Lectures 18-20: Stereotypes and Prejudice, Lecture 21: Affect, Lectures 23-25: Cultural Cognition, PSYC 137 Final Review (+ Midterm 1)

What are stereotypes?

Generalized belief about the characteristics of a group. Can be positive or negative.

What is prejudice?

Attitude toward a group/person formed before evaluating evidence; usually involves negative affect.

What is discrimination?

Negative behavior toward members of an outgroup.

What is the stereotype content model (SCM)?

Model proposing stereotypes vary along two dimensions: warmth and competence.

What is the BIAS map?

(Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes) - Model explaining how stereotypes/emotions predict behavior toward groups.

What is stereotype threat?

Fear of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group, which can impair performance.

What is social identity theory?

People define themselves partly through group memberships.

What is ingroup favoritism?

Favoring members of one's own group over outgroups.

What is the outgroup homogeneity effect?

Seeing outgroup members as more similar to each other than ingroup members.

What is the ultimate attribution error?

Attributing negative outgroup behavior to internal traits but positive outgroup behavior to situations.

What is realistic conflict theory?

Prejudice/conflict arise from competition over limited resources.

What is integrated threat theory?

Prejudice arises when outgroups are perceived as threatening.

What is the habit breaking model of prejudice?

Implicit prejudice acts like a habit: automatic but changeable with effort.

What is the intergroup contact theory?

Positive contact between groups reduces prejudice.

What are Allport's optimal conditions for reducing prejudice through contact?

Equal status, common goals, cooperation, institutional support.

What is the parasocial contact hypothesis?

Media exposure to outgroup members can reduce prejudice.

What is the difference between affect, emotion, and mood?

Affect- broad umbrella term for emotional experiences; diffuse and immediate.

Emotion - specific psychological/physiological response to an event.

Mood - Long-lasting, weaker, less specific feeling state.

How did Darwin explain emotions?

Emotional expressions are innate, evolved, and shared across species.

What did Ekman propose about emotional facial expressions?

Basic emotional expressions are universal across cultures.

How do Russell and Barrett describe emotions?

Emotions are constructed from dimensions like valence and arousal.

What is mood-congruent cognition?

Mood influences thoughts/memories in mood-consistent ways.

What is misattribution of arousal?

Mistakenly attributing physiological arousal to the wrong source.

Tomasello's Origin of Cultural Cognition

The theory that uniquely human cognition originates from the ability to understand and share intentions with others, allowing for cooperation, culture, and social learning.

Shared Intentionality

The ability to share attention, goals, and intentions with others. Tomasello argues that shared intentionality underlies many uniquely human cognitive abilities.

Phylogeny

The evolutionary development of a species. Tomasello uses phylogeny to explain how human cognition differs from that of other primates.

Human vs non-human primate cognition

Both humans and other primates understand others as animate agents. Humans uniquely understand others as intentional and mental agents with their own beliefs, desires, intentions, and attention.

Human as understanding other's as intentional agents

Humans view others as intentional agents with their own goals and mental states, making it possible to coordinate behavior, share goals, and engage in shared intentionality.

Theory of Mind

The ability to understand that other people have their own thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions. It helps individuals form joint intentions with others.

Cumulative Cultural Evolution

The process through which knowledge, skills, technologies, and practices improve across generations as successful modifications are transmitted and built upon over time.

Ratchet effect

The idea that cultural progress tends to move forward rather than backward because innovations are preserved and accumulated across generations.

Ontogeny

The developmental process through which children acquire the abilities needed for shared intentionality and social interaction.

Face preference

The tendency for newborns to prefer face-like patterns over scrambled or non-face patterns. This preference appears within hours of birth.

Dyadic engagement

Interactions between an infant and another person as animate agents. It involves sharing emotions, following head or gaze direction, and turn-taking behaviors.

Triadic engagement

Interactions involving two individuals and a shared object or goal. Around 9-12 months, infants engage in joint attention and begin understanding others as goal-directed agents.

Collaborative engagement

Interactions in which individuals understand each other as intentional agents and coordinate actions toward a shared goal. Around 12-15 months, children begin actively coordinating and directing attention with others.

Individualism vs Collectivism

Individualism - A cultural orientation that views people as autonomous individuals whose identities are based on personal traits, preferences, independence, achievement, self-expression, and personal choice.

Collectivism - A cultural orientation that views people primarily through their relationships and social roles, emphasizing interdependence, social harmony, family obligations, cooperation, and group goals.

Individualism-Collectivism (I-C) - A cultural dimension describing the degree to which people in a society are integrated into groups.

Key Facets

Key Facets of Individualism:

- Independence

- Personal achievement

- Self-expression

- Individual rights

- Personal choice

Key Facets of Collectivism:

- Interdependence

- Social harmony

- Family obligations

- Group goals

- Cooperation

Differences in self-perception (independent vs interdependent self)

Independent self - A view of the self common in individualistic cultures in which people see themselves as separate, autonomous individuals with stable personal traits.

Interdependent self - A view of the self common in collectivistic cultures in which people see themselves as connected to others and defined by social relationships and context.

Cousins (1989) Study

A study comparing Japanese and American students that found Americans described themselves more through stable personal traits, whereas Japanese students were more likely to describe themselves in relation to social contexts and situations.

Holistic vs Analytical Processing

Holistic Processing - A cognitive style more common in collectivistic cultures that focuses on relationships, context, and the overall field rather than isolated objects.

Analytical Processing - A cognitive style more common in individualistic cultures that focuses on focal objects, categories, and individual attributes independently from context.

*Underwater Scene Study: A cultural cognition finding showing that North Americans tend to focus on focal fish and individual objects, whereas East Asians are more likely to notice background information, context, and relationships among objects.

Categories (with fuzzy boundaries)

-We define groups based on shared characteristics, but some categories have fuzzy boundaries (does a taco truck still count as a restaurant?)

Prototype

-Categories are actually organized around a "prototype" rather than strict definitions

-Items are included based on their similarity to this prototype

-Can be thought of as an average of the items in one category → acts as a reference point to fit items into categories

Exemplars

-People remember separate instances of exemplars actually encountered, rather than some average prototype abstracted from experience

Doctor exemplars:

-Your dentist

-Your pediatrician

-Your GP

-Your friend who is in med school

-Etc.

Self-referencing effect

It's easier for people to recall information that is personally relevant or related to their self concept

Self concept

Our self-concept are our collected beliefs about ourselves

Self Schema

-Qualities that people are certain about (about themselves)

-Self-schemas as the building blocks of our self-concept:

"I am capable"

"I am empathetic"

"I am loved"

"I am introverted"

"I am a good friend"

Temporal Self-Appraisal Theory in typical people

People tend to:

-View their present self as positive

-Distance themselves from their past selves, which they feel more negative about

-View their future selves as more positive

Temporal Self-Appraisal Theory in those who are anxious/depressed (Sokol et al., 2022)

-Temporal self-appraisal of the anxious group had the same trajectory as the euthymic group, but at each point, they scored lower

-Temporal sel-appraisal of those with depression had a stable past-to-present self-view and an improving present-future self-view

-Temporal self-appraisal of the comorbid group was the lowest for the present self, and the future self had the highest self-appraisal

Self-esteem

-Determined by the congruence between the actual self (self-image) and the ideal self

-When there is a large gap or incongruence between self-image and ideal self, it can lead to low self-esteem, unhappiness, and anxiety

-The evaluation of oneself → "How do I feel about who I am?

-Self-esteem can be measured on the Self Esteem Scale (Week 3 Quiz)

Cybernetic theory (control theory) of self-regulation

-Self-regulation → a dynamic feedback system

Cybernetic theory consists of:

-Current status

-Goals

-Monitoring the discrepancy

-Control and adjust to move toward the goal

How does social exclusion effect self-regulation?

It impairs their desire to self-regulate, but they are still able to if incentivized

Belonging

The need to belong is central to human health and well-being

-Social isolation leads to damaged cardiovascular and immune responses

-The age-adjuted mortality risk is similar to cigarette smoking

Understanding

The human need for socially shared cognition

Controlling

People's desire to influence access to desired resources, and outcomes of their actions (what they get for what they do)

Self-enhancement

People's tendency to see themselves in a positive light

Trust

A persistent positive bias toward people

Attribution Theory

A theory that tries to explain how people attribute causes of events or behavior and analyze how this attribution affects future behavior

Naïve Psychology

Humans spontaneously try to understand other humans and the cause of what they do

Core distinction between:

-Internal causes (aka dispositional causes, incl. traits, intentions)

-External causes (aka situational causes, incl. context, circumstance, luck)

Covariation Model

Says that we use three types of info to attribute the cause of a behavior:

-Consensus → Social comparison: Do others behave like this too?

-Distinctiveness → Situation comparison: Do they behave like this in other situations?

-Consistency → Time comparison: Do they always behave like this?

-High consensus, high distinctiveness, high consistency → external attribution

-Low consensus, low distinctiveness, high consistency → internal attribution

Correspondent Inference Theory

We make inferences based on 3 factors:

-Person's degree of choice

-Expectedness of the behavior

-Intended effects or consequences of the behavior

We're more likely to make internal attribution inferences when behavior is diagnostic:

-Behavior is freely chosen

-Behavior is unexpected/low in social desirability

-Behavior has unique effects

Attributional Model of Motivated Behavior

Attributions influence our emotions, motivations, and future behavior

3 dimensions:

-Locus (attribution to internal vs external cause) → emotions

-Stability (stable vs unstable) → future expectations

-Controllability (controllable vs uncontrollable) → emotions (anger vs sympathy)

Dual-process Model of Attribution

Dispositional (internal attribution) inference happens with our automatic processes

-When someone cuts you off in traffic, your immediate thought it to think that they are a terrible person

After your initial attribution, we can adjust for situational factors

-This would be your controlled processing

-We try to correct for situational factors, but in the end are still often biased toward internal attributions

We are more biased when our cognitive resources are low → such as when we're tired, stressed, or have high cognitive load, and when time is limited

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes

False Consensus Bias

The tendency to believe that other's share our own opinions, attitudes, and behaviors

Actor-observer Bias

The tendency to attribute our own behavior to external, situational causes while attributing others' behaviors to internal, personal traits

Actor = self → external/situational attribution

Observer = others → internal/dispositional attribution

Self-serving Bias

The tendency to attribute positive events ("I studied really hard for the test I did well on") to one's own character or efforts, while blaming external factors for failures or negative outcomes ("The test was too hard, there's nothing I could have done")

Success → Internal attribution → Pride

Failure → External attribution → Less shame

Negativity Bias in PTSD

Those with PTSD seem to show a bias toward negative attributions instead of positive

-Ambiguous/neutral situations could be seen as threatening

-They might attribute negative intent to others

-They could make internal, stable, global attributions about negative events

Internal → relating to themselves ("It's my fault")

Stable → it's unchangeable ("It will always be this way")

Global → it affects every aspect of their lives ("It affects everything")

This pattern (internal, stable, global) has been linked to depression

These attribution patterns are based on trauma and cannot easily be "fixed"

Individualism

A culture where people are viewed as autonomous individuals whose identities are based on personal traits and preferences (i.e. United States); an independent, context-free view of oneself (based on stable internal traits)

What does individualism emphasize?

independence, personal achievement, self-expression, individual rights, personal choice

Collectivism

A culture where people are viewed as primarily through their relationships and social roles (i.e. Japan); more of an interdependent, contextualized view of oneself (depending on the situation - such as acting differently at work vs at home)

What does collectivism emphasize?

interdependence, social harmony, family obligations, group goals, cooperation

What did the Holistic vs analytical processing (Nisbett et. al, 2001) study find?

-Americans tended to immediately mention the items that were more salient or stuck out (the fish) far more frequently than the Japanese participants

-Japanese participants mentioned information about the field or background almost twice as often as the Americans

-Japanese participants also mentioned almost twice as many relations between objects and the background

When asked to recognize objects with an original background, no background, or a novel background:

-Japanese participants tended to have less recognition accuracy when objects had a novel background

-This might indicate a difference in how Japanese participants processed the underwater scenes (holistically)