UIUC PSYC 201 Quiz 2

What is social cognition?

The encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of information in the brain related to members of the same species.

What are the five aspects of social cognition?

1. Quality of information affects judgments. 2. Presentation order can influence judgments. 3. Biased information seeking distorts conclusions. 4. Pre-existing knowledge influences new information interpretation. 5. Reason and intuition systems underlie social cognition.

What is a snap judgment?

A quick inference made about someone's motives and personality based on minimal information.

What are the two prominent dimensions in social judgments?

1. Trustworthiness (positive-negative). 2. Dominance (power).

What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

A situation where expectations about a person influence behavior towards them, causing the expectation to come true.

What is bias in social cognition?

A systematic tendency to favor or oppose an idea, belief, or thing.

What is pluralistic ignorance?

A misperception of a group norm where most group members privately believe one thing but publicly express another.

What are order effects in social cognition?

The influence of the order in which information is presented on later judgments, including primary and recency effects.

What is framing in social cognition?

The way information is presented, which can affect how it is processed and understood.

What is confirmation bias?

The tendency to search for evidence that supports a proposition, leading to false beliefs and selective memory.

What is top-down processing?

Interpreting new data based on pre-existing knowledge and expectations (schemas).

What is bottom-up processing?

Building judgments based on the stimuli encountered, without pre-existing expectations.

What are schemas in social cognition?

Mental concepts or shortcuts that inform expectations about experiences and situations.

How do schemas influence attention?

Schemas direct attention to important stimuli, allowing us to ignore irrelevant information.

How do schemas affect memory?

We are more likely to remember schema-consistent information than inconsistent information.

What is construal in social cognition?

The interpretation of information influenced by existing schemas.

How do schemas affect the encoding of information?

Schemas influence how information is stored in memory.

How do schemas affect the retrieval of information?

Schemas influence how information is extracted from memory.

What is the relationship between facial appearance and self-reports of personality?

There is a relationship between facial appearance and self-reports, but not with behavioral observations.

What is the significance of temporal framing?

It refers to how actions and events are understood within a specific time perspective.

What is spin framing?

Changing the phrasing of information to make it appear more favorable or unfavorable.

What is the role of intuition in social cognition?

Intuition is quick and automatic, based on associations and operates in parallel.

What is the difference between reasoning and intuition in decision-making?

Reasoning is slower, controlled, and based on rules and deductions, while intuition is faster and operates automatically.

What are heuristics?

Intuitive mental operations that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgment, necessary for survival but can lead to errors and biases.

What is the Availability Heuristic?

A process where judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind, often leading to overestimations of dramatic events.

What is fluency in the context of information processing?

The feeling of ease associated with processing information.

What does Attribution Theory explain?

It explains how people assign causes to events and the effects of their causal assessments.

What are the three dimensions of Explanatory Styles?

Internal/External, Stable/Unstable, Global/Specific.

How does controllability affect attributions?

If an outcome is seen as controllable, individuals are more likely to be hopeful and try harder; if uncontrollable, they may give up.

What is Casual Attribution?

The process of linking an event to a cause, inferring that a personality trait is responsible for a behavior.

What is the Covariation Principle?

The idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior.

What are the three types of covariation information?

Consensus, Distinctiveness, and Consistency.

What does high consensus indicate in attribution?

It suggests that most people would behave the same way in a situation, indicating behavior is driven by the situation.

What does high distinctiveness indicate in attribution?

It suggests that a behavior is unique to a particular situation, indicating behavior is driven by the situation.

What does high consistency indicate in attribution?

It suggests that a person behaves the same way in a given situation on different occasions, necessary for making specific attributions.

What is the Discounting Principle?

People assign reduced weight to a cause of behavior if other plausible causes exist.

What is the Augmentation Principle?

People assign greater weight to a cause of behavior if other causes normally produce different outcomes.

What are counterfactual thoughts?

Thoughts of what might have happened if something had been done differently, often leading to regret.

What is emotional amplification?

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

What is self-serving attributional bias?

The tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes to maintain a positive self-image.

What is the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)?

The tendency to attribute a person's behavior to their personality while ignoring situational causes.

What is the Actor-Observer Difference?

The difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment; actors are more likely to make situational attributions.

How do individualistic cultures differ from collectivistic cultures in attribution?

Individualistic cultures focus on personal attributes and dispositional attributions, while collectivistic cultures emphasize social roles and situational attributions.

What is the impact of social class on attribution?

Higher socioeconomic status often leads to more independent attributions, while lower status fosters interdependence and situational attributions.

What is explanatory style?

A person's habitual way of explaining events, which can be pessimistic (internal) or optimistic (external).