Week 6 (Social Cognition and Influence) Flashcards
What is social psychology?
*A subfield of psychology seeks to understand
- How groups/ people influence others’ behaviour (W1 + Simplified)
- How groups/ people influence others’ thoughts, feelings and actions (Textbook)
Why groups are important to human? (in general)
(survive, reproduce, genes, compete, successful, coded, inherited, evolved)
- Human survival has been maintained though genes passed on across generations
–> A person has to carry the genes long enough to reproduce - To survive and reproduce = To compete for limited resources of water, food, shelter –> One of the successful strategies = Living in social groups + Genes coded for successful behaviours have been inherited –> Humans have evolved to live in social groups
–> Brain of the primates (including human) has evolved to enable human to maintain good membership/ be a good group member (Being a good group member requires the capacity to: understand complex and subtle social rules, recognise when actions might offend others, control desires that might violate group norms - i.e. process social info and control behaviour)
What does social brain hypothesis suggest? (large, because, enable)
- Primates, including human, have large brains (in particular, large prefrontal cortices) because they live in dynamic and complex social groups
–> Self: Large brains enable the capacity to: understand complex and subtle social rules, recognise when actions might offend others, and control desires that might violate group norms
= i.e. process social info and control behaviour
Brain activity associated with group membership
(Rules, violate, others thinking about, bias, empathise, differentiate, dehumanise)
- Being a good member requires people to
+ Recognise and follow the group’s rules (Violate rules = Exclusion)
+ Understand what other members are thinking and are thinking about them –> Middle region of prefrontal cortex is important for our thoughts/ understandings about other people (either in or out members)
+ Ingroup bias –> Middle region of prefrontal cortex
+ Observe others in pain and empathise with them –> Mirror neurons = “Pain regions” are more active when seeing in members
+ Various brain regions when we differentiate between/ consider in versus out members: brain reward regions, medial prefrontal cortex - Dehumanise outgroups; Dehumanisation of outgroups
What is social cognition? (perceive, judge, make sense, understand, navigate)
- The process of making perceptions and judgments about other people (Why? To make sense of the social contexts, understand others’ intentions and motivations to ensure we’re on the right side, navigate groups successfully) (Slide)
- Self: navigate groups = find yourself around the right groups/ find the right way to deal with others or groups
Components of social cognition/ Factors influence our perceptions and judgements about others?
- Impression Formation: What kind (of person is this)?
- Attribution: Why they behaved like that? Would they act like that again in the future?
- Stereotypes: The status of their group in society? Would they be (un)favourable to sb like me?
- Social Categorisation: Where they can be located within the society? My in-group/ out-group?
(Self: What is a stereotype? –> A generalisation about a group of people in which certain traits are assigned to all members of the group, regardless of actual variation among the members - W12 Tutorial Game)
- Impression Formation
- Definition?
- Features?
- Influence what?
- Influenced by what?
= The process of + forming a “first impression” of sb
- Involves making inferences about their personal characteristics from your observation of them
- Quick, spontaneous, may be unconscious
- Acts as a schema, sets expectations for them and thus guides later info processing
(Textbook)
- 1st impressions heavily influence long-term evaluations
- Factors affecting 1st impressions can lead to perceptual biases (e.g. gender/ skin colour + leads to you automatically think about them in particular ways –> these 1st impressions often mistaken)
*Roles of appearance and nonverbal behaviour in impression formation
- Make quick judgements of a new person
- 1st thing usually noticed = face
- The face communicate info e.g. emotions, interest, competence and trustworthiness
- Nonverbal behaviour (sometimes aka body language)
+ Ex: facial expressions, gestures, mannerisms, movements, voice tones, …
+ Only some seconds of observation = Quick views = Thin slides of behaviour = Powerful cues for impression formation –> People make accurate judgements based on that, based on nonverbal behaviour (e.g. judging sexual orientation)
- Attribution (cause, own or others, tendency, personality and attitudes, external forces, think and relate)
- Definition?
- Features?
- What does this influence?
- Why we do this?
- Dimensions?
- Attributional Bias?
= Infer the causes of behaviours or situations; Attribute either our or others’ behaviours to specific causes; Make judgements about the causes of our own and others’ behaviours
- Done all the time, often unconscious
*Actor - Observer Bias = Discrepancy in explanation of our own versus others’ behaviour
*Fundamental Attribution Error = Our tendency to attribute others’ behaviour to their personality and attitudes, which is often incorrect, rather than their situations/ external forces
- Tend to attribute our own behaviour to external forces than personal characteristics
>< Tend to attribute others’ behaviour to their personality and attitudes
- Attributions we make about ourselves and others strongly influence how you think and relate to others
(Textbook)
- Attributions = One’s explanations for why events/ actions (including others’ behaviour) occur
- e.g. try to explain others’ motives, traits, preferences, …
- Why we make inferences? –> Basic need for order and predictability (things happen for a reason, anticipate future events)
- Personal/ Internal/ Dispositional attributions = Attributions of one’s behaviour to their internal characteristics e.g. traits, abilities, moods, efforts, …
- Situational/ External attributions = Attributions of one’s behaviour to external events e.g. weather, luck, accidents, others’ actions, …
- Attributions vary on other dimensions: permanent & temporary; controllable & uncontrollable
*Attributional Bias
- Intuitive scientists; Systematically biased
- Fundamental Attribution Error = Tendency to over-emphasise personality traits and underestimate situational factors when attributing others’ behaviour (e.g. fail to consider social pressures that lead to obedience)
- Actor/ Observer Discrepancy = Two tendencies (1) to focus on internal characteristics when attributing others’ behaviour (2) and to focus on situations when attributing their own behaviour
- Attributional styles differ between Eastern & Western cultures, not in whether emphasise internal characteristics, but in how much emphasise situations (Eastern cultures more likely to ha ve more holistic perceptions and consider situations)
- Stereotyping (Don’t be confused between “Stereotypes” and “Stereotyping”)
- What are stereotypes?
- What is the act of stereotyping?
- Features of stereotypes?
- How stereotyping affects thoughts, feelings and behaviours?
- Why is stereotyping problematic?
- Whom we learn stereotypes from? Since when? Is it easy to change stereotypes?
- What is sub-typing and what are sub-types?
- Can we ever learn to inhibit the use of stereotypes?
- Stereotypes = Widely held beliefs about a group of people
- Stereotypes function as cognitive schemas, helping to organise information we encounter in our environment, thereby reducing our cognitive load.
- Stereotyping = Activating a stereotype in our mind and using it in our judgment and behaviour toward the target person.
–> Stereotypes often arise automatically and outside of our conscious awareness. - Stereotyping can be problematic in many social contexts because stereotyping ascribes the stereotypes to all members of the relevant social category.
- Not all stereotypes are negative; they can be neutral and positive also.
–> However, over-generalisations, irrespective of whether positive or negative, are almost always problematic.
–> Why? One reason: Stereotyping ascribes the stereotype to all members of the relevant social category (particularly problematic when the stereotype is negative) - We often learn stereotypes from our parents, other adults, peers, cultural objects and the media.
- Some (not all) stereotypes are learned early at age 5
–> Once learned, they can be difficult to change due to a process called sub-typing - When someone who does not meet the stereotype is encountered, we tend to create a sub-type, a special category to place that person in, and then maintain our stereotype rather than change it.
–> (Textbook) See pp not matching the stereotypes = An exception rather than evidence of the invalidity of the stereotypes - Recent research: We can. When we notice that we are about to engage in stereotyping, we can consciously regulate our thoughts and behaviour through practice – e.g. by saying “no” to a depiction that shows people in a stereotypic manner
(Textbook)
- Schemas = Cognitive structures in LTM that help us perceive, organise, process and use information
–> We form new memories by filling in holes within existing memories, overlooking inconsistent information and interpreting meaning based on past experiences (p. 263)
- Stereotypes = Cognitive schemas that help to organise info and mental shortcuts that allow for easy, fast processing of info about pp based on their membership in certain groups (p. 294, 498)
- Stereotyping occurs automatically and unconsciously
- Stereotypes can be neutral, positive or negative and affect impression formation positively/ negatively
- Once formed, stereotypes are maintained by many processes: they guide attention to info confirming them and away from info disconfirming them, memories getting biased to match them, illusory correlations, sub-typing
–> p. 500: Stereotypes affect attention, influence basic perceptual processes
*Prejudice & Discrimination
- Negative stereotypes may lead to prejudice and discrimination (because to relieve tensions and protect self-esteem)
- P = negative feelings, opinions and beliefs associated with a stereotype
–> have destructive effects,
- D = the inappropriate and unfair treatment of pp as a result of prejudice
- Evolution has led to to 2 processes producing P and D
(1) Tendency to favour their own groups over other groups (self-guess: ingroup favouritism)
(2) Tendency to stigmatise those who pose threats to their groups (Competing for limited resources + Social Identity Theory –> Feel threatened by anything that favours outgroups at the expense of the ingroups)
*Moden Prejudice
- “modern racism” - subtle forms of prejudice - hold implicit negative attitudes while explicitly condemn/ reject racist attitudes
- happens because the equal treatment of minorities may challenge traditions of the majority
Distinguish stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination
*MyUni
- Stereotypes= Our beliefs concerning a group (and social category)
- Prejudice = How we feel towards a group (and social category)
- Discrimination = How we behave towards members of a group (and social category)
*Textbook
- Social Categorisation (MyUni)
- What is social categorisation?
- Its relations with impression formation and stereotyping?
- What are in, out, and social identity theory?
- What is social identity?
- Effects of social identity theory?
= The process of classifying people into groups based on their characteristics (e.g. age group, sex, occupation, ethnicity or other traits)
- Is closely linked with both impression formation and stereotyping
–> When we form an impression of a person, we use their social categories (e.g., sex, occupation) as well as observed behaviours of the person (e.g., holding multiple laptop computers) as cues
–> On top of that, stereotypes associated with their social categories are activated in our mind.
- We categorise not only others but also ourselves into social categories
- People classified into the same category as ourselves constitute the in-group
>< Those placed in a different category from our own constitute the out-group
–> This process of social categorisation into in-groups and out-groups = Social Identity Theory (Henry Tajfel)😱 - Social Identity = one’s sense of who they are - based on their group membership
- His research has shown: People favour their in because they are motivated to have a positive source of pride and self-esteem.
- This theory asserts
+ Classifying people into in and out is based on a normal cognitive process - the tendency to group things together
–> In doing so, we tend to over-emphasise the differences between groups and exaggerate the similarities between in members - This process of social categorisation leads to in-group favouritism and sometimes out-group discrimination - particularly if there is competition over limited resources which tends to increase prejudice and discrimination
- This cognitive process sits at the heart of extreme racism and acts of genocide (e.g. what occurred in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis, as well as in Germany with the Jewish population)
Downside of grouping?
- Other groups also compete for the same limited resources
What are ingroups and outgroups?
- Ingroups: Groups which particular people belong to
- Outgroups: Groups which particular people don’t belong to
Since when humans differentiate between in and out?
- Infancy (Categorising/ Identifying others as in/ out members is innate, is hardwired, is inherited in our genes)
Distinguish grouping & categorisation
- Grouping: form, band together in a group
- Categorisation: Identify other groups as friends/ foes; Categorize others as in/ out members;
Why categorisation happens?
- Downside of grouping = Other groups may also compete for the same limited resources
–> Critical to identify other groups as friends/ foes (which groups could supply needed resources as in trade or cooperate in attaining the resources INSTEAD OF competing for the same limited resources)
