Week Seven

Question 1

thought

Answer 1

the internal symbols and language that we use which is conscious.

Question 2

cognition

Answer 2

‘conscious’ thinking plus underlying nonconscious processes that are automatic (e.g. memory, executive functions).

Question 3

social cognition

Answer 3

focuses on how cognition is affected by wider and more immediate social contexts and on how cognition affects our social behaviour.

Question 4

impression formation: physical features

Answer 4

○ Individuals and cultural associations are made between physical features and psychological, personality and social characteristics.
○ Psychical beauty is often connected to good or moral personality traits.
○ Consequences
§ More likely to meet attractive strangers than intelligent strangers.
§ More likely to help attractive strangers.
○ Physical features can also have competing ideas.
§ I.e. that baby faced people are innocent but also not powerful.
○ Clothing
§ Can signal authority, and enhance factors like attractiveness.

Question 5

impression formation: non-verbals

Answer 5

○ Eye contact
§ Provides a lot of useful social information’s (e.g. gaze, direction and duration etc.).
§ Facial expressions (smiling or frowning can indicate certain things).
§ Body language (body angle, body movements, personal space etc.)
§ Non-verbal behaviours are largely culturally based.
○ Deficiencies in ‘theory of mind’ (metalizing) - they are mind blind.
§ Issues with autistic people and eye contact

Question 6

observation of behaviours

Answer 6

○ Direct observation
§ Someone sitting quietly in the corner at a loud party=shy
§ Someone pushing in could be rude
§ Information from others behaviour can be given by other people.
§ First impressions are generally automatic and intuitive
§ Generally accurate, but depends on a range of factors.
§ Forming more considered impressions requires great efforts and greater motivation
□ Seek out more detailed information about the person.

Question 7

cognitive algebra

Answer 7

§ We mathematically combine all impressions to form an overall impression.
○ This doesn’t take any context into account.
§ Can take context/situation into account by assigning weights.

`

Question 8

salience

Answer 8

§ Salient information is information that ‘stands out’.
§ Often behaving in ways that do not fit (their social group, people in general).
§ Top down factors (if someone can help with goals or if someone has told you to watch them etc.)
§ Bottom up factors (things about the stimulus)

Question 9

valence

Answer 9

§ Refers to the positivity or negativity of the information

Positivity is default, however, we rarely expect negative answers.

Question 10

order effects

Answer 10

§ Primacy is information that arrives first, we remember more at the state.
§ Recency is information that comes last, we remember the last information received.
§ Primacy information disproportionately influences final overall impression, influences how we interpret late information and is resistant to change and perseveres even when we know it to be false.

Question 11

social encoding

Answer 11

pre-attentive analysis –> focal attention –> comprehension –> elaborate reasoning

Question 12

node

Answer 12

A node is a piece of information

Question 13

connecting nodes

Answer 13

○ When we perceive 2 things together, the stronger the connection between them in our brains
○ Nodes get connected into networks that can, over time, develop into ‘schemas;

Question 14

schema

Answer 14

§ Schema is a cognitive construct that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and relations among those attributes.
A network of social information

Question 15

types of schemas

Answer 15

§ Person: specific individuals
§ Trait: characteristics, internal dispositions, personality factors
§ Behaviour: types of behaviour (running etc.)
§ Group/role: types of groups or prescribed occupants in a group (politicians; prime minister etc.)
§ Event (scripts): situations or contexts
Self: personal schemas
- social schemas (organise impressions and perceptions of people, allow us to quickly categorise a person).

Question 16

content dimensions

Answer 16

• Two basic dimensions
  ○ Warmth (intentions to help or harm)
  § First judgement made about a person
  § May most attention towards ‘negative warmth’
  ○ Competence (ability to enact intentions)
  § People are biased towards seeing competence
  § ‘positive’ competence is more informative.

Question 17

impressions

Answer 17

• Our impressions form a basis for how we interact with people
  
  • How we behave towards a person influences how they behave towards us
    ○ If we think someone is aggressive, and behave as though they are aware of this, they are more likely to be aggressive and such a self fulfilling prophesy emerges.

Question 18

altering impressions: modify the schema

Answer 18

□ Bookkeeping: schema gradually changes as more evidence accumulates, overcoming initial impressions.
□ Conversion: people hold on to the initial schema until the evidence against it is overwhelming, then abandon it for a new one.
□ Subtyping: place contextual boundaries around a schema, and build a difference schema for other contexts.
□

Question 19

attack the schema

Answer 19

provide disconfirming or more nuanced information to change the schema.

Question 20

modifying impressions: enhance the schema holder

Answer 20

§ Induce a positive mood in them, as positive emotions can lead to more positive impressions
§ However, this can backfire if overdone.

Question 21

attribution

Answer 21

• Cognitions about the cause and effect of behaviours
  ○ How we make inferences from behaviour to what a person is like
  § Personal vs situational
  § Global vs specific
  § Stable vs unstable
  § Controllable vs uncontrollable
  ○ How we attribute the causes to behaviour.

Question 22

information that contributes to attribution

Answer 22

§ Consistency: how often does a particular behaviour accompany a particular stimulus.
§ Distinctiveness: how much does a particular behaviour ‘bling’ to a particular stimulus or many stimuli.
§ Consensus: how idiosyncratic is the behaviour?
○ Attribution is made based on the combination of these factors.

Question 23

correspondent inferences

Answer 23

• When we make an attribution from a behaviour to a characteristics this is called correspondent inference
  - Dispositional causes are stable, so they make others predictable and therefore increase the sense of control we have over our world.
  § Thus these inferences are popular, we tend to like making internal attributions.

Question 24

cues used to make correspondent inferences

Answer 24

• freely chosen behaviour
• unique or specified effects
  was not socially desireable behaviour
• personally impactful (hedonic relevance)
• directed to or at us (personalism)

Question 25

attribution applications

Answer 25

self attributions (how we understand ourselves)
§ Understanding our self concept
- Attributions styles (how we attain goals)
§ Goal attainment and mental health implications
- Interpersonal relationships
§ Relationship satisfaction and divorce.

Question 26

self perception theory

Answer 26

self-attribution

	- The thoughts and feelings we have about the world are only weak cues about what we are really like. 
	- We know our selves based on what we see ourselves doing

Question 27

attribution styles

Answer 27

• How much control do you have?
  
  • Individual difference in application of attribution
    
    • Internals: believe they have significant control over their destiny and that they can make things happen.
    • Externals: believe they have little control over what happens to them
  • Implications for mental health, self-efficacy, motivation, perseverance and goal attainment.

Question 28

interpersonal relations

Answer 28

• Attributional conflict
  - Partners have divergent explanation for the behaviour of the other partner.
  - If one is internal and another is external there can be an issue.
  
  • Increased marriage satisfaction where partners (heterosexual).
    
    • Use attributions of internal stable and controllability to explain positive spousal behaviours.
    • Attributions of external, unstable, specific, uncontrollable to explain negative behaviours.

Question 29

attributional biases

Answer 29

• Biases in attribution of others and our own behaviours.
  
  • We tend to attribute behaviours of others more to personal factors than to situational factors.
  • We tend to attribute our own negative behaviours more to situational factors.
    
    • Known as actor-observer bias

Question 30

self-enhancing bias

Answer 30

We tend to attribute positive outcomes more to personal factors but negative outcomes to situational factors.

Question 31

internal attribution

Answer 31

the process of assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviour to internal or dispositional factors.

Question 32

external attribution

Answer 32

Assigning the cause of our own or others’ behaviour to external or environmental factors.

Question 33

dispositional cause

Answer 33

A dispositional cause is a stable cause that renders people’s behaviours predictable and thus increases our own sense of control over the world. As such, people like to make correspondent inferences.

Question 34

kelly’s covariation model

Answer 34

People assign the cause of behaviour to the factor that covaries most closely with the behaviour.
- We use the covariation model to decide whether to attribute a behaviour to internal dispositions (personality) or external environmental factors (social pressure).
to do this, people look at:
- consistency- whether the behaviour occurs consistently
- distinctiveness- whether the behaviour is distinctive to a particular situation or person.
consensus- whether everyone behaves the same in the situation.