ISC Exam 1

Part 1: Basic Concepts in Social Cognition, Part 2: Understanding Individual Selves and Others

social psychology

The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual or imagined presence of others

the largest influence on social psychology

Adolf Hitler and the Holocuast motivated a lot of people to look into social psychology and why so many people commited atrocities they didn’t necessarily believe in.

3 forms of social influence

conformity, compliance, obedience

confirmity

change in behaviour to match the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours of others

compliance

change in behaviour as a result of request by others

obedience

change in behaviour as the result of orders of an authourity figure

norms

implicit, specific rules shared by a group of individuals that guide their interactions with others; no need for social pressure.

Zajonc, Heingarter, Herman’s ‘69 experiment

Beetle study: Simple tasks are easier when performed around others, Complex tasks are more difficult when performed around others.

social facilitation

(double check) people show increased levels of effort and performance when in the presence of others

social facilitation occurs when:

a task requires a dominant response

social inhibition

(double check textbook)

social inhibition occurs when:

a task requires a non-dominant response

1982 Pool Hall Experiment

Pro vs Beginner pool players played with or without an audience present.

Professional pool players’ performance ________ with an audience.

increased

Beginner pool players’ performance ________ with an audience.

decreased

social cognition

How people make sense of other people and themselves in order to coordinate with their social worls; the study of mental processes in percieving, attending to, remembering, thinking & feeling about and making sense of the people in our social world

Assumptions in Social Cognition

Mentalism, Cognitive Processes, Cross-fertilization, real-world issues

Mentalism

mental representations; cognitive structures that both represent one’s general knowledge about a given concept or stimulus somain and one’s memory for specific experiences

Cognitive Processes

S-O-R: Stimulus, Organism, Response

Cross-fertilization

Informs and is informed by different branches of psychology, e.g. Cognitive neuroscience

Methods of researching Social Cognition

Priming, recall, behavioural measurements, reaction times, questionnaires, scenarios

Emotions

an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the bodily state in response to the evaluation of an external or internal event as relevent to major concerns of the organism

Ekman’s emotions

Ethnographic studies indentifies six basic “universal” emotional expressions

More complex emotions

may require processing of social relations that go beyond information in the face

Plutchik’s Emotions

Cone with 8 sectors: Vertical = intensity, 8 sectors = 8 emotions

Mood

long duration, vague feeling

Affect

preferences, emotions, mood

valence

positive or negative character of emotional experience

Asch’s Competing Models

Holisitc (configural) approach, elemental (impression) approach

Holistic approach to social cognition

Configural model where people form a unified overall impression of other people; the unifying forces shape individual elements to bring them in line with the overall impression.

Elemental approach to social cognition

Algebraic model where an impression is made up of elements that need to be understood that make up the whole (a+b+c)

the elemental approach…

breaks scientific problems into pieces and analyzes the pieces in seperate detail before combining them

the holistic approach…

analyzes the pieces in the context of other pieces and focuses on the entire configuration of relationships among them

Hume’s view of ideas

elemental; ideas first come from our sensations and perceptions

Wundt and Ebbinghaus

the first labratory psychologists, trains themselve to observe their own thought processes

Kant

reacting against the elemental approach, argued for tackling the whole mind at once

Gestalt Psychology

describe the phenomenon and immediate epxerience without analysis. Focused on people’s experience of dynamic wholes

A song percieved as a series of indvl notes is an example of what?

elemental psychology

a song as a melody that emerges from relationships among its notes is an example of what?

Gestalt psychology

Lewin’s Person-Situation Field Theory

Focused on the person’s subjective perceptions, not “objective” analysis

B = f (P, E)

Behaviour is a function of the situation and the person (person-situation field theory)

Lewin’s “Psychological field”

the influence of the social environment as percieved by the invididual.

The total psychological field is determined by two pairs of factors:

the person in the situation and cognition+motivation

Cognition helps determine:

What a person will do, which direction behaviour will take.

Motivation helps determine:

whether the behaviour will occur at all, and if it does, how much of it will occur.

Movements in Social Cognition

Consistency Seeker, Naive Scientist, Cognitive Miser, Motivated Tactician, Activated Actor

Consistency Seeker Example

Dissonance theory of attitudes

Consistency seeker role of cognition

about behaciours and beliefs

Consistency Seeker role of motivation

Drive to reduce discomfort from cognitive discrepancy

Naive Scientist example

Covariation model of attribution

Naive Scientist role of cognition

Primary, rational analysis

Naive Scientist role of motivation

prediction and control, qualified rationality

Cognitive miser example

Heuristic decision making

Cognitive miser role of cognition

Shortcuts to conserve limited capacity

Cognitive miser role of motivation

rapid adequate understanding

Motivated Tactician example

Dual process models

Motivated tactician role of cognition

goals organize cognitive strategies

Motivated tactician role of motivation

thinking is for doing in social contexts

Activated Actor Example

Implicit Associations

Activated Actor role of cognition

automatic affect and behaviour

Activated actor role of motivation

Social surviving and thriving

Cinsistency Seeker critique

People actually accept a fair amount of inconsistency. What does a person think is inconsistent and to what degree?

Naive scientist critique

Sometimes people just do not think it through.

Cognitive miser critique

Motivation was no longer so important.

Motivated Tactician critque

People are not always that deliberate, a lot goes automatic.

Activated Actor

What about neuroscience?

Change blindness

Being unable to see a change in the environment due to distractions

Visual search is easier when

unique target

Visual search is difficult when

target shared multiple feature with non-targets, or when target is defined by conjunction of features.

Feature search

easy, automatic, parallel

Conjunction search

attentive processing, difficult, controlled, serial

feature integration theory

object → preattentive stage → focused attention stage → perception

the steps of information processing

Perceptual inputs --> Encoding --> Memory --> Behaviour

Behaviour is guided by information that is

accessible

Perceptual Readiness

Chronically accessible goals, needs, values

The need for an object, e.g. money changes the perception of the object. What is this an example of?

Perceptual readiness

**Visual Salience**

The state or quality of an item that stands out to neighboring items; bottom-up processing

visual salience is mainly

automatic

**Social Salience**

People acting differently than the social context

Examples of social salience

* Novel (race, age)
* Figural (bright, moving)
* Onset/offset (entering or leaving)
* Unusual behaviour
* Goal relevant (date, boss)
* Dominating visual field (head of table, camera)
* Being instructed to observe the person

**Consequences of Salience**

* Causally significant
* Organized in impression coherence
* Evaluative extreme

Causally significant

Only showing the suspect in a video (rather than cutting between the suspect and someone else) makes the suspect seem more guilty

Organized in impression coherence

Solo student at a staff meeting seen as more typical student

Evaluative extreme

Unpleasant solo is condemned more, but pleasant solo is praised more

Salience has ___ reliable effect on memory recall

no

**Face Perception**

It takes 100-200 milisecs to identify face, race, and gender id, but also trait inferences

FFA

Fusiform face area

Facial recognition

A global process

Feature-oriented processing of a face undermines recognition (e.g. verbally describing a bank robber interferes with recognizing in line-up)

**Babyfacedness**

elicit caregiving and nurturing, decrease aggressive responsive

**Gaze**

 signal of attraction and aggressive approach; Provides basis for making inferences about the other's focus of interest, encourages the observer to shift attention to the corresponding

**Vividness**

to attract and hold our attention and to excite the imagination; Emotionally interesting

Vividness does ____ have evidence in being more persuasive

not

**Priming**

Use of a triggered concept

**Excitation transmission model of priming**

Takes less and less stimulus to trigger

**Response threshold**

Made that much salient to influence behaviour (?)

Why does exposure lead to accessibility?

Focusing attention requires retrieval of memory to correctly categorize the stimulus

**Proceduralization**

People who have easily accessible personally dimensions are more likely to describe others in terms

Biggest priming effect

Prime, Immediate stimulus, long period before retrieval and rating

Moderate priming effect

Prime, Moderate period before stimulus, moderate period before retrieval and priming

Least priming effect

Stimulus, prime, retrieval and rating (prime after stimulus)