Social Cognition and Attitudes - PSYC1030 Week 5

Flashcards covering key terms from Week 5: Social Cognition and Attitudes, including models of impression formation, heuristics, attribution errors, and persuasion theories.

Social Psychology

A field of study that tries to understand how people think and behave in social settings.

Impression Formation

The process where people combine information about others to form an overall judgment about them.

Algebraic Model

Developed by Anderson ($1965$), this model posits that impressions are formed based on the mechanical combination of information, including summative, averaging, or weighted averaging methods.

Summative Model

A type of algebraic model where the overall impression rating is the sum of the ratings of individual traits (e.g., $+3 + 3 + 2 - 2 - 1 = 5$).

Averaging Model

A type of algebraic model where the overall impression is the total of trait ratings divided by the number of ratings (e.g., $5 \div 5 = 1$).

Weighted Averaging Model

An algebraic model considered the best match for human behavior where each attribute is assigned a weight based on its personal importance; the total weights are then divided by the number of ratings (e.g., $13 \div 5 = 2.6$).

Configuration Model

Asch's ($1946$) model based on Gestalt principles, suggesting that the whole impression is greater than the sum of its parts and that traits are not all used in the same way.

Central Traits

Influential, important traits within the Configuration Model that can drive an overall impression and change the meaning of peripheral traits (e.g., "warm" vs. "cold").

Peripheral Traits

Less influential traits that take on different meanings depending on the context provided by central traits.

Schemas

Cognitive structures representing knowledge about a concept or stimulus, formed from past experience, that allow for the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Event Schemas (scripts)

Knowledge structures associated with a context or situation that tell an individual what to expect in that setting.

Role Schemas

Knowledge about the parts or roles people play in a setting, which are often integrated with event schemas.

Stereotype

A specific type of person schema associated with a social category.

Heuristics

Decision-making mental shortcuts or quick strategies used to make judgments and decisions more efficiently than systematic processing.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut (Kahneman & Tversky, $1973$) used to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event based on how easily examples of that event come to mind.

Representativeness Heuristic

A rule (Tversky & Kahneman, $1974$) where people judge the likelihood of group membership by comparing case features to a prototype.

Attribution

The process of inferring the cause of behavior ($Heider, 1944$), typically categorized as Internal (dispositional/traits) or External (situational/environmental).

Covariation Model

Kelley's ($1973$) model stating that we attribute behavior to the cause it covaries with over time, based on Consensus, Distinctiveness, and Consistency.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to attribute another person's behavior to their dispositional qualities rather than the situation ($Ross, 1977$), more common in individualist cultures.

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes while attributing others' actions to internal causes (Jones \text{ & } Nisbett, 1971).

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to attribute successes to internal, stable factors and failures to temporary, external factors (Taylor \text{ & } Koivumaki, 1976).

Attitude

An association between an act or object and an evaluation ($Fazio, 1986$), composed of beliefs, behavioral tendencies, and feelings.

The Sleeper Effect

The phenomenon (Hovland & Weiss, $1951$) where persuasion from a low-credibility source increases over time due to the disassociation of the message from the source.

Fear Messages

A common tool in advertising that can backfire (Janis & Feshbach, $1953$), but its effectiveness depends on response efficacy and perceived self-efficacy.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Petty & Cacioppo's ($1986$) theory of attitude change through two routes: Central Route (logical elaboration) or Peripheral Route (emotional/stimuli association).

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Festinger's ($1957$) theory that inconsistency between cognitions results in aversive psychological tension, which people reduce by changing beliefs or adding consonant cognitions.

Induced Compliance

Attitude change following a behavior that is inconsistent with one's beliefs, often occurring when external rewards are small, as shown in the Festinger & Carlsmith ($1959$) $1\,USD$ vs. $20\,USD$ study.