UNIT 2 AOS1 - Social cognition chapter 6 Flashcards
What is social cognition?
How we perceive, think and use information to form judgements about ourselves or others in social situations
What is person perception?
Mental processes used to form impressions and draw conclusions about personal characteristics of others.
Person perceptions are ____of how people look and act.
first impressions, and can have a lasting impact on how we perceive and behave towards them.
What are physical cues?
How someone looks and acts.
How do physical cues impact person perception?
Person perception is based primarily on how someone looks and acts.
e.g attractive person is perceived as warm and kind
How does attractiveness effect person perception?
If someone is attractive, more likely to perceive them as interesting, warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, etc.
What is the halo effect?
A cognitive bias where the impression of one quality influences beliefs and expectations about other qualities.
Reverse halo effect
Incorrect assumption that positive characteristic indicates presence of one or more negative characteristics
A pos. characteristic indicates negative ones.
Horn effect
Negative characteristic indicates presense of one or more negative characteristics.
Neg.characteristic indicates more neg.
How does body language impact person perception?
Can make often quick and accurate assumptions based on body language, e.g eye contact
Define body language
Expression of behaviour enabling people to make quick, accurate judgements about others.
Examples of body language
- eye contact
- tapping fingers showing impatience
- raising eyebrows in disbelief
shared understanding of what certain expressive behaviours mean.
What is salience detection?
A characteristic that attracts attention
More noticable in context and therefore attracts attention.
Examples of salience
A teacher with face tattoos vs most teachers.
Social caterogisation
Define
the process of classifying people into different groups on the basis of common characteristics
Classification based on common characteristics.
When does social categorisation normally occur?
Sometimes conciously, but mostly without concious awarerness.
Unconciously
What is social categorisartion used for?
- Form impressions quickly using past experiences
- Learning through media and culture to guide new social interactions
Ingroup and outgroups
Ingroup - any group you belong to or identify with
Outgroup - a group you do not belong or identify with.
Attribution
Define
Process used to explain the cause of our or others behaviour.
How do we explain the cause of a person;s behaviour?
Types of attribution
Internal and external attribution
Internal attribution
Explanation of behaviour due to characteristics of person involved
e.g personality, ability, attitude, motivation, mood or effort.
External attribution
Or situational
Explanation of behaviour due to factors of situation
Something to do with the situation
What are the biases affecting attributions?
- Fundamental attribution error
- Actor-observer error
- Self-serving error
Fundamental attribution error
Define
Tendency to overestimate influence of personal factors and underestimate impact of situational factors
Overestimate personal, underestimate situational
Attribute to internal rather than external factors.
Why does fundamental attribution error occur?
Behaviour tends to be more visible (salient) than situation occuring, calledd salient bias.
Behaviour more noticeable than situation
What is the just world belief?
Belief that world is a safe place and people generally get what they desierve.
What does the just world belief achieve?
Allows us to undersand and feel safer in a world where we do not always have control over the situation and therefore can be exposed to twists in fate.
What is actor-observer bias?
Judge/attribute own behaviour to situational causes, but other’s behaviour to internal factors.
e.g you failed the exam because the ‘test was too hard’ (external/situational) but your friend’s failure to internal factors, they did not study enough.
What is self serving bias?
Tendency to take credit for positive evets (sucesses) and attribute failures to situational factors.
- Take credit for positive events, external factors for negative events
e.g you got an A+ because you are so smart (take credit for sucess, but you failed psycology because the teacher ‘doesn’t like’ you (attribute failures to situation.
Why does self-serving bias occur?
Motivated by desire to protect self-esteem and dustance ourselves from failure.
