Psych - Social Cognition

Social cognition

Involves how we perceive, think about and use information to understand and make judgments about ourselves and others in different social situations.

Person perception

refers to the mental processes we use to think about and evaluate other people.

The halo effect

Is a cognitive bias in which the impression we form about one quality of a person influences our beliefs and expectations about the person in other qualities.

Body language

A person’s body language is an expression of behaviour that enables us to make quick and often accurate judgments about them

Salience detection

Refers to any personal characteristic that is distinctive, prominent, conspicuous, or noticeable in its context and therefore attracts attention.

Attributions

Refers to the process by which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviour.

• Internal (personal) attribution: an explanation due to the characteristics of the person involved, such as their personality, mood, effort or attitude.

• External (situational) attribution: an explanation due to factors external to the person involved, such as the actions of another person, luck and fate.

Biases affecting attribution

• The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate the influence of personal factors and underestimate the impact of situational factors on other people’s behaviour.

• Actor-observer bias refers to our tendency to attribute our own behaviour to external or situational causes, yet attribute others’ behaviour to internal factors

• Self-serving bias is when jugding ourselves, we tend to take the credit for our successes and attribute failures to situational factors

Attitude

An attitude refers to an evaluation a person makes about an object, person, group, event or issue.

Evaluation

Is a consistent and lasting judgement being made (either positive, negative, or neutral), about some specific aspect of our lives and the world in whcih we live

Tri-component model of attitudes

The tricomponent model of attitudes (the ABC’s of attitudes) proposes that any attitude has 3 related components:

• Affective component = based on the feelings that someone has about something

• Behavioural component = our actions towards something

• Cognitive component = the beliefs we have about something.

This model suggests that all 3 components must be present before an attitude can be formed.

Sterotype

Refers to a collection of beliefs that we have about people who belong to a certain group, regardless of individual differences among members of the group.

• Stereotyping is the process of ‘fitting’ individuals into groups, based on what they look like and what we think we know about them.

Prejudice

Is a negative emotional attitude held towards members of specific social group.

Explict and implict prejudice

• Explicit prejudice is defined as prejudice that is consciously held and usually deliberately thought about.

• Implicit prejudice is prejudice that is typically unconsciously held; that is, the person holding such prejudice is not usually aware that they do so.

Discrimination

Takes place when a person or a social group is treated differently than others

• Direct discrimination is where someone is treated unfairly because of a personal characteristic.

• Indirect discrimination is where treating everyone the same way actually indirectly disadvantages someone because of a personal characteristic.

The basic difference between prejudice and discrimination is that prejudice is an attitude and discrimination is the behaviour.

Factors that reduce discrimination

1. Anti-discrimination laws: These laws help to reduce discrimination

   because people are fearful of consequences, people also learn what is socially acceptable.

2. The media: Social media, ads and billboards help to reduce prejudice by persuading society to take action and stand up against discriminatory behaviour and by making racism more confronting by giving it a name and a face.

3. Education: helps integrate all cultural groups

4. Intergroup contact: refers to increasing direct contact between two groups who are prejudiced against each other.

Prejudice will be reduced if there is:

a. Extended Contact: There is sustained and ongoing contact either directly or indirectly over a period of time.

b. Mutual Interdependence: Two rival groups are dependent on one another

c. Superordinate goals: a goal that cannot be achieved by any one group alone and overrides other existing goals which each group might have

d. Equality of status: the groups must have equal status in the contact situation.

Status

Refers to the importance of a person within a group as perceived by members of the group

Group

A group consists of two or more individuals who interact with each other, influence each other and share a common purpose

Social power

is the individual’s ability to control or infulence the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of others

Types of social power

1. Reward power:

Ability to give positive consequences or remove negative consequences.

2. Coercive power:

Ability to give negative consequences or remove positive consequences.

3. Legitimate power:

An individual’s status or position in a group gives them the right to give commands and/or instructions to others.

4. Referent power:

Individuals want to be like or liked by the person giving commands and/or instructions.

5. Expert power:

Having special knowledge and skills that are needed or desired.

6. Informational power:

Having resources or information that are useful and not available

Groupthink

Is a tendency for the members of a group to seek agreement when decision making or problem solving, even if this is not the best option or decision.

Group polarisation

Is the tendency for an individual to have a more extreme view/opinion, in the same direction, following group discussion with others who have a similar view/opinion.

De-individuation

Iis a reduction in self-consciousness, inhibition, feeling of personal responsibility and restraint as a result of being in a group or crowd.

Obedience

Is when an individual follows the commands of someone with authority or the rules and laws of our society.

Factors that affect obedience

1. Proximity to the victim:

The closer the victim, the more likely it is that individuals will refuse to inflict pain on another individual.

2. Proximity to the authority figure:

The closer the authority figure, the more likely it is that individuals will obey an instruction to inflict pain on another individual.

3. Legitimacy of the authority figure:

Individuals are more likely to be obedient when the authority figure is perceived as having legitimate power.

4. Group pressure:

Individuals are more likely to be obedient when there is group support for the authority figure. Individuals often report feeling uncomfortable with being the only one to disobey.

Conformity

Conformity involves adjusting thoughts, feelings and/or behaviours so that they are consistent with other members of a group, or with social standards about how an individual should behave in a certain situation.

Factors that influence conformity

1. Group size:

Asch replicated his experiment with different numbers of confederates. We now know that conformity is most likely to occur within a group of 4/5 individuals

2. Unanimity

Unanimity is complete agreement among members of a group. When unanimity is present, conformity is highly likely. When another person openly disagrees, conformity drops dramatically

3. Informational influence:

Individuals are likely to conform when they want to provide a correct response but are unsure of what the correct response is.

4. Normative influence:

Individuals are likely to conform when they want to be liked and/or accepted by the group

5. Culture:

Individuals from individualistic cultures are less likely to conform than individuals from collectivist cultures

• Individualistic cultures encourage individuality, independence and achievement of personal goals

• Collectivist cultures consider the individual to be less important than the group. Group goals are typically placed above individual goals

Experiments

Don’t forget Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram’s experiment on obedience, and Asch’s experiement of conformity