week 3 Cognition and Perception

Question 1

Thought

Answer 1

internal language

Question 2

Cognition

Answer 2

internal processing. Cannot be directly observed. May not be conscious

Question 3

Social cognition

Answer 3

Mental processes which influence and are influenced by, social behaviour.

Question 4

Cognitive consistency model

Answer 4

Theory/model that people try to overcome inconsistencies of thought. Out of favour since 1960’s as seems we can be quite happily inconsistent.

Question 5

Naive Scientist model

Answer 5

Theory/model which replaced Cognitive Consistency. In this model, people are assumed to naturally need to attribute causes to behaviours or events. Ie one of the Attribution Theories.

Question 6

Cognitive miser model

Answer 6

Replaced Naive Scientist model. Assumes people are often more economical than accurate, ie use heuristics which may result in processing biases etc.

Question 7

Motivated Tactician model

Answer 7

1980’speople are believed to have multiple cognitive strategies, and which chosen to be utilised, depends on motive, situation and need.

Question 8

Social neuroscience

Answer 8

modern meld of social psychology and its neurological levels, measured eg with f MRI

Question 9

Affect-infusion model

Answer 9

Part of Appraisal approach which believes our mood/environment affects cognition.

Question 10

Impression

Answer 10

This forms the basis of judgement. Impressions are influenced by pieces of information such as attributes or traits.
one study foundattractive male execs assumed more capable but also found assumed attractive female execs were assumed to have been promoted for looks not capability.
Research shows normally give more weight to negative info than positive.

Question 11

Trait

Answer 11

a characteristic or attribute. A trait may in one’s schema, be automatically associated with other traits closely or distantly, and may carry greater or lesser weight when creating impressions of others. A Central Trait has far more influence than a Peripheral Trait.

Question 12

Personal constructs

Answer 12

an idiosyncratic way of viewing the world and others

Question 13

Implicit Personality Theories

Answer 13

a theory that individuals have cohesed their own personal constructs into individual unique implicit personality theories-eg a personal view on “what I want in a partner” or “what makes a good friend” etc as well as “what traits are usually seen together”. Some research has shown Implicit Personality Theories are more likely to be similar within cultures.

Question 14

Primacy

Answer 14

A processing phenomenon where earlier info has more influence on the impression/judgement. Physical appearance has been shown by research to be hugely influential, and is frequently an example of primacy. Appearance based impressions can actually be quite accurate.

Question 15

Recency

Answer 15

A processing phenomenon where later info has more influence on impression.

Question 16

Schema

Answer 16

Cognitive structure summarising a concept including how attributes relate to other attributes/concepts. Schemas use top-down processing, ie rapid general view (as opposed to detailed itemisation). Schemas can be the protocol for many subjects eg person schemas (understanding of a specific person), script schemas (eg. how to attend a lecture/party/event), self-schema (part of self-concept), content-free-schemas (contain rules for how to process info ie attribute cause to behaviour).
To use a schema, must categorise as fitting a particular schema.

Question 17

Categories

Answer 17

schemas and categories are used sometimes interchangeably, but category tends to have fuzzier definitions/rules. Categories are collections of instances sharing a general family resemblance.
A category may be based around a Prototype (representing the typical or ideal family member with fuzzily defined attributes) or an Exemplar (very specific instance of attribute definition, possibly just actually defining one case or member).
Tend to use more exemplars as become more familiar with a group.

Question 18

stereotype

Answer 18

a simplified but widely held belief/image of a particular social group. Is a form of schema. usually can be altered slowly with wider politicosocial change, but are harder to change if conflict involved. Often established as child, and will persist if can access them in memory.

Question 19

ethnocentric

Answer 19

evaluative preference for own group cf other groups.

Question 20

Accentuation principle

Answer 20

When making categorical judgements, we tend to accentuate (or exaggerate) ;
a) similarities b/n instances in a category
b) differences b/n instances of different categories
c) differences b/n categories.
Thus, we are more likely to make mistakes within categories (eg confuse cocker with king charles) than b/n categories (dog and cat).

Question 21

Which cues determine which schemas we use?

Answer 21

Basic level categories; these have cognitive priority as the most useful. eg situation determines if use chair or furniture.
Optimal Distinctiveness Theory; basic level categories are used as balance one’s need to categorise people as similar to others but also as distinct to others.
When costs of error high, tend to be more attentive to data. Sometimes the importance is on reaching a decision quickly, and accuracy becomes less important.
People may be aware that their schemas may lack accuracy, yet attempting to overcome automatic processing, can be difficult.

Question 22

Evolving schemas

Answer 22

Whilst sometimes schemas are never re-examined, and do not change, sometimes in the face of contrary evidence, schemas will change
Bookkeeping change-changes slowly as evidence accumulates
Conversion change-changes suddenly when critical mass of disconfirming evidence acquired
Subtypying change-form subcategory to accomodate the new evidence

Question 23

Social Encoding

Answer 23

Process of presenting external social stimuli in our mind. At least 4 stages described:
1. Pre-attentive analysis-automatic unconscious scanning of environment
2. Focal attention-once noticed, stimuli are identifed and categorised consciously
3.Comprehension-stimuli are given meaning
4. Elaborative reasoning-stimuli linked to knowledge to allow complex inference
However, is dependent upon what actually captures our attention.

Question 24

Salience

Answer 24

how relevant the stimuli is within a given context. Increased salience if novel, unexpected or important to one. Salient people attract more attention and are considered more influential, more personally responsible, and less situationally-influenced.

Question 25

Accessability

Answer 25

how easily can recall existing schemas. Are usually “primed” to attend to things important to us, as we access these schema frequently. Priming influences how new info is processed. Sometimes we are aware of priming and try to overcome its influence eg try not to be gender role specific etc.

Question 26

Associative network

Answer 26

model of memory where nodes are connected by associative links. Spreading cognitive activation.

Question 27

Factors making eyewitness testimony more reliable

Answer 27

The witness;
a) goes back over scene
b)has associated perpetrator’s face with other symbolic info
c) saw perpetrator for longer period
d)gave testimony very shortly after incident
e) witness usually attentive to external environment
f) generally forms vivid mental images
The perpetrator:
a) face was not disguised
b)was younger than 30
c) looked dishonent

Question 28

Remembering people

Answer 28

remember by organising either individually or by group attribute clustering.

Question 29

social inference

Answer 29

The way we process social info to form impressions and judgements. May use either Bottom-up processessing (construct imression from building up bitsof data) or top-down processing (draw inferences automatically from schemas or theories). Neither is 100% accurate.

Question 30

Illusory correlation

Answer 30

An automatic bias. Make a judgement that there is a correlation (and there is not)or exaggerate a correlation.eg. assume obesity and poor education linked, therefore on seeing one trait, assume the other.
Explained on basis of associative meaning (eg 2 words assumed ought to belong toether eg bacon and eggs), or on basis of paired distinctiveness-items share some unusual or distinctive feature.
In real life negative events usually rarer and so are viewed as more distinctive (and so recalled easier and seem more common).

Question 31

Cognitive heuristics

Answer 31

reduce complex problem solving to simpler judgements by processing shortcuts. serve adequately most of the time.
some types include;
a)Representativeness Heuristic-make category judgement based on a few shared characteristics, and assume has all the other characteristics of category
b)Availability Heuristic-event likelihood is based on how quickly associations come to mind, not on actual frequency
c) Anchoring and Adjustment-make inferences based on first impressions or own self uderstanding and this anchors us and makes further adjustments of judgement difficult
Education particularly in rational thinking and statistics can decrease our intuitive reliance on such heuristics.

Question 32

Attributions

Answer 32

Being able to attribute cause makes the world understandable.
Internal (or dispositional attribution)=assign cause of behaviour to internal factors eg personality.
External (or situational attribution)=assign cause of behaviour to environmental factors.
Frits Heider believed we are intuitively naive psychologists and tend to attribute behaviour to stable personality properties, yet assumptions re personality can be based on very little info at all.
Kelley argued a theory of the Covariation Model whereby a person asks “what factor covaries with the behaviour?” in order to then attribute behav to internal or external factors. ie Need to assess factors of;
Consistency
Distinctiveness
& Consensus.
People tend to underutilise consensus info and are not great at assessing covariation.

Question 33

achievement attributions

Answer 33

Bernard Weiner proposed we attribute achievement based on:
Locus-result/performance is due to internal or external factors?
Stability-is the internal/external (determined at locus) cause stable or unstable?
and Controllability-how much control subject has over future task performance?
Critics argue controllability less important than 1st thought, and how well lab settings truly reflect real life

Question 34

molecular behaviour

Answer 34

momentary discrete responses

Question 35

molar behaviour

Answer 35

analysed by large response units. takes variable length of time

Question 36

Self-perception theory

Answer 36

According to Bem, we infer our attitudes from our own behaviour. Assume same process when making attributions re others, as self. Argues this is how gain self-knowledge.

Question 37

Emotions

Answer 37

Consist of physiological and cognition. Cognition=we label the physiological effect. Usually one explanation but sometimes we can label the physiology as different emotions, depending on how attribute.
Emotionally labile=being able to re-label emotions eg from anxiety to anticipation. Generally such re-labelling is of limited or short term effect outside of an immediate laboratory effect.

Question 38

Stanley Schachter

Answer 38

demonstrated that physiological effect of adrenalin was attributed as either anger or euphoria, depending on context of what confederate was doing.

Question 39

Attributional style

Answer 39

According to Rotter personality predisposes us to be either an

a) internal-make internal attributions, believeing we have great personal control over our destiny, or
b) external-make external attributions and believe things occur largely through luck or chance

Question 40

Relationships

Answer 40

in good relationships, give partner credit by attributing their good behaviour internally and understanding with attributing bad behaviour to external factors.Distressed couples behave oppositely. also, one key predictor of divorce, is withdrawn behaviour by 1 partner.
Women also tend to engage in attributional thought re relationship consistently whereas men tend only to engage in this when the relationship has become dysfunctional.

Question 41

Correspondent inference

Answer 41

An explanation of attribution by Jones et al where one infers another’s behaviour is due to underlying disposition. More likely made if behaviour seems freely chosen and if action is socially undesirable

Question 42

Correspondence bias

Answer 42

Also called Fundamental Attribution Error.Where attribute internally despite strong evidence to contrary.. eg assume pro Castro b/c speech is pro Castro despite knowing person was instructed to write that way.
This is a common bias although less common in collectivist societies

Question 43

Essentialism

Answer 43

Extreme form of Correspondence Bias, where firstly attribute behaviour to underlying disposition, but also that the disposition is immutable and innate to belonging to a particular group.

Question 44

Actor-observer effect

Answer 44

This is opposite of Correspondence Bias and occurs with regards to ourself. Tend to attribute own (undesirable?) behaviours to external factors whereas for others, attribute internally. Can reduce somewhar by becoming observer of self-eg watch video of self.

Question 45

False Consensus effect

Answer 45

Tend to overestimate how typical own behaviour is (makes justification easier). Also promoted because tend to seek out those similar to us.

Question 46

Self-Serving Bias

Answer 46

attributional distortions serving to enhance self esteem.Generally tend to take credit for positive behaviours (self-enhancing bias) and blame negative behaviours on external factors (self-protecting bias). People with low self esteem though may attribute failures internally. Occasionally, self-serving biases are muted, so as not to appear boastful etc.
Another form of self-serving bias is the Self-handicapping Bias where publicly announce external attributions for our future anticipated failure.
Self-serving Biases are rooted in a “belief in a just world” where good things happen to good people. But this can lead to victim blaming.
Self-serving biases tend to slightly enhance our perception of ourselves, not tend to portray “dummy as genius” etc

Question 47

Cultural knowledge

Answer 47

for causal explanations to be meaningful, need to be attached to complex framework of culturally acquired knowledge (eg explanations of football or washing only make sense when know what these are).

Question 48

Ultimate Attribution Error

Answer 48

When attributing outgroup behaviour, often atribute negative behav internally and positive behav externally. .

Question 49

Intergroup Attribution

Answer 49

when attribute own or others behav as due to membership of a group.

Question 50

Idealogy

Answer 50

an interrelated set of beliefs functioning to give explanation, but not involving deep thought. Difficult for holder to alter.

Question 51

Social representations

Answer 51

commonsense world explanations shared by a group. These exist on such topics as global warming, evolution, diet, etc etc.

Question 52

Rumour

Answer 52

unverified accounts passed b/n individuals in effort to make sense of events

Question 53

conspiracy theory

Answer 53

explanations of widespread worrying events in terms of premeditated actions of a small highly organised group.