Social Cognition exam 1

Social cognition

study of how people make sense of other people, themselves, and events in their social environment (an approach not a content area of study)

Social cognitive approach

provides a lens to identify social information processes and relevant methods to understand these processes

"Information" in social cognition

all the stimuli in the environment that impinge on an individual's sensory systems, non social and social aspects of environment

2 important aspects to the social cognitive approach

use of experimental methods to study social behaviour, development of research tools to directly study underlying cognitive processes

Behaviourism

watson argued psychology should only deal with observable phenomena (not internal processes~ thoughts, beliefs, consciousness) skinner ~ "black box"

Gestalt psychology

getting beyond just observed behaviour, is about subjective experience, describing people's experience of thinking/perceiving

Lewin's "person situation" field theory (gestalt)

influence of social environment "as perceived by" individuals (psychological field)

Phenomenology

individuals subjective reports about their own cognitions and behaviours

Asch impression formation

constantly adding and integrating info, continuously evolving impression, perceivers play active role by organizing info as it comes in and contrasting it to new information with the impression that is already formed

Balance theory

Heider 1946~ preferred psychological state is consistency among cognitive elements, interested in social relationships (individual (P), other individual (O), third element (X))

Balance theory links

connecting P, O and X have pos or neg valence, relative satisfaction of these relations are determined by multiplying the valence of three link, this determines if relation is balanced or imbalance, people tend to change whatever link is easiest for them

Cognitive dissonance theory

broader theory, inconsistent relation between two cognitive elements (or cognition and behaviour) = aversive psychological state

Attributions

explanations/reasons people give to explain outcomes in their environments, internal vs external causes

Social cognitive sequence

outcome (event) ~> cognition (think) ~> emotion (feel) ~> behaviour (act)

Minimal group studies

participants assigned to arbitrary groups (meaningless), when asked to anonymously assign points to other participants, they awarded more to their group (in group) than to the other group (out group), the mere act of grouping people is enough to make people view themselves as part of a group membership vs separate individuals, helps us impart meaning in social situations

Why not just cognitive psych

both cognitive psych and social psych concern how people process info, they focus on different types of info

Cognitive psych focuses on

how an individual processes all sorts of stimuli (objects, language, sounds, memory)

Social cognition focuses on

how an individual processes info about people, social situations (the self, others, groups, their relationships)

Culture

causal think differs, cognitive beliefs differ, perception of self differ

Cultural psychologists

remind us to conduct research on a larger variety of populations

WEIRD

western educated industrialized rich democratic

Independent self construal

encourages the idea that we are the center of our own social worlds

Interdependent self construal

encourages us to see ourselves from others' eyes in a specific setting

Holistic thinkers

considers context or area as a whole; placing focus on relationships between objects, more prominent in east asian societies

Analytic thinkers

focus on individual objects and attributes of that object (detachment from object and its context) more prominent in western society

Dominant cultural values

are not just copied into minds of cultural participants; we know this because people can be "primed" with individualistic or collective mindsets

Cognitive representations

we use this info to understand novel experiences, places, people, and objects to help us know what to do with the info

Associative visual agnosia

rare condition where cognitive representations are not available from memory when new info (object) is presented, from damage to occipital and temporal lobes of brain, visual systems are intact, they can copy/draw object but they cannot identify what they have drawn after

Cognitive representations concept

our stored understanding of a term, represent meaning of abstract terms

Cognitive representation category

cognitive representation of a class of objects (categories)

Cognitive representation script

our understanding of the sequence of events that happen in situations that recur, help us anticipate/predict (adaptive)

Similarity

among stimuli helps us determine concepts and categories (can also be similar functions/meaning)

Prototype

the best representative of a concept, helpful when encountering new exemplars

Concepts ~> memory

we store information in terms of concepts, each concept is associated with a set of properties/features, concepts are linked to one another in memory

Ways of conceptualizing mental representations in memory

hierarchical structure, associative networks

Hierarchical structure

classifying diverse (but related) objects using categories and subcategories

Associative networks

memory consists of interconnected concepts, each node represents a concept, links (pathways) connect related concepts and features, activation of one concept can spread to related concepts

Spreading activation

when node gets activated, it spread through pathways associated with it, activating other nodes

Spreading inhibition

process suppressing activation of competing information

Dual structures

two distinct memory systems for cognitive representation (old and new)

Old CR memory system

built slowly over time, activated automatically, resistant to change, stores general knowledge about people groups objects events

New CR memory system

formed quickly, requires attention/effort to activate, easily updated, stores recent observations and experiences

Task engagement

when getting something done, relevant and related concepts will be activated

Goals and motivation

a person's goals and motivations influence which cognitive representations are activated and maintained in memory

Priming effect

happens when being exposed to an event/stimulus (prime) influences a person's response to a subsequent event/stimulus

Subliminal priming

response is activated from something in the environment, below conscious awareness, can influence subsequent judgements and responses (effects are typically small and short lived, studies are difficult to conduct and replicate reliably)

Priming emotions

brief exposure to smiling or frowning faces can influence later evaluations

Priming cognitions

can increase the accessibility of related concepts in memory, may influence simple judgements, recognition, or categorization tasks

Conscious priming (supraliminal)

conscious perception of the prime but no awareness of its effects on subsequent reactions

Chronic accessibility concepts

mental concepts frequently used or occur often and thus come to mind easily (become fast/automatic), people will differ in what comes to mind more readily (unique histories), particular traits stick to people to inform their impressions, can lead to proceduralization

Effects of cognitive representations

comprehension/interpretation, categorization, frees up cognitive resources

Categorization

fundamental process that allows people to group similar objects or with similar function into categories, from social cognitive perspectives, we do this all the time with people

Categorization can lead to expectations

the knowledge and beliefs we ascribe to an object/person of a category can help us gain information about it, important to acknowledge categorization can be accurate generally but not regarding all objects/group members

Cognitive representation frees up cognitive resources

multitasking is challenging, using cognitive representations helps people to allocate resources efficiently

activated cognitive representations

provide an organizational framework (categorization) that reduces processing demands and frees up cognitive resource for other tasks

Black sheep effect

when a member of the ingroup commits a highly undesirable act, we might devalue them as a person, and construe them as a member of an entirely different category, people prefer positive ingroup members, negative ingroup members may be evaluated especially harshly, people may psychologically distance these members from the group

Stereotype

the knowledge, beliefs, and expectancies about a social group, network of associations

Social categorization hypothesis

normal human tendency to put people you encounter into social categories, people tend to be better at recognizing and distinguishing faces perceived to belong to their own group

Cognitive representation and understanding self

studies have examined how the 'self' is a cognitive representation, people react faster when selecting traits that reflect their self schema than traits that do not, self concept

Regulatory focus theory

people are habitually motivated to maximize growth (promotion focused on achieving gains) or maximize safety (prevention focused on avoiding risk/failure)

Ideal self

attributes ideally would like to possess

Ought self

attributes one thinks they should possess

Cognitive representation of people

incorporate both exemplars of behaviour (direct experience) and memory representation (trait impressions)

Unconscious

the processes that happen outside a person's awareness

Full automaticity

unintentional, uncontrollable, efficient, autonomous, unconscious, goal independent. Behaviour becomes over learned; muscle memory, settings often in routines/scripts

Dual modes

two kinds of processing, automatic and controlled

Automatic processing mode

occurs without intention and without our awareness

Controlled processing mode

how we process and use info, plan, judge, decide

Mindlessness

minimal attention, mentally disengaged, clueless, uncritical, automatic response

Chronic accessibility

constructs/concepts such as traits, attitudes, values that are chronically accessible (easily activated) because they are prioritized

Proceduralization

process whereby automaticity happens through practice

Goals

cognitive representations of desired outcomes; they include intended behaviour with preferred outcomes

Goal driven automaticity

initially intentional/conscious but the partly automatic, requires a goal to engage the thought process, not needing to monitor process

Goal inconsistent automaticity

when you can't think what you want

Thought suppression

deliberate attempt to avoid unwanted thoughts

Rumination

repetitive, often harmful thinking. Stemming from goal directed thinking when goals are not achieved. Entails: analyzing, fantasizing, agonizing, brooding, over focusing, worrying

Intent

a controlled process, linked to responsibility, seen when you consider "other options" and maintain your thinking, most obvious when a person makes the harder choice

Consciousness

being aware of a cognition or mental process, being awake and mindful, a necessary condition for human understanding and intent, involved in learning; troubleshooting after automaticity processes fail

Systems of evaluation model system 1

implicit automatic. Forms and uses associations in memory to process attitudes/judgements. Evaluations are made based on the associations and from pairing new info with memory representation based on similarity

Systems of evaluation model system 2

explicit deliberate. Evaluations based on using logic and reasoning relative to what is being processed. Take not of interests, attitudes, behaviours

Associative propositional evaluation

associative, conditioned and learned processes that associate mental concepts together. Propositional, based subjective validity

Perceived control

subjective capacity to influence or predict certain outcomes, events, or experiences

Two process model of perceived control

primary and secondary controls

Primary control

people's beliefs they can influence the environment to suit their needs through exerted effort or personal influence

Secondary control

people's beliefs they can attain control by means other than influencing the environment but rather aligning with it

Jingle jangle

different constructs measuring same thing or constructs with the same label measure different things (e.g. perceived control: self efficacy; locus of control; mastery; self regulation; effort; growth mindset; goal engagement)

Attention

attending to information in our social worlds, learning how to interact with people and function successfully in society, integral to encoding (focuses on what's being encoded)

Selective focus (for external or internal attention)

two components: direction (selectivity) and intensity (effort)

Encoding

the transforming of a perceived external stimulus into a mental representation, happens very quick, through interaction over time becomes routinized or proceduralized

Encoding social cognition

attuning to obvious social stimuli

Gaze

an attentional cue from others

Two components of encoding

attention and interpretation

Encoding attention

our focusing important cognitive resources to specific information while others go unnoticed

Encoding interpretation

understanding or making meaning of otherwise vague observational events (how people act, what they say, or even what they mean by non verbal expressions)

Filter theory

unattended information is filtered out of incoming stimuli so it is never actually processed

Cocktail party effect

when in conversation at a party, hearing your name elsewhere would instantly pull your attention

Attenuation theory

unattended information is not ignored completely; some is partially extracted from stimuli that are not main focus of attention

What drives attention

goals, expectancies, cognitive load, motives

Expectancies attention drive

people see what they want to see, confirms their beliefs and expectations

Cognitive load attention drive

when we attend to novel, challenging tasks while under cognitive load, we struggle to pay attention