weeks 1-6 Flashcards
what is social cognition?
“Social cognition is not a content area, but rather is an approach to understanding social psychology. It is a level of analysis that aims to understand social psychological phenomena by investigating the cognitive processes that underlie them. The major concerns of the approach are the processes involved in the perception, judgment, and memory of social stimuli; the effects of social and affective factors on information processing; and the behavioral and interpersonal consequences of cognitive processes. This level of analysis may be applied to any content area within social psychology, including research on intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup processes.”
International Social Cognition Network (http://www.socialcognition.info/)
“Social cognition is the study of how people make sense of other people and themselves. It focuses on how ordinary people think and feel about people – and on how they think they think and feel about people.” (Fiske & Taylor, 2013, p.1)
what is mentalism?
importance of cognitive representations
eg. general knowledge, memory of experiences
what is the cognitive process in social settings?
the internal process that goes from stimulus to response
- attention & encoding
- information processing
- memory & retrieval
- information use
what is the behaviourist approach?
objective, observable stimulus produces objective, observable response
what is the social cognition approach?
- a social decision works from stimulus through the person to response
- each step is cognitively mediated
- stimulus
Beyond objective description of stimulus, people’s interpretations of the stimulus matters
- person
The person is a social thinker that engages in thinking processes (e.g., evaluation of the situation, personal goals and values)
- response
Beyond observable behaviours, thoughts are important responses
what are the models of social thinker?
Consistency seeker (1950-1960s)
Naïve scientist (1970s)
Cognitive miser (1980s)
Motivated tactician (1990s)
Activated actor (2000s)
what is the motivation in consistency seeker?
Drive to reduce discomfort from cognitive discrepancy
what is the role of cognition in consistency seeker?
- Cognitions about behaviours and beliefs
- Perceptions of inconsistency
examples of consistency seeker
- Festinger’s (1957) dissonance theory:
- change cognition so behaviour & cognition align - Heider’s (1958) balance theory:
- idea that social relationships need to be consistent in a balanced state
- Balanced if all 3 people like each other
- Balanced if A & B like each other but both hate C because they both think the same way
- Unbalanced if only A hates B, but B & C are good friends. To bring balance, either C must hate B too or A must like B
what is the motivation in naïve scientist?
- prediction & control
- motivation’s role is secondary to cognition (cognition assumed to be the primary force in human behaviour while motivation is not so important)
what is the role of cognition in naïve scientist?
- Rational analysis (assumes that humans are able to engage in rational behaviour)
- Cognition plays primary role
examples of naïve scientist
Kelley’s (1967) covariation model of attribution:
- Causal attributions are based on the pattern of association between
~ Presence/absence of possible causal factors
~ Presence/absence of behavior
3 factors:
- Consensus (if others do the same thing in the same situation)
- Distinctiveness (if the same person does the same thing in all situations)
- Consistency (if the same person does the same thing repeatedly in the same situation)
internal attribution: low consensus & distinctiveness + high consistency
VS
external attribution: high consensus, distinctiveness & consistency
what is the motivation in cognitive miser?
- Rapid, adequate understanding (no need perfect understanding)
- Efficiency in problem solving
what is the role of cognition in cognitive miser?
- Cognition system is limited in capacity
- Use of shortcuts to conserve limited cognitive capacity
examples of cognitive miser
heuristics in decision making:
- availability heuristics
~ make judgements on what’s readily available in our minds
- representativeness heuristics
~ whether the thing is a representative example of a category
what is the motivation in motivated tactician?
someone who shifts between quick-and-dirty cognitively economical tactics and more thoughtful, thorough strategies when processing information, depending on the type and degree of motivation.
- Multiple goals, motives & needs could moderate the cognitive process
what is the role of cognition in motivated tactician?
- Interaction goals organise cognitive strategies
- Choice of strategy is not necessarily conscious
examples of motivated tactician
dual process models like Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986):
- Central route – in-depth, thoughtful analysis of the central message
~ high motivation, high ability
~ Attitude change depends on strength of argument
~ More permanent change
- Peripheral route – does not pay attention to the message content, heuristic processing
~ low motivation, low ability
~ Attitude change depends on presence of persuasion cues
~ Temporary change
what is the motivation in activated actor?
- Cognition serves social survival and thriving purposes
- Social environment contains cues that primes goals that may not reach conscious awareness but nonetheless affects the way we respond to the world
what is the role of cognition in activated actor?
- Social environment cues associated cognitions, affect, motivation, behaviour
- Fast, automatic process often not under volitional control
examples of activated actor
Implicit associations
- stereotypes
- prejudice
- social tuning
methods in social cognition
- Manipulation of thought process
1. Priming - conceptual
- mindset
- goal
2. Cognitive busyness - Measures of thought process
3. Explicit self-report - Thought listing
- Explicit ratings
4. Implicit measures - Implicit association test
5. Social neuroscience - neuropsychology
- fMRI
- EEG
- EMG
- TMS
- EDR
- CV
- Hormone levels
- Immune functioning
- Genetic analysis
Full Automaticity (to control)
Autonomous Unconscious Unintentional Uncontrollable Goal-independent Stimulus-driven Efficient
Very fast process
eg. Breathing as controlled by the autonomous nervous system
Full Control
Intentional responses with conscious awareness
- Breathing as voluntary control
Eg. Swimming, running
A Continuum from Automaticity to Control
- Applies to a variety of social cognitive processes
E.g., impression formation, causal attribution, persuasion,
stereotyping and prejudice
Progression from Automatic to Controlled Processes(Fiske & Taylor, 2020)
- subliminal priming (preconscious)
- conscious priming (postconscious)
- chronic accessibility
- goal-dependent automaticity
- intent
- consciousness
what is priming?
a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.
- Situational activation of knowledge
- Once the knowledge is activated, it can affect our responses
- No conscious awareness of the effect of the prime on responses, once they are aware of it, then the controlled process will kick in
- Automatic process
- Exposure to a particular stimulus automatically pulls knowledge out
- There is a certain level of control we can exert affecting our responses
Subliminal priming
- preconscious automaticity
- prime objectively registers on the senses
- NO CONSCIOUS perception of the prime’s existence
- no conscious awareness of the effect of the prime on responses
Conscious (supraliminal) priming
- postconscious automaticity
- prime objectively registers on the senses
- CONSCIOUS perception of the prime’s existence
- no conscious awareness of the effect of the prime on responses
Chronic Accessibility
- individual differences in how easily certain knowledge is retrieved from memory
~ how easily some knowledge/concepts come to mind in daily life
~ something high in chronic accessibility comes to mind easily
eg. Chords come to mind easily for guitar player - chronically accessible concepts are habitually used in responses
proceduralisation: the repeated use of certain knowledge results in automaticity ->possible development of chronic accessibility
Goal-dependent automaticity
Goal-dependent automaticity concerns skill and thought processes that require a goal to engage in them. This process is much similar to postconscious in that it requires conscious awareness to be initiated, but after that it can be guided outside of awareness by the unconscious mind.
- conscious intent launches preconscious automaticity (automatic sequence of behaviours)
Intent
- intentional thought
- perception of option to think otherwise
~ deliberate choice among options
~ hard choices are perceived as especially intentional - enactment of intent
~ paying attention to the implementation of intent
Consciousness
Social cognitive perspective (Winkielman & Schooler, 2012)
- Being awake
- Being mindful
- Subjectively experienced cognitions
- Available for report and intentional use
methods for accessing the content of thoughts
- experience sampling (beeper cues reports of current thoughts during daily life)
- random probes (cued reports of current mind-wandering & awareness of it during lab)
- cognitive response (report thoughts immediately after processing a communication)
- think aloud protocols (verbalise own reactions as process online)
- naturalistic social cognition (report thoughts during interaction when viewing video afterwards)
- role-play participation (imagine self in & report reactions to partial or overheard interactions)
what similarity is there among the methods for accessing conscious thoughts?
they all ask people explicitly what they’re thinking about at the end of an event/study
weaknesses of accessing conscious thoughts
- Lack of motivation
- Lack of accurate knowledge of what affects one’s behaviour (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), people cannot tell us what’s the true reason behind their behaviours
under what conditions, can people provide useful reports of their conscious thoughts?
- when report is simultaneously done with the thoughts
- when the thoughts are in verbal form, easier
- when the report is on content instead of process
dual process models
According to dual-process theories, moral judgments are the result of 2 competing processes: a fast, automatic, affect-driven process & a slow, deliberative, reason-based process. Accordingly, these models make clear and testable predictions about the influence of each system.
- Some models focus on situational & motivational factors that move individuals between automatic and controlled processes
- Some models focus on the controlled process as a correction process
- These models also vary somewhat on the focus of system 1 vs. system 2 characteristics
System 1 (Automatic)
Intuitive Categorical Holistic Rapid Effortless Parallel Affective Associative Crude Reflexive Slow-learning Rigid Consistency
System 2 (Controlled)
Rational Individuated Analytic Slow Effortful Serial Neutral Logical Differentiated Reflective Fast-learning Flexible Novelty
A Dual-Process Model of Reactions to Perceived Stigma Pryor et al. (2004)
The authors propose a theoretical model of individual psychological reactions to perceived stigma. This model suggests that 2 psychological systems may be involved in reactions to stigma across a variety of social contexts. One system is primarily reflexive, or associative, whereas the other is rule based, or reflective. This model assumes a temporal pattern of reactions to the stigmatized, such that initial reactions are governed by the reflexive system, whereas subsequent reactions or “adjustments” are governed by the rule-based system. Support for this model was found in 2 studies. Both studies examined participants’ moment-by-moment approach–avoidance reactions to the stigmatized. The 1st involved participants’ reactions to persons with HIV/AIDS, and the 2nd, participants’ reactions to 15 different stigmatizing conditions.
What were the objectives of this paper?
Pryor et al. (2004)
To (a) examine people’s moment-by-moment reactions to perceived stigma (in terms of 0.5-s intervals)
&
(b) investigate the factors that influence ongoing approach–avoidance behaviour at different points in time
What were the predictions?
Pryor et al. (2004)
Pryor & his colleagues predicted that people would show more positive reactions to a person with an uncontrollable stigma when given time to consider their responses than when they were asked for immediate responses.
Study 1:
- participants would avoid the person with the criminal stigma as well as the person with HIV/AIDS.
- Unlike the person with HIV/AIDS, however, avoidance of the person with a criminal stigma should not be related to attitudes toward homosexuality or motivations to control prejudice regarding persons with HIV/AIDS.
- Participants were predicted to perform approach behaviour toward the honors student (i.e., to move the cursor closer to his picture)
Study 2:
- early reactions to stigmas would be more highly correlated with feelings of disgust than later reactions
- highly sensitive to disgust should have a more negative immediate reaction (reflexive negative reaction) which should dissipate over time
- those with higher motivation to respond without prejudice will show more approach behaviour after having time for reflection
- Perceived onset controllability of a stigma would have an impact on approach-avoidance behaviour & that this impact would increase over time (Participants should approach one with uncontrollable stigma, avoid one with controllable stigma, & react less extremely to one with a non-perceivable stigma)
How did the researchers test their predictions in Studies 1 and 2?
Pryor et al. (2004)
Study 1:
- questionnaire (to lead participants to believe that the other 3 participants are real)
- 10s to move cursor toward/away from the picture of other “participants” (participants were instructed to move the cursor rapidly before fine tuning their positions)
- order in which participants are exposed to HIV/AIDS, criminal, honors student was counter balanced
- HATH & MTCP questionnaires (told that this was unrelated)
- Funnel debriefing technique (asking the impressions about the study before moving on to more specific questions about the procedures) this is important to double check that the participants were not suspicious during the procedures
Study 2:
- pre-test to narrow down on the perception of controllability on 36 different healthcare problems
- participants given the scenario of being a healthcare transportation employee that includes physically helping patients & initiating conversations
- same computer task (patients vary on the controllability of their stigma)
- DS & MTCPS questionnaire
- manipulative check in to confirm the patterns found in the pretest
What were the main results in Studies 1 and 2?
Pryor et al. (2004)
Study 1:
- participants who held more negative attitudes toward homosexuality were more likely to keep their distance from persons with HIV/ AIDS stigma.
- This relationship interacted with time showing that the strongest relationships between antigay attitudes and avoidance were within the first few seconds of their responding.
- Consistent with predictions about rule-based processes, participants’ motivations to respond without prejudice led them to move closer to persons with HIV/AIDS stigma.
Study 2:
- Consistent with predictions about reflexive processes, participants who were higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to keep their distance from persons with stigmas
- This relationship interacted with time showing that the strongest relationships between disgust sensitivity and avoidance were within the first 3.0 s.
- Consistent with predictions about rule-based processes, participants’ motivations to respond without prejudice led them to move closer to persons with stigma. This relationship built more slowly over time.
- Also consistent with predictions about attributional considerations involving a rule-based process, participants approached stimulus persons with uncontrollable stigmas more than those with the more controllable, neutral stigmas only after 5.0 s of reflection.
Based on the findings of this article, what have we learned about dual processes in reactions to stigma?Pryor et al. (2004)
- when given time to think, participants were able to correct their prejudices and were more likely to show approach behaviour towards those belonging to stigmatised groups.
- in particular, those who had a higher motivation to control their prejudice, supporting the dual-process model.
- The reflexive process is immediate and can be heavily based on emotions (this can be seen where participants with higher disgust sensitivity tended to have a more immediate negative response to stigmas)
more on system 1 characteristics
- rapid, effortless, reflexive
- System 1 concerns instinctive reactions (e.g., disgust) or spontaneous reactions that have developed through learning (e.g., associations)
- More influential in immediate responses
- System 1 is slow-learning, relies on repeated exposure of associative experiences
- System 1 is rigid, the product of associative learning
- Change of System 1 association will take time
more on system 2 characteristics
- slow, effortful, reflective
- System 2 requires conscious deliberation of information (e.g., onset controllability)
- More influential over time
- System 2 is fast-learning, acquires detailed new knowledge quickly
- Information can just be received once for it to be used
- System 2 is flexible, can acquire new knowledge and deliberately apply different knowledge depending on situation
person perception (Gilbert, Pelham & Krull, 1988)
3 sequential processes in person perception
- Categorization (identify action)
- Characterization (dispositional inference) eg. This person is rude
~Overlearned
~Relatively automatic
~Requires little effort or conscious attention
- Correction (adjustment to situational constraint)
~Deliberate
~Relatively controlled
~Uses significant portion of processing resources
~Can be disrupted by other ongoing cognitive activities
How can we show that correction is a controlled process?
Gilbert, Pelham & Krull, 1988
- Disruption of the controlled process
- Cognitive busyness manipulation
~engaging in multiple tasks that require cognitive resources
~mentally multitasking
Cognitive busyness manipulation
Gilbert, Pelham & Krull, 1988
1 task condition:
- Participants told they would make judgments of the target’s personality
2 task condition:
Participants told
(1) they would make judgments of the target’s personality
(2) they would need to recall the 7 discussion topics at the end of the experiment
- Participants are cognitively busier
- Correction is more controlled
- Cognitive busyness disrupts correction (situational constraints) but leaves characterization intact (automatic process so cognitive busyness should not affect characterization)
Judgment of trait anxiety
1 task:
- greater judgement of perceived anxiety for relaxing topic
2 tasks:
- Will disregard discussion topic and see person as anxious
- If anxious person talks about anxious topics, we may make dispositional inference
results
Gilbert, Pelham & Krull, 1988
- greater perceived trait anxiety on relaxing topic for 1 task
- When participants are cognitively busy in 2 tasks, they don’t have enough cognitive resources for controlled processes
- less difference in perceived trait anxiety between relaxed and anxious topics for 2 tasks
dual processing conclusions
- In real-life, our responses are often affected by both processes
- 1 process might be more influential than the other depending on the situation
~Amount of processing resource available
~Time
~Motivation - Both processes are useful, albeit in different ways
- Occasional errors but are useful
Knowledge Representation and Activation
- Mental representations in memory
- Memory structure
- Knowledge activation through priming
How do we perceive the world?
- Interplay between information from the outside world & our existing knowledge
- Data-driven process
- Theory-driven process
Relies on mental representations
Mental Representations
- A mental object
- The concepts/ideas that we keep in our memory about things
~Mapping with reality varies
~Things can be physical or abstract - In social cognition, the things are often social in nature
2 types:
- category
- schema
category
- a class of things
- Categorization is the act of placing objects, persons, or events into a certain class
Characteristics of categories
- Categories as fuzzy sets
~No clear, definite set of features that define membership
~Category members are related by family resemblance – sharing of some features/similarity
By prototype
- A prototype is a typical category member
- The central tendency (average) of the set of most common features most probable to be found in category members
- Abstraction of likely features
By exemplar
- Specific examples of actual members
- Drawn from personal experience stored in episodic memory
Schema
- An organisational structure for the knowledge that comprises a category
- Features of a category stored in an abstract structure
- Both generalised types and specific instances
- The connections between the features and the rules that govern the features
Self-schema (Markus, 1977)
a cognitive framework comprising organised information & beliefs about the self that guides a person’s perception of the world, influencing what information draws the individual’s attention as well as how that information is evaluated and retained.
Role schema (Fiske & Taylor, 1984)
norms and expected behaviour from people with a specific role in society
social roles eg. mother
Relational schema (Baldwin, 1992)
the beliefs that people have about themselves and their romantic partners. Relational schemas are defined as beliefs and expectations about the self and others which guide subsequent behavior
Script (Schank & Abelson, 1977)
a mental road map—containing the basic actions (and their temporal and causal relations) that comprise a complex action
Memory Structure
For mental representations to be used, they need to be retrieved from memory
- Associative network
~Pieces of knowledge in our memory are linked
~Knowledge in memory is associated
~A piece of knowledge is a node
~Nodes are connected through associations
~The connections vary in strength - Spreading activation
~When one node is triggered through cues or use, the activation travels along the associative network to trigger associated nodes
~Activated through cues or repeated use
~Which nodes get activated depends on strength of association
~When activation reaches a threshold, the node will be activated
Knowledge Activation
3 key principles of knowledge activation
- Availability
- Accessibility
- Applicability
Availability
- Available knowledge is knowledge that is stored in memory
- Available knowledge can lie dormant without being easily retrieved (accessed)
Accessibility
- How easy it is to retrieve the knowledge from memory
- The activation potential of available knowledge (Higgins, 1996)
Paths to increased accessibility
- Cued by situation (priming)
- Cumulated through repeated use (chronic accessibility)
Applicability
Whether the use of the activated knowledge is appropriate in the situation
Temporary accessibility
Priming
- A piece of knowledge in the mind being triggered by a prime (external stimulus)
- The knowledge is temporarily pulled from long-term memory and activated above the threshold
- The knowledge becomes temporarily accessible
- Once you remove the external stimulus, it disappears
Priming effect
- The influence of the activated knowledge on responses
- Downstream behaviours & judgements
- Measure of outcome/response (DV)
- How the activated knowledge is used later / if it affects people’s responses later
The classic priming study
Higgins, Rholes, & Jones (1977)
Priming task - Memorize a list of words - 2 lists (the primes) Negative: reckless, conceited, stubborn Positive: adventurous, self-confident, independent
Priming effect
- Read ambiguous behavioural description of Donald
- Rate the impression of Donald
results:
- those who memorised positive primes formed significantly more positive impressions of Donald than those who memorised negative primes
What do we prime?
- semantic concepts
- goals
- cognitive procedure
Semantic concepts
- Draw meaning from language
- Involves words that are associated in a logical or linguistic way
- Eg. responding to the word “banana” more rapidly after being primed with the word “yellow”.
Goals
- Motivate us with means to achieve a goal
- Cues that trigger goal-directed cognition and behaviour
- Eg. Prime to be rich, caring, etc
Cognitive procedure
- The way we engage our cognition to solve a problem & process information
- how the frequent or recent use of certain cognitive procedures on one taskcan lead to a greater propensity to use the same procedures on a subsequent task
How do we prime?
Content priming
- Supraliminal priming
~Exposure of stimulus within conscious awareness
- Subliminal priming
~Exposure of stimulus outside of conscious awareness
Procedural priming
- Engagement in a particular cognitive procedure
~ How they solve a problem
~ Go through information processing in order to be primed
Individual Construct Accessibility and Subjective Impressions and Recall
Higgins, King & Mavin (1982)
- 2 studies examined the role of individual differences in construct accessibility in subjective impressions and recall of others.
- In the 1st session of each study, subjects’ accessible traits were elicited by asking them to list the characteristics of different people, with accessibility defined as frequency of output (Study 1) or as primacy of output (Study 2).
- In the 2nd session, held 1 or 2 weeks later and supposedly investigating a different issue for a different researcher, subjects read an essay describing the behaviors of a target person.
- The essay contained both accessible trait-related information and inaccessible trait-related information for each subject, with different traits being accessible or inaccessible for different subjects.
- Both studies found that subjects deleted significantly more inaccessible trait-related information than accessible trait-related information in their impressions and in their reproductions of the target information.
- More- over, this effect on impressions and reproductions was evident even 2 weeks after exposure to the target information (Study 1).
- This general effect was not found for the impressions of subjects low in cognitive differentiation, even though it was found for their reproductions (Study 2), which suggests that their active bias toward forming univalent impressions inhibited the passive-accessibility effect.
How did the authors operationalise accessibility in Study 1?
Higgins, King & Mavin (1982)
Frequency of output - A trait was considered “accessible” for a subject either if it appeared in the subject’s description of both himself or herself and at least 1 of his or her friends, or if it appeared in the subject’s descriptions of 3 or more friends.
How did the authors operationalise accessibility in Study 2?
Higgins, King & Mavin (1982)
Primacy of output
- Inaccessible Traits:
A subject’s inaccessible traits were operationally defined as any trait that did not appear among the subject’s responses to the questions in the first session.
- Accessible Traits:
A subject’s accessible traits were selected from among those traits the subject listed first in response to the questions in the first session (1 from each of the 4 affect questions & 2 from the frequency question) - Control:
Inaccessible traits were chosen from some of the accessible to control for particular traits being representative of both accessible and inaccessible to different participants
priming procedures:
Across the 4 tasks, what are some similarities that you can identify in the procedure?
- None of the participants were aware of the effects of the prime
- All tasks were designed to elicit certain thoughts and traits from the participants
priming procedures:
What is the major difference between task 1 and task 2?
- Task 2’s prime exposure is subliminal as whereas Task 1 is supraliminal priming
- The dependent measure in task 2 was measured after the entire prime-target process, whereas the dependent measure was measured during the prime-target process in Task 1
priming procedures:
What is the major difference between task 1 and task 3?
- The primes used in Task 1 were images of faces, while primes used in Task 2 were words.
- Task 1 was a within subject design while Task 3 was a between subject design.
priming procedures:
What is the major difference between task 4 and the other three tasks?
Task 4 uses procedural priming, whereas the other 3 tasks uses content priming.
How long does the priming effect last?
Decay of temporary accessibility
- The stronger the activation, the longer one would expect the effect to be
- Strength of activation would depend on
~Frequency of activation (the more frequently we prime something, the stronger the effect)
~Recency of activation (the more recently we prime something, the stronger the effect)
What are the take-home messages of Figure 1?
Srull & Wyer (1979)
- The effect of priming decreased with the time interval between the priming task and presentation of the stimulus information to be encoded
- The magnitude of the decrease in priming effects over time is a positive function of the number of times the category was initially activated (both frequency and number)
- When collapsed over delay conditions, the difference in the mean trait ratings of the target between low and high proportion lists was greater for the long questionnaire than for the short questionnaire
- Proportion of hostile priming items had less effect on hostility-related judgments than on evaluative judgments along other dimensions
- The effect of delay interval on judgments along descriptively related dimensions was greater than its effect on judgments along evaluative but not descriptively related dimensions
- The differences in ratings under the 24- hour delay conditions are sufficient to justify the conclusion that the priming task influenced judgments even after a fairly long time interval had elapsed.
What are the take-home messages of Figure 2?
Srull & Wyer (1979)
- There were main effects of delay, proportion of hostile priming items, & length of the priming questionnaire.
- Subjects who completed priming questionnaires in which only 20% (6 or 12) of the items were hostility-related made less hostile ratings of both the hostile and ambiguous behaviours than subjects who received no priming at all.
- Taken at face value, this suggests that priming under these conditions had a negative effect after a delay of 24 hours.
- Interaction among delay, number of priming items, & proportion of critical priming items was greater for the ambiguous behaviours than for the other 2 behaviour types
- The priming task influenced judgments even after a fairly long time interval had elapsed
What are the take-home messages of Figure 3?
Srull & Wyer (1979)
- Ratings increased monotonically with the number of times concepts related to kindness were previously activated (Main effects for both questionnaire length & proportion of kind priming items in the questionnaire)
- The priming manipulations had very similar effects on ratings of both dimensions that are descriptively related to kindness and those that were evaluative but descriptively unrelated.
- This shows that once the target’s behaviour is encoded in terms of a trait, it will also be assigned other characteristics that are evaluatively associated with this trait
- Priming effects decreased over the time interval between the priming task and stimulus presentations.
(Magnitude of this decrease was greater when the proportion of kind priming items in the questionnaire was high and when the questionnaire was long) - These indicate that the effect of delay is a positive function of the number of times that kindness was initially primed
- Moreover, the effect of proportion was significantly greater when the questionnaire was long than when it was short.
- However, the effect of delay on rating is descriptively related dimensions was greater than for rating of evaluatively related dimensions.
- The effect of delay interval in experiment 2 was negligible when the proportion of priming items was low
What are the take-home messages of Figure 4?
Srull & Wyer (1979)
- Each level of priming increased the perceived kindness of all 3 types of behaviours.
- However, this effect was much less pronounced after a 24 hour delay
- The estimated kindness of all 3 types of behaviours increased with both questionnaire length & the proportion of kind priming items contained in the questionnaire, while decreasing as a function of the time interval between the priming task & making these estimates
- Effects of time delay increased with both questionnaire length & the proportion of kind priming items
The Role of Category Accessibility in the Interpretation of Information About Persons: Some Determinants
and Implications
Srull & Wyer (1979)
- Many personality trait terms can be thought of as summary labels for broad conceptual categories that are used to encode information about an individual’s behaviour into memory.
- The likelihood that a behaviour is encoded in terms of a particular trait category is postulated to be a function of the relative accessibility of that category in memory.
- In addition, the trait category used to encode a particular behaviour is thought to affect subsequent judgments of the person along dimensions to which it is directly or indirectly related.
- To test these hypotheses, subjects first performed a sentence construction task that activated concepts associated with either hostility (Experiment 1) or kindness (Experiment 2).
- As part of an ostensibly unrelated impression formation experiment, subjects later read a description of behaviours that were ambiguous with respect to hostility (kindness) and then rated the target person along a variety of trait dimensions.
- Ratings of the target along these dimensions increased with the number of times that the test concept had previously been activated in the sentence construction task and decreased with the time interval between these prior activations and presentation of the stimulus information to be encoded.
- Results suggest that category accessibility is a major determinant of the way in which social information is encoded into memory and subsequently used to make judgments.
Priming effect is stronger when…
- Frequency of activation
- Recency of activation
- Ambiguity of target
How long does the priming effect last? pt.2
Postpriming delay has different influence on the effect of semantic prime and goal prime
postpriming effect on semantic prime
- Activation dissipates with delay
- Repeated use of activated semantic concept reinforces the activation
postpriming effect on goal prime
- Activation becomes stronger with delay
- Once it’s activated, if you don’t do anything about it, it gets stronger
- Eg. the longer you have to wait to eat ice cream, the stronger the activation (you want to eat it)
- Use of activated goal (fulfillment of the goal) reduces the activation
- Eg. Once you eat the ice cream that you’ve been craving, the craving will disappear
What kind of effect does temporary accessibility produce?
Assimilation and Contrast effect
Assimilation effect
- Response is consistent with the concept being primed
- The common priming effect
Priming procedure:
- Not recalled
- Subtle
Prime:
- Subliminal
- Moderate
- Fluent (easy to see & process)
Prime-target relation:
- Similarities salient
Target:
- Ambiguous
Processing style:
- Low amount of processing (not thinking too much)
- Similarity focus
- Global processing (attention)
Contrast effect
- Response is inconsistent with (goes against) the concept being primed
Priming procedure:
- Recalled
- Blatant
Prime:
- Supraliminal
- Extreme
- Disfluent (difficult to see & process)
Prime-target relation:
- Dissimilarities salient
Target:
- Well-defined
Processing style:
- High amount of processing (thinking a lot about the prime)
- Dissimilarity focus
- Local processing (attention)
Awareness of the influence as a determinant of assimilation versus contrast
Strack et al (1993)
- subjects had to generate an evaluative judgment about a target person on the basis of his behaviour that had both positive and negative implications.
- In a previous phase of the study that was ostensibly unrelated to the judgment task, the relevant trait categories were primed.
- Subsequently, half of the subjects were reminded of the priming episode.
- Consistent with earlier research (that used memory of the priming events as a correlational measure), a contrast effect was found under the ‘reminding’ condition and assimilation resulted when subjects were NOT reminded of the priming episode.
- This pattern of results is interpreted as the consequence of corrective influences.
Explain how the numbers presented in Table 1 illustrate assimilation and contrast effects.
- Assimilation effect when subjects were not reminded of the priming episode
- Contrast effect when subjects were reminded of the priming episode
Ratings of Likeability:
No reminding:
- Subjects who were not reminded of the priming episode rated the target person as more likeable in the positive valence (6.10) than in the negative valence (4.95)
Reminding:
- Subjects who were reminded of the priming episode rated the target person as less likeable in the positive valence (5.60) than in the negative valence (6.95)
Specific trait ratings:
- there was an assimilation effect when subjects were not reminded of the priming episode (6.15) and a contrast effect when they were reminded (5.65) for positive valence prime
- there was an assimilation effect when subjects were not reminded of the priming episode (4.60) and a contrast effect when subjects were reminded (6.91) for negative valence prime.
Valence of Open Answers:
- When no reminder provided for participants, assimilation effect increased (2.87), increasing positive characterisations of “Thomas”.
- When reminders were provided, priming manipulation did not affect the valence of the open judgement (2.55). “
Forster, Lieberman & Kuschel (2008) Study 1
Processing style manipulation:
Global processing condition:
- Look at a map as a whole to answer questions about the overall shape of the map
Local processing condition:
- Look at the details of a map to answer questions about them
Control condition:
- Look at both details and overall shape
Semantic prime:
- Word-search puzzle: aggression vs. neutral
Dependent measure:
- Srull & Wyer’s (1979) person perception task
results:
- global processing produced assimilation
- local processing produced contrast.
implicit measures
- Measure of elements involved in the automatic process
- Assesses mental content without requiring awareness of the relation between the response and the measured content (Nosek, Hawkins & Frazier, 2011, p. 153)
Some characteristics of implicit measures
- Not direct
- Not deliberate
- Not controlled
- No intentional self-assessment
examples of implicit measures
- Facilitation of responses that are consistent with association
- If a & b are closely linked in our network/have a close association, if we see a, our response towards b will be faster
- Look at people’s reaction time
- Implicit association test (IAT)
- Lexical decision task
- Evaluative priming
- Projection of activated valence onto ambiguous stimuli
- Whether we project a particular valence (+ve/–ve) onto something ambiguous
- Affect misattribution procedure
- Accessibility guides retrieval
- Word stem completion
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
- Based on reaction time
- Measures strength of association between concepts
- it is a relative measure
- Target stimuli need to be easily recognised & categorised
- Takes time
Attitude: Attitude object – Evaluation
Identity: Self – Social group (eg. Gender)
Stereotype : generalised beliefs about social groups, Social group – Specific quality
Math = Male, Me = Female, Therefore Math ≠ Me
Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald (2002)
- College students, especially women, demonstrated negativity toward math and science relative to arts and language on implicit measures.
- Group membership (being female), group identity (self = female), and gender stereotypes (math = male) were related to attitudes and identification with mathematics.
- Stronger implicit math = male stereotypes corresponded with more negative implicit and explicit math attitudes for women but more positive attitudes for men.
- Associating the self with female and math with male made it difficult for women, even women who had selected math-intensive majors, to associate math with the self.
- These results point to the opportunities and constraints on personal preferences that derive from membership in social groups.
What was a trial? What happened in a trial?
Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald (2002)
- Participants were instructed to respond by pressing a key each time an item that represented the category math (e.g., algebra, equations) and the category pleasant (e.g.,peace, love) appeared in the center of the screen
- Each trial consisted of the classification of a single item
- Participants were required to press A key for the categories on the left, and Z for the categories on the right.
- If participants made an error, an X appeared below the item, and they had to correct the error before moving on.
What was a block? What happened in a block?
Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald (2002)
- Practice blocks were present to acquaint participants with the process and appropriate key classification
- In each block, participants underwent either 20 (practice) or 40 trials (critical) and discriminated the items in each block.
- Within each block, stimuli appeared in random order, except that in blocks in which both concept and attribute items were presented, trials alternated between presenting target concept and attribute stimuli.
How many blocks were there in the IAT? Briefly, what happened in each block?
Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald (2002)
- There were 7 blocks in total. In the 5 practice blocks, there were 20 trials each. In the 2 critical blocks, there were 40 trials each.
- In the 1st block, participants discriminated items representing the target concepts (e.g., math, arts).
- In the 2nd block, participants discriminated attribute items (e.g., pleasant, unpleasant)
- In the 3rd block, participants practiced categorising both target and attribute items at the same time such that pairings were created because a target concept and an attribute were required to share an identical response.
- The 4th block was an identical repeat of the third block.
- In the 5th block, participants practiced discriminating target concepts (i.e. math & arts) again, except that the computer keys representing correct classification were reversed
In the final practice and critical blocks, participants again categorised both concept and attribute items.
critical trials
Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald (2002)
- If I have a very positive attitude towards math, then it would be relatively easy for me to make the same response as math towards pleasant (pressing the same key)
- If I have a negative attitude towards math, then it would be relatively difficult for me to make the same response as math towards pleasant (pressing the same key)
- Having to make responses that are inconsistent with my association is hard
limitations of IAT
It is a relative measure
- It does not provide an absolute measure of evaluation toward a single target concept
- Possible solution: Single-category IAT (Task 4 in Collection of Implicit Measure)
It reflects not only personal evaluative associations, but also extrapersonal associations
- Possible solution
Personalised IAT: ‘I like, I don’t like’
Can get a purer measure of association, more personalised
Lexical decision task /sequential priming
Words/non-words (fillers) -> lexical decision
- Reaction time as indication of association between prime and target
~Faster reaction time, stronger association - Use beyond measure of attitude
Evaluative priming
Positive/negative words -> Positive/negative judgement
a positive or negative target (delight) is preceded by a prime of the same valence (healthy) or of the opposite valence (failure). Usually, participants in these reaction-time tasks are asked to decide whether the target denotes something positive or negative.
- Reaction time as indication of association between prime and valence
~Faster reaction time, stronger association - Measure of attitude
Affect misattribution procedure (AMP)
Ambiguous targets -> Positive/negative rating
measures automatically activated responses based on the misattributions people make about the sources of their affect or cognitions.
- Not looking at reaction time
- Rating of ambiguous target as indication of perceived valence of the prime
- Measure of attitude
Word stem completion
procedure in which participants are presented with sets of introductory letters and asked to form complete words.
eg.
HA_E
RU_E
Implicit vs. Explicit Measures
Assumptions:
- Implicit measures tap the automatic process
- Explicit measures tap the controlled process
- Automatic and controlled processes are distinct
- If the 2 processes have common contributions to the construct, then there should be some correspondence between implicit and explicit measures of the same construct
- If the 2 processes are distinct, implicit and explicit measures of the same construct should not have too high a correspondence
Implicit-Explicit Correspondence
High correspondence means positive correlation between implicit & explicit scores
Individuals’ motivation to avoid appearing prejudiced moderates the correspondence between implicit and explicit prejudice
Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart (2005) Experiment 6
- Implicit measure: AMP of racial attitude
- Explicit measure: self-report feelings toward Blacks and Whites
- Motivation to avoid appearing prejudiced
~Internal motivation to control prejudice
~External motivation to control prejudice
~Concern with acting prejudiced
~Restraint to avoid dispute
results:
- Individuals’ motivation plays a role
- The correspondence between implicit & explicit attitudes change when individuals have high motivation to avoid appearing prejudiced -> low correspondence
- for individuals with low motivation to avoid appearing prejudiced, we see a high correspondence
Possible moderators of correspondence (Nosek, 2007)
Self-presentation
- Weaker correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes
Perceived distinctiveness of attitudes from norms
- Stronger correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes
- If people are aware that their own attitudes are distinct from social influence, then they should have better understanding of what the attitudes are
Attitude importance and elaboration
- Attitudes that are important to us
- Stronger correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes
Methodological consistency
- IAT is a relative measure of attitude (1 thing relative to another) eg. Math vs art
- Both explicit and implicit scores should use a relative measure to create stronger correspondence
For Lexical decision task, what was a trial? What happened in a trial?
- Participants are required to make word-nonword judgements to various attributes which were preceded by either a subliminally presented group prime or a subliminally presented neutral prime.
- In a trial, participants were first exposed to a prime, and then exposed to a target adjective relating to African Americans/White Americans.
- Followed by this exposure to the adjective stimulus, the participants were required to judge if a combination of a word-nonword pairing was correct. (if both ‘words’ are actual words)
For Evaluative priming, what was a trial? What happened in a trial?
- People were subliminally primed with a face.
- Face prime varied in SES and race (low/high, White/Black)
- After priming, participants had to categorise target words into positive or negative categories.
- Faster responses for primes preceding positive/negative words are thought to reflect the valence of opinion towards the prime.
For Affect misattribution procedure, what was a trial? What happened in a trial?
- First, participants are shown the prime image for 100ms (either neutral, black, or white)
- This was followed by a blank screen for 100ms, and then a Chinese pictograph for 100ms.
- Following the pictograph, a patterned mask of black and white “noise” appeared.
- There was a 4-point rating scale at the bottom of the screen (-2 very unpleasant; -1 unpleasant; 1 pleasant; 2 very pleasant), where participants have to provide their evaluation of the Chinese pictograph.
- After making the evaluation, the next trial would begin.
Situational Activation of Behaviours
Automatic goal pursuit
- Habit as association of goal with action
- Priming of the goal results in goal-dependent automaticity
- Eg. Goal is to drive, which triggers an automatic sequence of actions
Priming of cognition guides downstream behaviour
- Can result in either assimilation and contrast effect
- Ease of retrieval affects whether assimilation or contrast effect is caused
Ease of retrieval moderates the effects of power: implications for the replicability of power recall effects
Lammers et al. (2017)
- Past investigations show that asking participants to recall a personal episode of power affects behaviour in a variety of ways.
- Recently, some researchers have questioned the replicability of such priming effects.
- This article adds to this conversation by investigating a moderator of power recall effects: ease of retrieval.
- 4 experiments find that the effects of the power recall manipulation are reduced or even reversed when the power episode is difficult to recall.
- This moderation is demonstrated across 3 effects associated with power: confidence, disobedience, and unethical behaviour.
- This moderation occurs regardless of whether ease of retrieval was measured or manipulated.
- These findings offer insight to the efficacy of the power recall manipulation and provide 1 explanation for failures to replicate (i.e., populations or situations differ in ease of retrieval).
- Overall, this work encourages a cumulative science by fine-tuning our understanding of when recalling experiences of power drive behaviour.
How was power primed?
Lammers et al. (2017)
Exps 1-3:
High-power participants were instructed to recall a time “in which you had power over another individual or individuals.” Low power participants were instructed to recall a time “in which someone else had power over you or where you lacked power. Afterwards, participants had to describe the situation, what happened, and how they felt.
Exp 4:
Participants in the high ease of retrieval condition were asked to provide 2 experiences where they felt either high or low power. Participants in the low ease of retrieval condition were asked to provide 8 experiences where they felt either high or low power.
What was the article’s prediction?
Lammers et al. (2017)
- The article predicts that the power recall manipulation is more likely to produce previously established effects when the recalled information comes to mind with little effort, but more likely to attenuate, or even reverse, prior effects when people experience difficulty in recalling.
- Generating a few experiences of power (high ease of retrieval) would increase confidence more than generating many experiences (low ease of retrieval)
What rationale did the authors provide for their prediction of ease of retrieval moderating the effect of power manipulation?
Lammers et al. (2017)
- When the experience of power is retrieved easily, participants might, consciously or unconsciously, misattribute this ease to the experience being diagnostic about one’s power.
- If people need to spend considerable effort to retrieve an experience of power, this difficulty might reduce the impact of the manipulation on one’s sense of power, even if the content of their thoughts emphasises power.
- Organisations tend to adopt hierarchical structures that grant varying degrees of power and people experience social roles associated with more or less power.
- This means that for those who frequently experience powerful positions or who for other reasons find it easy to think of their personal past, recalling such experiences may be easy, but for others this might prove difficult.
Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985)
- Looks at how attitude affects behaviour
Behavioral - Assume must have intention to engage in behaviour first, then will engage in it;
- focuses on intentional behaviour (not all behaviour are intentional)
3 factors:
- specific attitude
- subjective norm
- perceived behavioural control
specific attitude
Attitude has to match behaviour in its specificity (attitude towards lettuce should match with lettuce-eating
behaviour, not vegetables)
subjective norm
About how our significant others view the behaviour, whether they approve or not (does not include societal norms, only about how our friends & family think)
perceived behavioural control
- Do I think I have the ability to do this? (Resources, ability, opportunity etc.)
- do I think I can actually exert control over the behaviour?
- If high, then more likely to have the behavioural intention, which leads to behaviour
Match of specificity
- Specific cognition and specific behavior
- General cognition and general behavior tendency
- if the behaviour that I’m trying to predict is very specific, then the cognition, that I need to measure should be as specific.
- Whereas, if I’m looking at general behaviour tendency, then the cognition that I’m measuring should also be general cognition.
- match of specificity would help us have better predictive ability, using explicit cognition to predict behaviour.
- If there is a mismatch, then it will be a lot harder to use this cognition to predict behaviour.
Moderation of cognition–intention and cognition–behaviour relations: A meta-analysis of properties of variables from the theory of planned behaviour
Cooke & Sheeran (2004)
- Meta-analysis was used to quantify the moderating effects of 7 properties of cognitions—accessibility, temporal stability, direct experience, involvement, certainty, ambivalence and affective-cognitive consistency—on cognition–intention and cognition–behaviour relations.
- Findings showed that all of the properties, except involvement, moderated attitude–behaviour consistency. - Similarly, all relevant moderators improved the consistency between intentions and behaviour.
- Temporal stability moderated PBC–behaviour relations, certainty moderated subjective norm–intention relations, and ambivalence, certainty, and involvement all moderated attitude– intention relations.
- Overall, temporal stability appeared to be the strongest moderator of cognition–behaviour relations.
In general, which moderator had the strongest effect on cognition-behavior consistency?
Cooke & Sheeran (2004)
Temporal stability is the moderator that had the strongest effect on cognition-behaviour consistency (r+ = 0.62)
Cognition-Behaviour:
- Overall, temporal stability moderated cognition–behaviour relations
- participants with more stable cognitions possessed greater cognition–behaviour consistency (r+=.62) than participants with less stable cognitions (r+=.27).
- Temporal stability was also an effective moderator of specific relationships:
- Participants with more stable attitudes possessed greater attitude–behaviour consistency (r+=.65) than participants with less stable attitudes (r+=−.01);
- participants with highly stable intentions showed stronger intention– behaviour consistency (r+=.67) than participants with less stable intentions (r+=.30),
- participants with more stable PBC demonstrated greater PBC–behaviour consistency “
Comparing implicit and explicit measures
Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald (2002)
- Stereotype and SAT performance
- The stronger the explicit stereotype, the better the SAT performance
- Sex X Stereotype interaction: the link between explicit stereotype and SAT performance stays the same, regardless of participants’ gender.
- But implicit stereotypes were significant for Sex X Stereotype interaction
- Different predictive effect on performance for male and female participants
- Men: Implicit stereotypes positively related to SAT performance
- Women: Implicit stereotype was negatively correlated with SAT performance. So for women, the stronger the implicit stereotype, the worse their relative performance
- Stronger correlation between explicit attitude and performance compared to implicit attitude
Which was a better predictor of SAT performance, implicit or explicit stereotype? Identify the results that would support your answer.
Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald (2002)
- Explicit stereotypes were better predictors of relative SAT performance.
- From Table 5, the explicit stereotypes had a significant correlation (r = 0.24) with SAT performance while implicit stereotypes did not have a significant correlation (0.14) with SAT performance.
- Furthermore, for men, implicit stereotypes were positively related to all 5 dependent variables—implicit math attitude, implicit math identity, explicit math attitude, explicit math identity, and SAT performance (average r=.50).
- However, for women, stronger implicit stereotypes corresponded with weaker math attitudes, identity, and performance.
Which was a better predictor of SAT performance, implicit or explicit attitude? Identify the results that would support your answer.
Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald (2002)
- SAT performance was positively related to both explicit and implicit attitudes, but the correlation was stronger for explicit attitudes (r=0.49) than implicit attitudes (r=0.38)
- Implicit and explicit attitudes are not redundant measures of preference. Each carries its own predictive power
Some factors that affect the predictive effect of implicit vs. explicit measures
Nosek, Hawkins & Frazier (2011)
- motivation
- motivation for self-presentation
- motivation to control implicit response - opportunity
- opportunity to interrupt the automatic response - ability
- cognitive capacity
- knowledge of how to control the influence - awareness
- awareness of implicit influence
motivation for self-presentation
- When there is a strong motivation for self-presentation, such as for topics like prejudice and stereotyping, implicit measures tend to predict people’s behaviour better
- because people would exert a lot of control over their explicit responses, thus there is a very strong social desirability element on their explicit responses
- And because of that, then the explicit responses may not predict their behavior that well.
- So when there’s a strong motivation for self presentation, we tend to see implicit measures predicting behavior better than explicit measures
Motivation to control implicit response
eg. Control prejudice
- the implicit cognition is likely to predict behaviour when people who are not motivated to control their implicit response
Opportunity to interrupt the automatic process
- how much opportunity there is for people to interrupt the automatic process
- if they’re cognitively busy, they cannot exert much control over the automatic process right they cannot interrupt the automatic process
- When people are working under time pressure, they cannot really interrupt the automatic process that much
- when people don’t have the opportunity to interrupt the automatic process, implicit cognition predicts behaviour better
Cognitive capacity
When there’s low concept capacity to exert control, affects people’s behaviour
Knowledge of how to control the influence
- Sometimes we don’t know how to control our prejudice
- If there’s no knowledge or low knowledge on how to control the influence of the implicit process, then this would have a stronger predictor effect on people’s behaviour
Awareness of implicit content/influence
- People’s awareness of the content of their implicit cognition, or the awareness of the implicit cognition on their behaviour.
- Implicit content/cognition is supposed to be unconscious, but to some extent, people might have a certain awareness of what they are and usually that comes from their experience of their spontaneous response
- You can have an instinctive implicit association of something
- We might also have certain awareness of how the implicit content might be related to our behaviour.
- If they are not aware of the link between the implicit content and their responses, we see a stronger relationship between implicit cognition and behaviour.
- When there is high awareness, then people are more able to exert control, then we see a weaker effect of implicit cognition on behaviour.
