Unit 2: Social Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
How we understand and use information about people and social situations
Schemas
Mental frameworks that help us organize and interpret information
Social categories
Classifying people by shared traits
Principle of Accentuation
Emphasizing group differences and similarities
Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1970)
Belonging to a group shapes behavior and self-perception
Prototype
An example of an ideal person within a category
Exemplar
A specific person that represents a category (e.g., a successful football player)
Order Effect
When the order of information affects what we remember or how we judge it
Primacy
The information presented first influences social cognition most
Recency
The information presented last has a stronger influence on social cognition
Valence Effect
The tendency to expect positive outcomes and underestimate negative ones
Shared assumptions
Common beliefs within a group
Social Encoding
How we process and store social information
Salence
A property of a stimulus that makes it stand out and attract attention (novel, figural, or important)
Accessibility
How easily information or ideas come to mind based on recent exposure or frequent use
Priming
Triggering a past concept to affect the new information given is processed (e.g., seeing the word “doctor” makes you think of related words like “nurse” or “hospital” faster)
Stereotypes
Simplified, shared beliefs about the traits or behaviors of a social group
Implicit Personality Theories
General concepts about what kinds of characteristics go together to form certain types of personality (e.g., intelligent = friendly and not self-centered)
Appearance
Often biases first impressions
Social Inference
How we judge others based on combinations of information we know
Top-Down
Automatic model; using prior knowledge or stereotypes to judge others
Bottom-Up
Custom model; judging others based on observed behaviors or specific details
Data Collection
We often rely on schemas, which can lead us to overlook important information when collecting data
Law of Small Numbers
Explains how people can also be overly influenced by
extreme examples and small samples
Regression
A tendency for initial examples in a group to be more extreme than later ones
Base-rate Information
Statistical information is often replaced by anecdotal evidence, even if it’s more relevant
Illusory Correlation
Belief two events are related even though they aren’t
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that simplify problem-solving (representativeness, availability, anchoring & adjusting)
