topic 2 Flashcards
what is social cognition?
how we process and store social information, and how this affects our perceptions and behaviour
what type of processing do social schemas facilitate?
top down
what is a category?
family type characteristics, organised hierachically around a prototype
what is a prototype?
cognitive representation of typical defining members of a category
what are the four theories of attribution?
naive scientist
attributional theory
correspondent inference theory
covariation model
who proposed the naive scientist?
Heider
what are the 3 principles of the naive scientist?
need to form a coherent view of the world
need to gain control over the environment
need to identify internal vs external factors
what is attributional theory?
acts a person performs reflects their true characteristics
who proposed the covariation model?
Kelley
what is the covariation model?
use multiple observations to identify factors which covary with behaviour
assign causes with the factors
depends on whether the behaviour is internal or external
what is consistency?
whether a behaviour always co occurs with its cause
what is distinctiveness?
whether behaviour is exclusively linked to a cause, or if it is a common reaction
what is consensus?
if other people react in the same way to the cause/situation
what are attributional biases?
systematic errors, which indicate shortcuts and intuition
what is the fundamental attribution error?
observers tend to underemphasise situation and environmental factors for a person’s behaviour
overemphasise dispositional/personality factors as that is the focus of attention
who proposed actor observer bias?
Jones and Nisbett
why does actor observer bias occur?
perceptual focus and informational difference
what is self serving bias?
attributing success to internal events, and failure to external events
who proposed self serving bias?
Olson and Ross
why does self serving bias occur?
due to our expectations and self esteem
what are heuristics?
cognitive shortcuts
what is the availability heuristic?
based on how easily we can think of an example
what is the representative heuristic?
categorise between instance and prototypical category members
what is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?
initial standard influences subsequent judgements
