Unit 4 - Chapter 8 of Text - Social Cognition

Question 1

8.1 - What is impression formation and how does it differ with age?

Answer 1

• Impression formation is the way people form and revise first impressions

Study Situation:

• One group of adults presented with positive information about a person, such as evidence of honesty. They were then presented with negative information, including incidents of dishonest behavior.
• Another group of adults was presented the information in reverse: first they were given a negative portrayal (dishonesty) and then were given incidents of positive behavior (e.g., honest behavior).
• Everyone changed their minds
• Older adults - when new negative information was presented after the initial positive portrayal of the target, willing to modify their impression of the target from positive to negative - less willing to change their first impression when the negative portrayal was followed by positive information.
• Younger adults more concerned with making sure the new information was consistent with their initial impression - modified their impressions to correspond with the new information be it positive or negative.
• Older adults may rely on life experiences and social rules of behavior when making interpretations - younger adults may be more concerned with situational consistency of the new information
• Impression formation is how people form and revise first impressions.

Question 2

8.1 - What is the negativity bias and why is it important?

Answer 2

• Older adults let their initial impression stand because negative information is more striking to them and thus affects them more strongly.
• Older adults pay attention to and seek emotional information more than younger people
• Decline in cognitive functioning limits the ability of older adults to override the impact of their initial impressions
• Older adults appear to be more sensitive to the diagnosticity of the information available
• Older adults may be at a disadvantage when processing social information - younger and older adults can process social information similarly but older adults are at a disadvantage when the social context is cognitively demanding
• When older adults take time to make a social judgment, they process information similarly to younger adults and take into consideration all of the relevant information.
• Under a time limit, they have difficulty remembering the information they need to make their social judgments

Question 3

8.1 - What is social knowledge?

Provide original examples of how it is used.

Answer 3

• When we are faced with new situations, we draw on
  our previous experiences stored in memory, in other
  words, our social knowledge.
• The content of those experiences and knowledge and how easily we can retrieve it will affect what types of social judgments we make and how we behave in social situations.
• This process includes having available stored representations of the social world or memories of past events, how to apply those memories to various situations, and easy access to the memories.
• We have implicit theories of personality, for example, about how a professor should act in a classroom. If the professor’s behavior is inconsistent with our implicit theory of how he or she should act, this will affect the impression we form
  of the professor

Question 4

8.1 - Why is knowledge accessibility important?

Answer 4

• Availability of social information in memory does not necessarily imply easy access to that information.
• The degree to which information in memory is easily accessible will determine the extent to which that information will guide social judgments and/or behavior.
• Accessibility depends on the strength of the information stored in memory.

Question 5

Describe the processing capacity explanation for age differences in social judgement biases. (pp. 285-286)

Question 6

3. What are social beliefs and how do they change with age? How do beliefs affect social judgements, memory, and problem solving? Provide original examples. (pp. 286-288)

Question 7

4. What are causal attributions? Be sure your answer includes a definition of the two major types. What is the correspondence bias and how is it affected with age? (pp. 289-292)

Question 8

How do beliefs affect social judgements, memory, and problem solving? Provide original examples. (pp. 286-288)

Question 9

5. Define each of the following and describe how they influence information processing. Also include a description of how they are related to age. (pp. 293-296)
   a. personal goals
   b. emotion
   c. cognitive style

Question 10

6. What are stereotypes? Describe the stereotypes associated with aging. (pp. 296-298)

Question 11

7. What is the age based double standard? Provide an original example. What is implicit stereotyping and how is it measured with the Implicit Attitude Test? (pp. 298-300)

Question 12

8. What is stereotype threat? Describe the evidence for stereotype threat in older adults. (pp. 301-303)

Question 13

9. What is personal control? How is it multidimensional? Provide original examples. Describe the different control strategies. (pp. 304-306)

Question 14

What is social facilitation of cognitive function and why is it important for older adults? )

Question 15

What is collaborative cognition and how is it related to social facilitation of cognitive function?

Question 16

How does the social context facilitate cognition? (307-309)