Social Psychology unit 2

social cognition

cognition vs social cognition? 2pts

1. cognition- the way in which people process info received through interaction, memory, or sensory input

2. social cognition- the way in which we mentally process, encode, and process social information, and when and how this information is activated in different situation

what does social cognitioin propose? 2 pt

social thoughts and actions arise from the interaction between:

1. social/cultural context

2. prior knowledge

what is the war of the ghosts by bartlett? 1 pt

folkloric history becomes conventional and adapts to more local history; participants used their cultural scehmas to change and reconstruct history

what are the different forms of cognitive structures that help us manage information? 4 pts

1. schemas

2. categories

3. prototypes

4. exemplars

what are schemas? 3 pts

1. general developmental patterns that helpp us act in our present environment- Bartlett and wagoner

2. cognitive structures that represent organized knowledge about a given concept or a type of stimulus- Morales and maya

3. simplified and holistic representations of the social world that act as relatively durable molds for stimulus interpretation and action planning

where do schemas come from? 2 pts

1. prior individual experience

2. specific socio-cultural contexts that are specific to each group

what are the types of schemas? 4 pts

1. people schemas- structre of individualized knowledge about specific people

2. role schemas- structure of knowledge about the people who fulfill a specific role

3. scripts- actions or specific sequences of events whose absence can lead to disorientation or frustration

4. self-schema- knowledge that people have about themselves and is richer than info stored about others

as we acquire and develop schemas they become…? 3 pts

1. more abstract and less linked to specific cases as more cases become known (park, 1986)

2. richer and more complex as more cases become known (Linville, 1982)

3. more resilient (fiske and Neuberg, 1990)

what are the ways in which schemas can be changed? 3 pts

1. bookkeeping- slow change in the face of accumulating evidence

2. conversion- sudden and massive change once a critical mass of disconforming evidence has accumulated

3. subtyping- schemas morph into a subcategory to accomodate disconforming evidence

what are social categories? 1 pt

a group of people who have a common attribute and the relationships between categories is hierarchial e.g. young→ student→ UEM student→ psychology student etc

how do we categorize people? 3 pts

1. principle of accentuation- categorixation emphasizes perceived similarities within the group and differences with other groups

2. theory of categorisation- theory of how the process of categorizing oneself as a member of a group generated social identity and group and intergroup behaviors

3. social identity theory- theory of group membership and inter-group relations based on self-categorisation, social comparison, and contruction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties

what is a prototype? 1 pt

an abstract set of characteristics commonly associated with members of a category (cantor, 1981) and describes the typical/ideal member of a category used to determine whether or not one fits into said category

cognitive representations of a category

what are exemplars? 1 pt

a specific peroson commonly associated with a category that has surpassed prototypical level e.g. a famous footballer

what are some biases when forming impressions? 5 pts

1. order effect

2. valence effect

3. stereotypes

4. implicit personality theories

5. appearance

what is order effect? 1 pt

the order in whcih information is presented affects subsequent impression

what is the primacy effect? 1 pt

the information presented first has a greater influence on social cognition

what is the recencey effect? 1 pt

the information presented last has a greater influence on social cognition

what is the valence effect?1 pt

if the information has a positive or negative chracter it has different effects

what is positive information? 1 pt (Sears, 1983)

in the absence of information people tend to assume the best of others and form a positive impression

what is negative information? 2 pts

1. if negative information appears it tends to attract our attention and acquires more significant importance in the impression

2. negative impressions are more difficult to change

why are negative impressions more difficult to change? 2 pts

1. unusual and distinctive information attracts attention

2. negative information poses a potential survival hazard

what are stereotypes? 1 pt

impressions of people that are strongly influenced by widely shared assumptions about the personalities, attitudes, and behaviors of people based on group membership

what are implicit personality theories? 1 pt

general principles concerning what sorts of characteristics go together to form certain personality types that are widely shared within cultures but differ between cultures

what is appearance? 1 pt

1. physical appearance awakens stereotypes with greater clarity and strength

2. we tend to think physically attractive people are good and more socially adapted

what is social encoding? 1 pt

the way in which external social stimuli are represented in the mind of the individual and are highly dependent on what captures our attention

what are two factors that influence social encoding? 2 pts

1. salience- property of a stimulus that makes it stand out in relation to other stimuli and attract attention

2. accessibility- the ease with which we can recover a construct

what is priming? 1 pt

the activation of accessible schemas that have been used recently and influence the way new information is processed

what is social inference? 1 pt

how we select and combine information to form impressions and make judgements

what are two distinct ways in which we process social information? 2 pts

1. top-down AKA automatic model- we rely automatically on general schemas or stereotypes in a deductive fashion

2. bottom-up AKA custom model- we can deliberatively rely on specific instances in an inductive fashion

what are some biases and errors involved in social inference processes? 5 pts

1. data collection

2. law of small numbers

3. regression

4. base-rate information

5. illusory correlation

what is data collection? 1 pt

overlooking information due to the overreliance on schemas when collecting info

what is the law of small numbers? 1 pt

how people can be overly influenced by extreme examples and small samples

what is regression? 1 pt

a tendancy for intial observations to be more extreme that subsequent ones

what is base-rate information? 1 pt

statistical information about any event that is replaced by anecdotal informationdespite being relevant e.g. flying is more safe than driving but people drive more and so feel safer driving than flying despite this

what is illusory correlation? 1 pt

cognitive exaggeration of the degree of co-occurence of two stimuli or events or the perception of a co-occurence where there is none

what are heuristics? 1 pt

cognitive short-cuts we use to reduce complex problem-solving to simpler operations

what are the types of heuristics? 3 pts

1. representativeness- instances are assigned to categories or types based on overall similarity or resemblance to the category

2. availability- evaluate the probability of an even by the ease with which examples can be retrieved

3. anchoring and adjustment- used to solve uncertainties by taking a starting point as a reference which is adjusted to reach a solution