Week 1: Social Cognition & Learning Flashcards
What is Social Psychology the study of?
How people’s thoughts and feelings influence their behaviour towards others, and of how the behaviour of others influences people’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
What is “social cognition and influence”?
The mental processes associated with the ways in which people perceive and react to other individuals and groups.
What are the two components of the self?
Self-concept and self-esteem
What is self esteem?
The evaluations we make about how worthy we are as human beings
What is self concept?
The thoughts, feelings and beliefs we hold about who we are and what characteristics we have
To consider the way we are now compared to the way we were in the past is called a ______ comparison?
Temporal
To use others as a basis of comparison for evaluating ourselves is called a ______ comparison?
Social
Categories to which people see themselves belonging to, and therefore compare themselves to, are called…?
Reference Groups
When one believes that they are getting less than they deserve in terms of money, status, recognition etc in comparison to a reference group, it is called…? E.g you are being paid $5 million while your co star is getting $10 million
Relative Deprivation
What is the name of the social norm that exists in every culture?
The reciprocity norm - the tendency to respond to others as they have acted towards you
What is deindividuation?
A psychological state occurring in group members that results in loss of individuality and a tendency to do things not normally done when alone (e.g acting out of character by trampling on people to get best seats at a concert). People who feel that they are anonymous members of a group may engage in antisocial acts that they might not perform on their own.
What are social norms?
Socially based rules that prescribe what people should or should not do in various situations
What is the term for when the mere presence of people can improve performance?
Social facilitation
What is the term for when the presence of people can hurt or reduce performance?
Social interference
What determines whether the presence of people will either hurt or hinder performance?
Whether the task is easy or difficult, i.e if it is familiar, then the task is easy therefore the dominant behaviour will be enhanced, but if its is not familiar and therefore the level of difficulty is hard, the dominant responses may be incorrect and cause performance to suffer.
What is the term to describe when people exert less effort when performing with others than if they were performing alone?
Social loafing
What are the 3 reasons behind the social loafing phenomenon?
- Harder to evaluate performance of individuals when working as a part of a group 2. Rewards may come to a group whether or not every member exerts maximum effort 3. A groups rewards are usually divided equally among its members rather than according to individual effort
In which cultures is social loafing not prevalent, and why?
Collectivist, Eastern Cultures e.g China and Japan. Because working in a group usually produces social striving.
What is the term used to describe the beliefs we hold about the groups to which we belong? (Also a part of our self-concept)
social identity
What is “social perception”?
The processes through which people interpret information about others, draw inferences about them, and develop mental representations of them
What is a “self-fulfilling prophecy”?
A process through which our expectations about another person cause us to act in ways that lead the person to behave as we expected e.g if we expect people to reject us, we might behave in a way that encourages that person to do exactly that
What is an “attribution”?
The process of explaining the causes of peoples behaviour, including our own
What are Kelley’s three key variables important in understanding how “observers” make attributions about the actions of “actors”?
- Consensus 2. Consistency 3. Distinctiveness
What is “consensus”?
The degree to which other people’s behaviour is similar to that of an actor
What is “consistency”?
The degree to which the behaviour is the same across time or situations. This question is difficult to answer without information about distinctiveness.
What is “distinctiveness”?
Distinctiveness concerns the extent to which the actor’s response to one situation stands out from responses to similar situations.
If there is low consensus, high consistency and low distinctiveness, according to Kelley’s theory people are more likely to make ___ attributions about an actor’s behaviour
Internal
What is the fundamental attribution error?
A bias towards over-attributing the behaviour of others to internal causes, such as personality traits
What does the term “out-group” mean and how does this relate to the “ultimate attribution error”?
Out-group = people we see as “different” When members of a social or ethnic out-group does something positive, we attribute this to luck of an external cause. And if do something negative, we attribute to internal cause. However, if members of an in-group (people we see like ourselves) do something positive, we attribute the behaviour to integrity or other internal factors. And if do something bad - external cause. Consequently, out-group members receive little credit for their positive actions. Biases such as ultimate attribution error help maintain people’s negative views of out-groups and positive views of their own groups.
What is the term used to describe when someone has the tendency to attribute their own behaviour to external causes and attribute other peoples’ behaviours to internal causes?
The actor-observer effect
What is a self-serving bias?
The tendency to attribute our successes to internal characteristics while blaming our failures on external causes. Most pronounced in people from individualist Western cultures
Why does the self-serving bias occur?
Because people are motivated to maintain their self-esteem.
How can schemas be a bias?
Because schemas (our prior knowlege) have an influence on our perception of individuals
What is an “attitude”, one of the aspects of social cognition that has been studied the longest?
The tendency to think, feel or act positively or negatively towards objects in our environment
What are the three components to the structure of attitudes?
Cognitive - a set of beliefs about the attitude object Emotional (or Affective) - feelings about the object Behavioural - The way people act towards the object
What is the elaboration likelihood model?
A model suggesting that attitude change can be driven by evaluation of the content of a persuasive message (central route) or by irrelevant persuasion cues (peripheral route)
What are the three factors involved in changing attitudes?
- Who communicates the message 2. The content of the message 3. The audience who receives it also.. Personal Involvement ‘Cognitive busyness’ Personality characteristics
What does the peripheral route in attitude change involve?
Low elaboration, or processing, of the message and relying on persuasion cues such as the attractiveness of the person making the argument. Persuasion cues say nothing about the logic or validity of the message content.
What does the central route in attitude change involve?
High elaboration - which is carefully processing and evaluating the content of the message. The content of the message is more important than the characteristics of the communicator such as attractiveness.
What is the theory that asserts attitude change is driven by efforts to reduce tension caused by inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviours?
Cognitive dissonance theory
According to Festinger’s research on cognitive dissonance theory, a person will have low dissonance if they have high or low justification to behave that way?
High justification e.g being paid $20 to lie about a task being fun. Instead of low justification through being paid only $1 to lie - more dissonance, but reduced by displaying more positive attitude.
What is self-perception theory and how does it differ to cognitive dissonance theory?
-It is a theory suggesting that attitudes can change as people consider their behaviour in certain situations and then infer what their attitude must be. -It differs in that it does not assume that people experience discomfort when their attitudes are inconsistent with their behaviours.
What are the two kinds of evidence inconsistent with self-perception theory?
- Brain imaging shows people do in fact get uncomfortable when attitudes are inconsistent with behaviours, and that cognitive dissonance does occur. Internal tension is created by cognitive dissonance. 2. People adjust their attitudes to match their behaviour even when unable to reflect on that behaviour
So, how are attitudes usually formed?
Through observation of how others behave and speak about an attitude object, as well as through classical and operant conditioning
What are the two types of routes by which people change the attitudes?
Central and Peripheral
According to cognitive dissonance theory, we tend to reduce conflict between attitudes and behaviours by changing our….?
Attitude!
In what ways can the quality of a person’s social relationships affect biological processes?
Through affecting the functioning of the immune system to the healing of wounds. The social environment can also affect the way genes express themselves.
What are stereotypes?
The perceptions, beliefs and expectations a person has about members of some group. They are schemas about entire groups of people, and, usually involve the false assumption that all members of a group share the same characteristics. Most powerful and commonly they are observable personal attributes, particularly ethnicity, gender, and age.
What is prejudice? (lead to by stereotyping)
A positive or negative attitude towards an individual based simply on membership of some people. Literally meaning is ‘prejudgement’.
What type of component (either cognitive, affective, or behavioural) is stereotyped thinking in prejudicial attitudes?
Cognitive
The hatred, admiration, or anger people have about sterotyped groups is the ___ component? (either cognitive, affective, or behavioural)
Affective (because emotions)
What is the behavioural component of prejudice, and how do you define it?
Social discrimination - the differing treatment of individuals who belong to different groups.
What are the THREE elements in Adorno’s Motivational Theory about why prejudice may be more likely among authoritarian people?
- an acceptance of conventional or traditional values 2. a willingness to unquestioningly follow the orders of authority figures 3. an inclination to act aggressively towards individuals or groups identified by these authority figures as threatening the values held by one’s in-group
True or false: prejudice against certain groups may enhance sense of security and help meet certain personal needs
True
True of false: People with an authoritarian orientation tend to view the world as a dangerous place, and one way of protecting themselves is to identify strong with their in-group, and reject the out-group
True
Why do we use cognitive theories to deal with the world?
Because of sheer volume of behaviours we might perform, we need to use schemas and other cognitive shortcuts to organise and make sense of our social world.
