WEEK 2 Flashcards
attributions
What are social cognitions:
- Cognitive processes and structures that influence and are influenced by social behaviour (Hogg and Vaughan)
Impression formation
traits - Asch
- Central traits
-Peripheral traits
Kelley (1950)
-Warm/ Cold
-Lecture delivery
-Impressions
Impression formation: Biases
- Primacy and Recency
-order of presented information - Positivity and Negativity
- The importance of negative information - Implicit personality theories
-Certain characteristics go together to form specific types of personality
Van der Zanden (pictorial and textual cues dating apps)
-Eye tracking data from 48 undergrad students
-Pictures are more likely to attract initial attention and more attractive pictures received more attention
-texts received attention regardless
schemas
-Cognitive structure
-A set of interrelated cognitions, thoughts/ attitudes/ beliefs
-schemas allow us to quickly make sense or judge a situation/ person
Types of schema
- Person schemas, role schemas, event schemas, content-free schemas, self-schemas.
Self-schemas
- Schemas about oneself
-Self schema- sense of self and identity
Heuristics
-cog short cuts
-availability: the frequency or likelihood of an event is based on how quickly instances/associations come to mind
categories / prototypes:
-people use categories to apply semantic knowledge
Prototype: Cognitive representation of the typical defining features of a category
Stereotypes:
-Widely shared and simplified generalisations of a social group and its members
-Central aspect of prejudice
creating stereotypes
Tajfel (1957, 1959) suggested it’s because of a
process of categorisation;
- ‘Categorization accentuates perceived similarities within and differences between groups on dimensions that people believe are correlated with the categorization.
The effect is amplified where the
categorization and/or dimension has subjective
importance, relevance or value.
The stereotype content model (SCM)
- Perceived competition / status
- Warmth / competence
- Admiration / contempt / pity/ envy
- Active / passive / Facilitative
Actor-observer effect
- Attribute own/ others behaviour differently
-own=externally
-others=internally
-perceptual focus
-informational differences
Self-serving bias
-Distortions that protect our self-esteem/ self-concept
-ego serving
-attribute positives to internal factors
-blame environment for failure
Self- handicapping
- setting up excuses that we can later use if we do poorly on a task
-protects self-esteem
-preserve or enhance self concept
Belief in a ‘just world’
the tendency to believe that world is a just place
-people get what they deserve
- illusion of control
-makes us feel secure
Attributions:
- how people explain their own and others behaviour
3 theories of attributions:
- Theory of naïve psychology (Heider 58)
- Covariation model (Kelley 67)
- Attributional Theory: Weiner (79,84,85)
- Theory of naïve psychology
- Studies peoples naive/common sense of psychological theories
three principles the study is based on
- Behaviour motivated
- Identify stable and enduring properties of the world
-Differentiate between personal and environmental causalities
- Covariation model
Kelley
- Identify a factor that covaries with behaviour and assign a causal role
- to make judgement, people consider three classes of information related to the co-occurrence of a certain action
three classes of info:
high/low
-consistency
*how often
-distinctiveness
*only during/ anything related
-consensus
*everyone/ just you
attributes
low consistency = search for alternative cause
high all factors = external attribution
low all factors = internal attribution
- Attribution Theory
Weiner
- success or failure on a task leads us to make an attribution based upon three factors
Three factors to make an attributiion
- Stability
- Locus of causality
- Controllability
Fundamental Attribution Bias (FAE)
“Overemphasise personal factors and underestimate situational factors when making attributions about others” (Ross 77)
Ross et al 77
- Students randomly assigned into 3 groups, questioners, pp’s, observer
- questioners asked to come up with difficult questions which were used to test pp knowledge
-Everyone knew questioners had the advantage, but still rated as more knowledgeable
why does FAE occur?
- Focus of attention
- Differential forgetting
- Cultural differences
- Linguistics
Four causes of correspondence bias:
- Lack of awareness
-Unrealistic expectations
-Inflated categorisations - Incomplete corrections of dispositional factors
Correspondence Bias
- Every situation can be explained using internal and external causes
- FAE represents cog biases
- FAE = Correspondence Bias
Ultimate FAE
- FAE applied to group level processes
-Prejudiced individuals explain:
-Negative outgroup behaviour is dispositional
-Positive outgroup behaviour is situational - Positive outgroup behaviour as anomalous
Intergroup attributions
-ingroup vs outgroup
-ethnocentrism
-stereotyping
Team- oriented attributions
Martin and Carron (2012)
- meta analysis with 21 studies
-emphasise internal factors for wins
-downplay internal factors for a loss
-females endorse loss better, appreciate the skill of others
Limitations of attributions
- Internal-external distinction questioned
- Concerns over empirical studies
- research on fae is culturally specific, not universal
