Social Psychology

Social cognition

The cognitive capability to perceive, interpret, and remember information about themselves and others.

Automatic thinking

Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless

Schemas

Mental structures that organize knowledge and guide processing of information. It helps us fill in the gaps of our knowledge

Accessibility

Refers to the ease with which information can be retrieved from memory, influencing how we think and behave.

Chronically accessible

Information brought up due to past experiences

Accessible due to current goals

Information brought up due it being related to our current goal

Priming

Information that becomes easily retrievable in response to current situational factors or recent experiences.

Higgins, Rholes & Jones (1977)

Conducted a study demonstrating the effects of priming on social judgments, showing how previously activated concepts influence perceptions and evaluations.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

An experience or belief that can influence your behaviours, thus causing the belief to come true

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)

Conducted a study on self-fulfilling prophecies in a classroom setting, showing that teachers' expectations of students can significantly affect their academic performance.

Rosenthal and Jacobson (2003)

Expanded on their earlier work, further exploring the impact of teacher expectations on student outcomes and the broader implications for educational practices.

Automatic thinking and metaphors about the body and mind

Priming metaphors about that relationship between the mind and the body influence what we do and think

Landau, Meier & Keefer (2010)

Investigated how metaphorical language affects cognitive processes and behaviors, particularly in relation to the body-mind connection.

Judgmental heuristics

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

Availability heuristics

Cognitive shortcuts based on immediate examples that come to mind, influencing decision-making and judgments.

Tversky & Kahneman (1973)

Developed the concept of cognitive biases and heuristics, demonstrating how people rely on mental shortcuts in decision-making, often leading to systematic errors.

Representativeness heuristics

Mental shortcuts that involve judging the probability of an event based on how similar it is to a prototype, often leading to misjudgments.

Kahneman & Tversky (1974)

Expanded on cognitive biases, exploring how people's judgments are affected by framing and context, further illustrating decision-making errors.

Analytic thinking style

People focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context, this type of thinking is common in Western culture

Holistic thinking style

People focus on the overall context, particularly in the ways in which objects relate to each other. Commonly seen in Eastern countries (e.g. China, Japan and Korea)

Controlled thinking

The slow, sequential, rules-based mental process which requires effortful attention

Counterfactual thinking

Mentally changing some aspects of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

Planning fallacy

Tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past

Controlled thinking and free will

There’s a disconnect between our conscious sense of how much control we have on our actions. Sometimes we overestimate it and sometimes we underestimate it. The more free will we have, the more likely we are to engage in prosocial behaviours and avoid antisocial ones.

Confirmatory Hypothesis testing

Selectively seeking information that supports one’s beliefs

Snyder and Swann (1978)

Female participants were told that they would meet a person who was either introverted or extroverted. They were asked to prepare a set of questions for the person they were going to meet. The study showed that the participants wrote questions that were consistent with whom they were expecting to meet. They concluded that the questions asked confirmed participants" stereotypes of each personality type. 

The conjunction error

Belief that a combination of events is more likely to happen than only one event separately

The anchoring and adjustment heuristics

Selects a reference value and then revise estimate up or down to reach a conclusion

Social perception

The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

Nonverbal communication

Ways in which people intentionally or unintentionally communicate without words through facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body language, touch and gaze

Encode

To express or emit nonverbal behaviour e.g. smiling

Decode

To interpret the meaning of the nonverbal behaviour other people express

Affect blends

Facial expressions where one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers another

Display rules

Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviours are appropriate to display

Ekman’s theory

Paul Ekman theorized that some basic human emotions (happiness/enjoyment, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust and contempt) are innate and shared by everyone, and that they are accompanied across cultures by universal facial expressions

Physical cues

Appearance and behaviour are determinants of first impressions (e.g. baby-faced = warm, naiive, weak etc.)

Roles

People thinking of others based on their roles first and then later according to traits

Trait inference

Moves quickly from observable info to traits using implicit personality theories:

• Competence

• Interpersonal qualities

Categorization

We automatically perceive stimuli as part of a category (Leads to category-based social judgments; speeds processing time and leads to errors)

The continuum model of impression formulation (Dual processing)

Impressions form by:

• Category-based inference: Its easy and quick

• Individuated information: Use it when we’re motivated to be accurate, a person doesn’t fit our category or want to know a person better

Primacy effect

An individual's tendency to better remember the first piece of information they encounter than the information they receive later on.

Belief perseverance

When a person holds to a belief or set of beliefs even when confronted with contrary evidence

Thin-slicing

The process of making very quick inferences about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information

Attribution theory

How people explain the causes of behaviour

Heider (1958)

We develop attitudes based on what we observe. If we infer something based on a belief that it is due to that individual's characteristics, then this is an internal or dispositional attribution

Dispositional / Internal attributions

People infer that an event or a person's behaviour is due to personal factors such as traits, abilities, or feelings

Situational / External attributions

People infer that a person's behaviour is due to situational factors.

Attributional Bias

The tendency to explain a person's behaviour by referring to their character rather than any situational factor

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to attribute the behaviour of others to internal causes, while attributing our own behaviour to external causes.

Self-serving attribution bias

The tendency to attribute positive events to their character, but attribute negative results or events to external factors unrelated to themselves and their faults

Covariation Model

People make decisions or judgments about other people's behaviour based on the perception of three difference types of information (Consistency, Consensus, Distinctiveness)

Consistency

Whether things happened repeatedly in the same way

Consensus

Whether similar things happened to many other people

Distinctiveness

Whether things happened only in a specific situation

Internal attribution occurs:

• Consensus = Low

• Distinctiveness = Low

  • Consistency = High

External attribution occurs:

• Consensus = High

• Distinctiveness = High

• Consistency = High

Self-concept

The perception that we have of ourselves

Self-esteem

A positive or negative orientation toward oneself; an overall evaluation of one's worth or value. Determined by our achievements and accomplishments and by how we think others are judging us

Self-schema

Categories of knowledge that reflect how we expect ourselves to think, feel, and act in particular settings or situations

Possible selves

Ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming

Self-knowledge

The way we understand who we are and organize this information

Self-control

The ability to control behaviours to avoid temptations and achieve goals

Impression management

The act of controlling or influencing another person's perception

Symbolic interactionism

We learn about ourselves through others’ responses

Cooley (1902)

The human mind is social and mental. This means that the mental processes occurring in the human mind are the direct result of social interaction. Proposed three steps to how interactions with others form self-identity:

1. People imagine how they appear to other people

2. People imagine how others are, thus judging them based on appearance and how they present themselves

3. People imagine how others feel about them based on the judgments they make.

Looking glass self

We see ourselves the way other people see us

Shrauger and Schoeneman (1979)

We see ourselves they way we think others see us

Feedback

We receive direct feedback from others; Rejection or acceptance, success or failure

Self-perception theory

When our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behaviour and the situation in which it occurs

Bem (1972)

Individuals interpret their actions the same way they interpret others' actions and every individual's action is influenced by social surroundings and not influenced by one's free will

Social comparison theory

The belief that media influence, social status, and other forms of competitiveness can affect our self-esteem and mood.

Upward social comparison

Comparing ourselves with those who we believe are better than or superior to us. Leads us to focus on the desire to improve ourselves, our current status, or our level of ability.

Downward social comparison

Comparing ourselves to others who are worse off than us. Centred on making ourselves feel better about our abilities or traits.

Form implementation intentions

Specific plans about where, when, and how you will fulfil a goal and avoid temptations

Arrange environments

Removing temptations from sight

Ensure well-rested

Depletion effect (a phenomenon that initial exertion of self-control impairs subsequent self-control performance)

Ingratiation

Flattering, praising and generally trying to make ourselves likeable to another person, often of higher status

Self-handicapping

Creating obstacles and excuses for ourselves

Behavioural self-handicapping

People actively engage in behaviours that will undermine their performance e.g. procrastination

Reported self-handicapping

Providing an excuse prior to a task in anticipation of a failure

Festinger (1957)

We have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behaviour in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance)

Aronson (1969)

Dissonance is most powerful when people behave in ways that threaten their self-esteem

Greenberg et al (1997)

Self-esteem protects us against anxiety caused by thinking about morality

Change behaviour

Change in behaviour leads to a decrease in cognitive dissonance e.g. quit smoking because its unhealthy

Change cognition

Attempt to justify behaviour by changing one of the cognitions e.g. smoking isn’t really that unhealthy

Add new cognition

Justify behaviour by adding new cognitions e.g. decide that smoking reduces stress

Self-affirmation

Bolster the self-concept by adding a new cognition about a different, unrelated, positive attribute e.g. smoking is bad, but I am a great student

Steele (1988)

The overall goal of the self‐system is to protect an image of its self‐integrity, of its moral and adaptive adequacy. When this image of self‐integrity is threatened, people respond in such a way as to restore self‐worth.

Post-decision dissonance reduction

Enhancing the attractiveness of our choices and downplaying the negative aspects

Brehm (1956)

After making a difficult choice between two ideas, participants’ rating of their chosen alternative tended to rise and the rating of the rejected alternative tended to fall

Justification of effort

The tendency to increase liking for something that you have worked hard to attain

Aronson and Mills (1959)

The more effort an individual expends to become a member of the group (e.g., a severe initiation), the more they will become committed to the group in order to justify the effort put in during the initiation.

External justification of effort

A reason to explain efforts that resides outside the individual e.g. money

Internal justification of effort

The reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself e.g. change an attitude or behaviour

Festinger and Carlsmith (1958)

Students who were paid $20 rated the task as dull and boring. Students who were paid $1 rated the task as significantly enjoyable

Freedman (1965)

Children forbidden from playing with desirable toy:

• Severe punishment = Rate the toy desirable

• Mild punishment = Reduced rating of toy

Later on:

• Severe punishment: Played with the toy weeks later

• Mild punishment: Didn’t play with the toy weeks later

Justifying cruelty

Cruel behaviour is dissonant with view of self as a nice, decent human being

Davis and Jones (1960)

Participants were asked to tell a man that he was shallow, untrustworthy, and boring. After, participants convinced themselves that they didn’t like him and he deserved to be hurt

Self-evaluation maintenance theory

Dissonance is experienced when someone outperforms us in an area that’s central to our self-esteem. In order to reduce this we should become less close to the person, change our behaviour to outperform them or decide that that area doesn’t apply to them anymore