Reading Week 1

What do the “Mark at a party” and “traffic incident” examples illustrate?

We constantly form impressions and “remember” events in real life, but those impressions/memories are shaped by cognitive processing—not recorded like a camera.

Why can two people leave the same party with different impressions of “Mark”?

They attended to different cues, interpreted them differently, and stored different summaries/inferences in memory.

Why can two witnesses describe the same traffic event differently?

Attention limits + missing info + interpretation + memory reconstruction → different stored representations and retrieval.

What’s the core claim of social cognition about “recording” reality?

Information isn’t stored verbatim; it’s selectively encoded, elaborated, interpreted, and reconstructed.

What does it mean that the perceiver is an “active processor”?

You select some info, integrate it with prior knowledge, draw inferences, and use it to guide judgments/behavior.

Name the main stages highlighted in the reading.

Attention/encoding → elaboration (interpretation/inference/attribution/evaluation) → representation in memory → retrieval → response (judgments/behaviors).

Why is attention described as a “gatekeeping function”?

The social world contains more information than we can process—attention decides what gets encoded and what gets ignored.

What’s the “good news” about selective attention?

It helps us focus on what’s most relevant in complex environments.

What’s the “bad news” about selective attention?

Ignored info often isn’t encoded—so it can’t influence later memory/judgment.

Party example: what does “peripheral” vs “center of attention” show about encoding?

You may encode some traits (e.g., reserved) while missing other possibilities because you didn’t attend to them.

Traffic example: how can attention shape “fault” judgments?

If you focus on “the car didn’t fully stop,” you may miss other relevant details and store a biased snapshot.

What is “elaboration” in social cognition?

The mind adds meaning to encoded information rather than just storing it.

What is interpretation?

Deciding what observed behavior means (often multiple meanings are possible).

What are inferences?

Conclusions that go beyond what was directly observed (filling in gaps).

Example: “Mark isn’t the life of the party” → what inference might you draw?

A trait inference like “reserved,” even if other explanations exist.

Example: “Honda didn’t fully stop” → what inference might you draw?

“Driver is at fault,” even if you didn’t encode other critical details.

What is attribution?

Explaining the causes of someone’s behavior (why they did it).

Why is attribution important for social cognition?

Causes you assign shape blame/praise, future expectations, and how you treat people.

Give an attribution contrast using the traffic scenario.

“He’s careless” (dispositional) vs “he couldn’t see the cyclist” (situational/info-limited).

What is evaluation in social perception?

Adding a positive/negative judgment (liking/disliking; good/bad; appropriate/inappropriate).

Why does evaluation matter?

It affects decisions and behavior (who you trust, avoid, support, punish).

What are two broad approaches to how experiences are stored?

Exemplar-based (specific episodes) vs abstraction-based (schemas/prototypes/general concepts).

Exemplar-based memory: what is stored?

Specific past experiences that can be retrieved later.

Abstraction-based memory: what is stored?

More general structures (schemas/prototypes) summarizing patterns across experiences.

Why do schemas exist (in this framework)?

They organize knowledge so we can quickly interpret new situations without starting from scratch.

How do current goals affect retrieval?

Goals guide what you search for and which details feel relevant to “remember.”

What is accessibility in memory retrieval?

How easily a concept/memory comes to mind at that moment.

Why can the same person seem “different” across time in your memory?

Different aspects become accessible at different times, changing the retrieved impression.

What’s the link between retrieval and response?

Your judgment/behavior is based on the retrieved mental representation, not the full original input.

What are “cognitive structures” in social cognition?

Organized packages of stored knowledge (schemas, beliefs, expectations) that guide processing.

What are implicit personality theories?

Beliefs about which traits go together (used to infer personalities from limited info).

Stereotypes

are cognitive structures about groups that can guide interpretation and evaluation.

How are cognitive structures adaptive?

They help interpret the present efficiently and anticipate the future (what might happen next).

How can cognitive structures become maladaptive?

They can be over-applied to new contexts, causing biased judgments and errors.

How can expectations “maintain the status quo”?

They bias attention/interpretation toward what confirms the expectation (self-reinforcing processing).

What is priming?

Recent exposure activates a cognitive structure, making it more likely to shape current processing.

how could priming affect person perception?

Seeing a portrayal can activate a stereotype, which then guides interpretation of an ambiguous target.

What is chronic accessibility?

Some concepts are frequently/strongly accessible for a person due to repeated past activation.

What increases chronic accessibility?

Frequency and recency of activation (and a person’s repeated experiences with that concept).