Social Psychology - Social Cognition and The Self

Social Psychology

The scientific study of causes and consequences of people's thoughts, feelings, and actions regarding themselves and other people

Bottom-Up Impression Formation

Gathering individual observations of a person in order to form an overall impression, brief (e.g. snap judgements of facial impressions) and indirect observations (e.g. image of someone's room) can be accurate

Top-Down Impression Formation

 Using preconceived information as the basis for impression formation, representative heuristic and multitasking

Representative Heuristic

"Cognitive shortcuts"; overgeneralized beliefs about the traits of an individual based solely on features that seem to indicate group membership

Multitasking

Dividing attention on three activities or more (often are overconfident in this ability)

Just World Beliefs

People get what they deserve and deserve what they get, enhances self-esteem and (can) promote fairness, rationalizes inequality and victim-blaming

Inequality and Victim-Blaming

“If this bad this happened to __, they must have deserved it”

Correspondent Inference

When people observe an action, they tend to conclude the actor possesses and attitude, desire, or trait that is associated with that action

Ex: Seeing someone walk into a restaurant may make someone think that that person is hungry

The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

People demonstrate a strong tendency to attribute behavior to internal qualities of the actor and consequently underestimate the casual role of situational factors

Ex: "they were late because they were irresponsible" but there actually was a backup on the highway out of their control

Social Components of the Self - Roles

Positions that entail specific ways of active (e.g. dividing responsibilities and resources)

Social Components of the Self - Identities

Personally acknowledged group memberships, research suggests that even minimally important identities can impact how we behave toward other

Social Comparison Theory

We come to learn much of what we think about ourselves by comparing ourselves to others, upward and downward social comparison

Upward Social Comparison

The act of comparing oneself to someone one perceives as superior, more talented, or more successful in a particular aspect

Downward Social Comparison

The act of comparing oneself to someone one perceives as inferior, less talented, or less successful in a particular way

Self-Esteem

The extent which one views oneself positively, as a person of significance, value, and worth, buffers potential anxiety, enables us to successfully pursue goals, and helps us satisfy social-belongingness needs

Socio-cultural standards of value

What is self-esteem derived from?

Derogating Others

Making ourselves feel better by putting others down

Self-Serving Attributions

Taking credit for one's successes and blaming external factors for one's failures

The Better-Than-Average Effect

On many generally positive abilities and traits, most people think they are better than average (a statistically impossibility!)

Basking-in-Reflected Glory

Affiliating with successful others/groups

The Dramaturgical Perspective

Using the theatre as a metaphor and the idea that people, like actors, perform according to a script, if we all know the script and play our parts well, then like a successful play, our social interactions go smoothly, seem meaningful, and the actors’ benefit.

The Spotlight Effect

We tend to overestimate the extent to which others are paying attention to aspects of ourselves.

Ex: People thinking many others will notice us wearing an embarrassing outfit or different outfit, but most people actually won't notice

The Illusion of Transparency

We tend to overestimate the extent to which others are aware of our internal states.

Ex: Thinking someone will know we are sad even when we are not saying anything.