Social Cognition Flashcards

Flashcards covering key vocabulary from a lecture on social cognition.

Social Cognition

The encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of information in the brain which relates to members of the same species. It is how we interpret, remember, and understand information about the people and situations that surround us.

Pluralistic Ignorance

The misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of a concern for the social consequences—actions that reinforce the erroneous group norm.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

A situation in which people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes the person to behave consistently with the original expectation, thus making the expectation come true!

Causal Attributions

Linking an instance of a behavior to a cause; attempts to figure out why someone or yourself did something.

Internal or Dispositional Behavior

Something about the person caused the behavior.

External or Situational Behavior

Something about the environment caused the behavior.

Covariation principle

Behavior should be attributed to potential causes that co-occur with the behavior.

Discounting Principle

Less weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are alternative causes present

Augmentation principle

Greater weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are other potential causes that would normally produce the opposite outcome.

Counterfactual Thoughts

Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something had been done differently

Emotional Amplification

Emotional reactions to counterfactual thinking increase depending on how easy it is to imagine the alternative

Self-Serving Attributional Bias

The tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to personality while ignoring situational causes

The Actor-Observer Difference

A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment:

Primacy Effects

Information presented first has an overly strong influence on later judgments

Recency Effects

Information presented last has an overly strong influence on later judgments

Framing Effects

The influence on judgment resulting from the way that information is presented

Spin Framing

Changing the way something is phrased/framed so that it looks more favorable or unfavorable

Temporal Framing

How actions and events are framed within a particular time perspective

Construal Level Theory

Psychologically distant actions are thought about abstractly, whereas close actions are thought about concretely

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it

Top-Down Processing

Theory Driven

Bottom-Up Processing

Data Driven

Intuition

Quick, automatic, based on associations, performs many operations simultaneously (in parallel)

Reason

Slower, more controlled, based on rules and deductions, performs one operation at a time (serial)

The Availability Heuristic

Judgments of frequency or probability made based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind

Fluency

The feeling of ease associated with processing information

The Representative Heuristic

The tendency to compare things or individuals to the prototypes of their category

Base-Rate Information

Info about relative frequency of events or members of different groups

Illusory Correlation

The belief that two variables are related when they’re not

evaluation

component of attitude. how much you like or dislike something

Affect

emotional reaction to attitude object

behavior

knowledge about interactions with an attitude object

cognition

thoughts about the attitude object

explicit method

self-report

likert scale. easy to write questions and administer. prone to social desirability bias. may not capture everything

implicit method

response latency - predictor of voting behavior

captures nonconscious attitudes. peoples imediate evaluative rxn they may or may not be aware of.

response time indicates attitude accessibility and is less prone to social desirability bias. difficult to administer.

other powerful determinants

power of the situation. time pressure overrides positive attitude. social norms against causing a scene overrides attitude. authority figure overrides negative attitudes of choking.

specific vs. general

behaviors are specific. when attitudes and behaviors are ont he same level of specificity, attitudes are better predictors of behavior.

introspection

the process of examining one's own thoughts and feelings, which can influence attitudes and behaviors, though it may lead to biases.

cognitive consistency theories

people are motivated to maintain consistency between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to reduce this sense of discomfort.

dissonance

inconsistency between thoughts, feelings, and actions creates an aversive state. we will change whatever is easiest in order to reduce dissonance and restore consistency. occurs after deciding between two+ alternatives. after undergoing a lot of effort. after being forced to engage in behavior. aversive physiological state that involves arousal. clear attitude

choice

attitude-discrepant behavior creates dissonance only when behavior is freely chose

insufficient justification

less incentive that someone ahs for performing counter-attitudinal bheavior, the more idssonance is experienced

negative consequence

we experience more dissonance whent he action leads to harm

forseeability

having participants write a counter-attitudinal letter only produces dissonance when told in advance it would be shown to someone

self-perception theory

we don’t experience dissonance and we don’t change our attitudes. people come to know their own attitudes by looking at their behavior and the context in which it occurred and inferring what their attitudes must be. merely observing behaviros and inferring attitudes. not clear attitude

embodied cognition

study of how thoughts are influenced by the body and physiological sensations

system justification theory

people are motivated to see the existing political and social status quo as desirable, fair, and legitimate

terror management theory

people deal witht he anxiety of death by striving for symbolic immortality and having children

peripheral heuristic process

unconscious, attractiveness, expertise, number and length of arguments, consensus

thought about a little

not personally relevant, tired

lowability and motivation, emotions, pictures

central process

conscious, argument quality, understandable, convincing

thought about a lot

data, knowledgeable, responsible

high ability and motivation, stats, numbers, logic

who

attractiveness, credibility, certainty

message

quality, vividness, fear, culture

whom

need for cognition, mood, age

halo effect

people you like are assumed to have other good qualities as well

sleeper effect

messages from unreliable sources tend to be rejected initially, but over time become accepted

new sleeper effect

weak messages from highly reliable sources tend to be rejected initially, but over time become accepted

message vividness

more vivid messages are more persuasive

identifiable victim effect

messages that focus on a single, vivid individual are more persuasive than fact-based messages

need for cognition

degree to which someone thinks deeply about things. high nfc people are persuaded by central cues. low nfc people are persuaded by peripheral

agenda control

topics that are covered frequently are thought to be prevalent

selective attention

people seek out and tune into information that supports their pre-existing attitudes. people avoide and tune out information that contradicts their pre-existing attitudes.

thought polarization

simply thinking about issue tends to produce more extreme, resistant attitudes

public commitment

telling other people about our likes/dislikes and intentions ‘binds’ us to those things

attitude inoculation

resisting small attack on our attitude makes us better able to resist larger attacks later on