Social Cognition Flashcards

Flashcards to review vocabulary from social cognition lecture.

Social Cognition

How individuals perceive, think about, and use information to understand and make judgements about themselves and others in social situations.

Person Perception

The mental processes we use to form impressions and draw conclusions about the personal characteristics of other people.

Schema

A concept or idea that helps us to organise information and interpret information, but can also lead to biases and stereotyping.

Halo Effect

A cognitive bias in which the impression we form about one quality of a person influences our beliefs and expectations about the person in other qualities.

Non-verbal communication

Communicating inner aspects of ourselves through facial expressions, eye gaze, posture, gestures and other bodily movements - commonly called body language.

Salient Characteristics

Characteristics that are different stand out and grab our attention, influencing our perception of people and the world.

Social Categorisation

Classifying each other into different groups on the basis of common characteristics. Gender, age and race are the most common social categories

Attribution

The process by which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behaviour.

Situational Attribution

Explaining peoples behaviour in terms of the situation they are/were in, also known as an external or environmental attribution.

Personal Attribution

Explaining peoples behaviour in terms of their personal qualities, also known as an internal or dispositional attribution.

Attitude

An evaluation a person makes about an object, person, group, event or issue that is: Learned or acquired, Evaluative, Directed towards something, and Relatively long-lasting.

Affective Component

The emotional reactions or feelings an individual has towards an object, person, group, event or issue.

Behavioural Component

The way in which an attitude is expressed through our actions (or how we might behave should the opportunity arise).

Cognitive Component

The beliefs we have about an object, person, group, event or issue.

Cognitive Dissonance

A situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors, producing a feeling of mental discomfort.

Cognitive Bias

A subconscious error in thinking that leads you to misinterpret information from the world around you and is a 'systematic error'.

Stereotype

A collection of beliefs that we have about the people who belong to a certain group, regardless of individual differences among members of that group.

Heuristics

Strategies for solving a problem or making a decision that is based on experience with similar types of problems but cannot guarantee a correct outcome.

Prejudice

Holding a negative attitude towards the members of a group, based solely on their membership of that group.

Old Fashioned Prejudice

A form of prejudice in which members of the majority group openly reject minority group members and their views towards the minority group are obvious and recognisable to others.

Modern Prejudice

A form of prejudice which is more subtle, hidden and expressed in ways more likely to be accepted within the majority group.

Explicit prejudice

Prejudice that is consciously held and usually deliberately thought about.

Implicit Prejudice

Prejudice that is typically unconsciously held; that is, the person holding such prejudice is not usually aware that they do so.

Discrimination

Positive or negative behaviour that is directed towards a social group and its members.

Direct Discrimination

When someone is treated unfavourably because of a personal characteristic protected by the law.

Indirect Discrimination

When there is an unreasonable requirement, condition or practice that disadvantages a person, or a group of people, because of a personal characteristic.

Intergroup contact

Involves increasing direct contact between two groups who are prejudiced against each other.

Contact hypothesis

Proposes that certain types of direct contact between members of different groups can reduce prejudice.

Mutual Interdependence

Two rival groups who dislike and are prejudiced against each other are placed in a contact situation in which they are dependent on each other- there is a greater likelihood that the rivalry and negative stereotypes can be broken down.

Superordinate Goal

A goal that cannot be achieved by any one group alone and overrides other existing goals which each group might have

Equality of Status

For contact between two groups to reduce prejudice between the groups, then the groups must have equal status in the contact situation.

Cognitive intervention

Involves changing the way in which someone thinks about prejudice.