PSYC 137 - Exam 1

Social Cognition

Social Cognition

the study of how people make sense of other people and themselves. Focuses on how ordinary people think and feel about people and themselves

Phenomenology

to describe systematically how ordinary people say they experience their world 

Elemental tradition

viewing concepts as “elements” of a psychological periodic table, you can form bonds between “elements” much like chemistry equations
“breaks scientific problems down into pieces and analyzes the pieces in separate detail before combining them”

• focus on the expert’s ability to break the whole into pieces

Configural model

many factors combine to arrive at an impression of someone, factors adapt to the impression to maintain unity

• “hypothesizes that people form a unified overall impression of other people. The unifying forces shape individual elements to bring them in line with the overall impression. “

  • “The pressure toward unity changes the meaning of the individual elements to fit better in context”

  • People change the meaning of ambiguous words (ie: intelligent) but also manage to combine opposite traits with clear conclusions (ie: “someone brilliant and bumbling might be an absent-minded genius”)

  • “Perceivers’ mental activity results in an impression made up of traits and their relationships”

Algebraic Model

factors are additive, each factor is independent, and a survey of the factors helps a person arrive at an impression

• “takes each individual trait, evaluates it in isolation, and combines the evaluations into a summary evaluation

  • Combining the person's pros and cons to form an impression

The Holistic Approach

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

• Gestalt psychology:

  • Psyc that uses Gestalt principles “first describe the phenomenon of interest, the immediate experience of perception, without analysis” (aka: phenomenology)

    • “Focuses on systematically describing people’s experience of perceiving and thinking”

• Gesalts focus on people’s experience of dynamic wholes

Psychological field

an individual’s perception of the influence of the environment
In order to predict an outcome, we must know about all of a person’s _______ _______

• Person in the situation

• Cognition and motivation

Different “forces” act on a person and these “forces” dynamically contribute to the outcome

Consistency seeker

The needed to avoid or get rid of cognitive dissonance by justifying the inconsistencies between morals and behavior

Naïve scientist

Covariation model of attribution to determine source of another’s behavior

• Is the person's behavior due to the situation or their personality

Cognitive miser

Heuristics used to make decision

Motivated tactician

Dual-process models: moral judgments are the result of two competing processes: a fast, automatic, affect-driven process and a slow, deliberative, reason-based process.

Activated actor

Implicit associations: Associations that affect our choices and decisions are the result of both conscious and unconscious mental processes.

Automatic Processing

• Happens quickly

• More efficient

• Is unconscious/uncontrollable

  • e.g: priming

Priming

Setting a person up to respond more quickly or strongly to certain stimuli by exposing them to another related stimulus first

• Semantic: ____ words

  • works and is well researched

• Subliminal: recently controversial bc of applicability issues

Proceduralization (chronic accessibility)

the process of the practicing an effortful skill that eventually becomes automatic

• Can do something automatically because you’ve done it so many times (e.g: riding a bike)

Goal-Dependent Automaticity

Process of achieving a goal done without conscious thought about:

• How to accomplish the goal

• potential outcomes

Sometimes can be unconcious as well

• e.g: doing something out of habit

Goal-Inconsistent Automaticity

Automatic processing not in-line or counter to one’s goal

• doing something you really didn’t want to do but the action is automatic

Thought suppression

• tends to rebound

Rebound- thoughts come back strongly

Ruminations

What thought suppression aims to suppress

Repetitive, counter-productive, unintentional thoughts potentially regarding a goal

• Studied in social and clinical psychological research

  • stereotype threat → ___ over success and stereotype → does poorly

Controlled processing

Intent –

• making a choice among various options

• making the hard choice among various options

• paying attention to examples of thought or choice a person wants

Consciousness –

• thoughts, emotional experiences, body sensations that can compete with the external world

Stimulus Dependent (type of thought)

thought related to something in the environment

• paying attention to the stimulus around you

Stimulus Independent (type of thought)

thoughts unrelated to something in the environment

• e.g: daydreaming

Operant thought (type of thought)

instrumental or problem-solving thought

• e.g: how do I solve this problem?

Respondent thought (type of thought)

distractions, daydreaming, thoughts without real goals

• ______ thoughts are stimulus independent

Experience sampling (method for studying thoughts)

periodically prompting participants to report their current thought as they go about their day

• surveys, “people in the wild”

Random probes (method for studying thoughts)

similar to experience sampling but done in the lab while completing a task

• in a lab setting

Think aloud (method for studying thoughts)

having participants voice their thoughts as they read information

• participant reads or watches something and “reports their consciousness”

Naturalistic social cognition (Method for studying thoughts)

participants are unknowingly filmed interacting with someone, then, after consenting, watch the video and report what they were thinking

Role-play participation

imagine self in a scenario and report thoughts and reactions

Belonging (motivations)

a need for a group

Understanding (motivations)

sharing beliefs or believing to share beliefs with one’s group

• we have a lot of automatic thoughts about this → we assume people think like us

Controlling (motivations)

attempting to influence outcomes that are dependent on others

• when someone has power they think less about the people around them in comparison to those without power

Self-enhancement (motivations)

Want to see oneself positively
desire to maintain or increase one’s positive views of oneself, to make oneself feel good

Trust (motivations)

having positive feelings toward a group or individual and confidence in the decisions they make for the group

• breaking of trust → hard to build back up

Person perception (dual-mode processing uses)

impressions of another person

Self perception (dual-mode processing uses)

impressions of oneself

Attributions (dual-mode processing uses)

cause of behavior

Inferences (dual-mode processing uses)

guesses or conclusions as to why something happened

Attitudes (dual-mode processing uses)

feelings, affect

Attention

Focus and effort of focus (conscious)

• can be in relation to external or internal stimuli

• Helps in encoding, but not necessary for encoding

Encoding

Forming memories

• Mentally representing external stimuli

• First step in processing stimuli to interpret and form memories

• Information that is being encoded is altered, sometimes discarded, misperceived, combined with inferences before becoming memory

  • may cause false memories

Processing faces

People are sensitive to others’ gaze

▪ Another’s gaze can be a guide to focus one’s attention

▪ People pay the most attention to the eyes of other humans (Quadflieg et al., 2004; Simpson et al., 2020)

Facial perception is a complex neurological process

▪ The process is global and gestalt

▪ When the focus on a person’s uniqueness, the process

is most global, right hemisphere (Mason & Macrae, 2004)

▪ When categorizing people (ex. by gender, race) the process is focused on salient cues (ex. hair, skin color), left hemisphere (Mason & Macrae, 2004)

• Facial features have been found to relate to specific traits

• Facial expression can make faces more memorable

• People infer traits from a face

Salience

Being notably different from the environment around a person or object, standing out

Can be due to:

• Physical features of the stimuli are notable

• Location

• How much time is given to the stimuli

• Stimuli that counter prior knowledge

• The ability of the stimuli to help one achieve a goal

Extremely positive or negative stimuli are more ____

• Often people find negative stimuli more ____ than positive stimuli

Can lead to perceptions of causality

Can lead to more extreme evaluations

Needs context to work

Vividness

Inherently emotionally interesting

• inherently image-provoking

• proximate

Does not improve memory or persuasion

• can inhibit persuasion

Is entertaining/get one’s attention

• there is no comparison component (does not need context)

Accessibility

How easily information is retrieved

• because of recency

• because of frequency

Priming can facilitate _____

Short-term Memory

Information that can be easily recalled

▪ Limited capacity for information

▪ is currently called working memory

Long-term Memory

Information that can be remembered indefinitely

▪ May be difficult to bring information from long-term

memory to mind

Intermediate Memory

Blurry line between short- and long-term memory

▪ It is not always possible to classify information as coming from short-term or long-term memory

Associative Network Model

Memory starts with a point of activation (Node)

▪ Spreads to other nodes associated with that memory

▪ More associations the more enhanced the memory

becomes

▪ The nodes and links are remembered together

▪ The more links and nodes the more paths to the

memory – retrieval routes

Person Memory Models

Person memory (Hastie, 1998)

▪ Extra attention given to impression-inconsistent stimuli - Pay more attention when something feels off

▪ Extra attention results inconsistency advantage

▪ When making links, information is held in shortterm memory

▪ The information gathered results in an impression of a person

Person memory (Srull & Wyer, 1989)

▪ Inconsistent information → stronger impressions

▪ Minimum number of inconsistent behaviors required to be noticed

▪ Primacy effect

▪ A mix of inco nsistent and consistent stimuli makes less likely that an impression will change

▪ Distractions when receiving inconsistent information will also interfere

Inconsistency Advantage Absence

• Forming impressions of multiple traits

• Multitasking

• Experiencing big cognitive load/ selective memory

• Making a complex judgement

• Expectancies are well-established

• Forming impressions of groups

Twofold Retrieval by Associative Pathways (TRAP) Model

Similar to the dual mode models of cognition

▪ Effortful recall favors inconsistent information

▪ Frequency recall favors consistent information - easier to remember when something is consistent

Associated Systems Theory

Maintains 4 systems eventually intertwine to form abstract impressions:

▪ Visual System

▪ Verbal/semantic System

▪ Affective System

▪ Action System

Procedural Memory

Memory of how to do something

▪ More automatic recall

▪ Involves condition/action pairs

▪ Together, these pairs form productions

▪ Implicit associations can be considered procedural

Declarative Memory

Memory of concepts

▪ Includes episodic and semantic memories

▪ Recall speed is a function of general usefulness and

current relevancy

▪ More commonly used in social cognitive research

ParaIlel Models

activating many memory pathways at once

Serial Models

procedural process of encoding, retrieval, and response

Parallel Distributed Processing Model

Memory is stored in patterns

▪ Links are important

▪ Constraint satisfaction model – considers all stimuli and existing knowledge to form impressions

▪ Connectionist models – focuses on the strength of links

→ Some links may be stronger than others due to sentimental meaning or repetition

Embodied Memory

▪ Perceptual symbols – encoded external and internal experiences

▪ External experiences includes environmental stimuli (ex. color, heat)

▪ Internal experiences include how a person feels in their body (ex. hot, tired, etc.) and introspection

▪ Symbols organize to form simulations

▪ Frames are existing schemas that simulations are built on

Social Categories

Socially constructed ways people are categorized

• Category definitions and boundaries change over time

  • Ex: race differs between how the US sees it vs Europe

  • Examples of non-social categories: people who like reading

• These definitions can benefit and disadvantage different groups of people

  • People view certain groups as “less” to feel more powerful

• Every person has multiple category memberships, between and within categories

Essentialism

Lay theory used to think about categories of natural kinds, including social categories

• Lay theory: A collection of lay people’s knowledge, explanations, and attitudes toward a particular idea”; implicit theories

• This theory is not an accurate

• A category has an inherent essence resulting in beliefs about categories and identities within them

Endorsement of _______ beliefs can vary by:

• Age

• Culture

• Social category

• Relates to prejudice

Prototype (social categories)

an abstract representation of the average traits of a group member

Exemplar (social categories)

real group members that are perceived to represent the group, can have several ___________ as examples of a group

Self-perceptions (social self)

self-knowledge, how a person thinks about themselves

Self-schemas (social self)

Beliefs a person has about themselves in general and in specific situations based on past experiences

• Influenced by others and environment

• Can be inaccurate, in ways that are self-serving or not

Reflected self-appraisals (social self)

evaluated oneself based on how the individual thinks others perceive them

• perception of yourself based on what you think others think of you

Working self-concept (social self)

evaluating oneself in a particular situation

• One’s self-concept can vary by situation

The 3 Selves

Individual – The concept of self related to one’s specific traits

Relational – The concept of self activated by significant others

• Transference – the activation of the mental representation of self related to the significant others

Collective – The concept of self activated by group membership

Social Identity Complexity

Everyone has multiple identities

• Some identities overlap

• Some identities are orthogonal

  • the two systems do not interact or influence each other

Intersectional (identity representation)

• Think of a Venn diagram

• Only the center circle counts

  • e.g: Christian White women (3 identities, but must have all 3)

Dominant (identity representation)

• The identity you view to be the most prominent

• e.g: Some Women who see themselves as mothers first

Compartmentalized (identity representation)

• Identity changes based on context 

• e.g: Accountant at work, father at home

Merger (identity representation)

• Back to the Venn diagram - includes ALL circles

• e.g: I hang out with queer people; some may be trans men, some may be bi, etc.

Social comparison theory

People compare themselves to others

• People chose to compare themselves to others who are similar to them

• Affects self-esteem – the overall positive or negative perception one has of themselves

• Can lead to competitiveness

In certain social contexts like the workplace, external social comparison may

• Affect perceptions of fairness

• Encourage zero-sum thinking

• Affect wellbeing

Upward comparisons (Social comparison theory)

comparing oneself to a person who is perceived as better

• usually results in low self-esteem

Downward comparisons (Social comparison theory)

comparing oneself to a person who is perceived as not as good

• usually results in high self-esteem

Contingencies of self-worth (self-evaluations)

theory that self-esteem is based on the successes and failures one has in the domains most important to them

Sociometer hypothesis (self-evaluations)

theory that self-esteem is based on one’s beliefs about how others appraise them measured if one is included or excluded by others

• Orth et al., 2018: level of self-esteem increases the most from about 15-30, and stays somewhat the same from then on.

Better-than-average effect (self-enhancement)

the belief that one is better than most on traits or in respect to abilities

Self-affirmation theory (self-enhancement)

after a threat to self-worth, a person focuses on the traits or skills they value about themselves unrelated to the threat

• Doesn’t have to be related to the task (ex: “I failed this test, but I helped my mom with dinner this whole week”

Self-verification theory (self-evaluate)

because one wants a consistent, predictable and coherent view of oneself, they strive for stable and subjectively accurate beliefs about themselves

Self Evaluation Theory

• We concern ourselves more with behavior of close other (ex. friends, family, coworkers) as opposed to distant others (ex. famous people, the president)

• Our emotional response to the behavior of close others is determined by how much the behavior relates to us

  • If the person is close to us but better at the behavior than you (and its “your thing”), we feel jealous. But if we aren’t good at it, we feel proud of them

Terror Management Theory

We are motivated by the fear of death, people don’t want to die and want to leave legacy behind when they do die

• Fear of death motivates individual behaviors and ‘cultural worldview’

• Cultural worldview relates to self-esteem by considering how much a person contributes to their society and are important members of that society

Theory posits that if mortality to made silent, then people:

• Endorse their worldviews more

• Are more willing to support violence to protect their worldview

Recent studies do not find support for the theory

Self-regulation

Changing or controlling behavior to achieve a goal

Self-discrepancy theory

a person has 3 selves

• Actual self – the self one believes they are

• Ideal self – the self a person wants to be

• Ought self – the self concerned with obligations and demands

  • The ideal and ought self motivate a person to self-regulate

  • When these selves are at odds a person may feel agitated, anxious, and guilt

Promotion focus (self-regulation)

regulating behavior to achieve ideal self-goals

• Focus on positive outcomes

• Usually involved with ideal self

Prevention focus (self-regulation)

regulating behavior to achieve the ought self-goals

• Focus on avoiding negative outcomes

• Usually involved with ought self

  • Ex: having to be a good daughter & go home to do chores

Behavior Activation System

Motivated to achieve goals

• Give full effort when achieving a goal

• When good things are happening, people are more likely to be in this state

Behavior Inhibition System

Motivated to avoid issues

• Spend time worrying, trying to avoid unpleasantness

• When bad things are happening, people more likely to be in this state

Self-focus

Regulation depends on self-attention

• Cybernetic Theory of Self-Regulation

  • A feedback process to monitor how closely one is to achieving a standard

  • A person determines whether or not they achieve the standard, and then attempts to either change their behavior or give up

Self-conscious emotions (self-control)

long-term perspective; emotions concerned with perceptions of the person by others or that person

• Can relate to pride/embarrassment

Hedonic emotions (self-control)

 short-term perspective, emotions concerned with immediate pleasure 

• Can relate to fun or disappointment

Self Projection

Assumptions that our traits, preferences, problems, activities, emotions, and attitudes are commonly held

• Can happen even when:

  • There is time to think

  • A person receives accuracy feedback about assumptions

  • When they have relevant info about others

Self-presentation

representing oneself as the person they want people to believe they are

Self-monitoring (self-presentation)

monitoring one's behavior and adapting it to fit the situation

Self-handicapping (self-presentation)

engaging in self-destructive behavior to save face in public

• Ex: getting drunk the night before an exam, so you can blame being hungover when you fail

Humblebrag (self-presentation)

complimenting oneself but masking it with: 

• Humility

• Complaint

Studies show:

• When people want:

  • Sympathy, they complain

  • To impress, they brag

  • Sympathy and to impress! They _______

• _________ results in people thinking the __________ is less likable and less competent than a person who just brags by hedging the brag

  • People believe that __________ helps garner sympathy and impress the listener

• ________ does not result in more likeability and competence than bragging 

  • Listeners perceive the __________ to be less sincere

  • Listeners are usually our friends 

Casual Attributions

cause and effect

• Disposition - due to how the person is

• Situation - due to the situation the person is in

Can be done with automatic or controlled processing

Cause and effect (Principles of Causation)

“Something HAD to make that happen”

Temporal contiguity (Principles of Causation)

Considering when it happened

• Ex: spill on kitchen floor, and Joey was just in kitchen, and spill wasn’t there before Joey was in there, so Joey did it

Spatial contiguity (Principles of Causation)

Considering where it happened (sometimes when too)