of confirming neg S about own group (Steele and Aronson, 1995)
- due to worrying may underperform on tasks in the domain
- gender stereotype threat
- woman poor at maths
- threat can result in:
1) fear poor performance will support S - group reputation threat
2) fear poor performance will provide proof conforming to S - self reputation threat
Zhang, Schmander and Hall (2013)
- woman and men complete multiple choice maths test
- stereotype threat induced
- half used own name, half anon
- anon woman outperformed woman using own name
Social Identity Theory
Tajfel and Turner, 1986
- emphasis on group
- based on minimal group studies (Tajfel et al, 1971)
- person identity
- individual characteristics
- social identity
- characteristics related to social category
- competition over resources not only cause of conflict
Minimal Group Paradigm
- lack all characteristics normally associated with a group
- no shared history, interactions and group structure
- group allocation random
- participants chose strategies that favour their group creating intergroup differentiation
Categorisation
- process of identifying self and others as member of social category
- accentuation effect - intercatagory differences and intracategorg similarities accentuated
- reliably produces systematic effect on perception and behaviour
Identity
- us vs. them
- evaluate own social identity positively
- evaluate ingroups positively
Comparison
- positive social identity requires comparison of ingroup and relevant Outgroup
- based on Festinger (1954) social comparison theory
- self enhancement - tend to make favourable comparisons
- intergroup social comparison - compare and evaluate 2 or more groups
- motivated to evaluate ingroups positively to enhance social identity
Stereotypes
- SIT rejects social category distorts perception
- function of S to orient to actualities of group life (Oakes, Haslam and Turner, 1994)
- group based perception as valid as individual
- elaborate info about social world
- veridical - accurately reflects life
- context dependent, variable and flexible
- reflect nature of intergroup context (Stott and Drury, 2004)
Ingroup Favouritism
- varies in strength of ingroup identity
- varies with ingroup size and perceived group threat
- IF and Outgroup derogation can represent prejudice
- own group superior and behaviourally discriminate
- minimal group demonstrates biased social perception
- feel better about self when discriminating (Rubin and Hewstone, 1998)
Need for Positive Self Concept
- discriminate in favour of in group to achieve positive distinctness
- self esteem hypo - ingroup favouritism
- SIT assume casual connection between ingroup bias and self esteem
- positive ingroup differentiation results in higher self esteem
- low self esteem show more differentiation to restore self esteem to normal levels
Rubin and Hewstone (1998)
9 out of 12 support positive intergroup differentiation resulting in higher self esteem
3 of 19 support low self esteem showing more differentiation
Aberson, Healy and Romero (2000)
Meta analysis on relationship of self esteem and ingroup bias
High self esteem showed more ingroup bias that low self esteem
Christensen, Boldry and Kashy (2004)
Support high self esteem showing more ingroup bias
More ecologically valid
Identity Differentiation Hypothesis
Greater ingroup differentiation associated with stronger ingroup identification (Lalonde, 2002)
High debated (Brown, 2000, McGarty, 2001)
Hinkle and Brown (1990)
Only 2 of 14 show consistent support for identity differentiation hypothesis
Conclude support should only be observed under certain condition (collectivism)
Lalonde (2002)
- examined factors proposed by Hinkle and Brown (1990) - strength and salience of ingroup identification and relevance of Outgroup
- test identity differentiation hypothesis on Canadians, relevant Outgroup Americans and irrelevant Australians
- stronger ingroup identification perceived greater differentiation from relevant Outgroup that irrelevant Outgroup
Limitations of SIT
Artificiality
Violent behaviour
Social constraints (e.g. poverty)
