UNIT 2 AOS1 - Social cognition chapter 6

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

How we perceive, think and use information to form judgements about ourselves or others in social situations

Question 2

What is person perception?

Answer 2

Mental processes used to form impressions and draw conclusions about personal characteristics of others.

Question 3

Person perceptions are ____of how people look and act.

Answer 3

first impressions, and can have a lasting impact on how we perceive and behave towards them.

Question 4

What are physical cues?

Answer 4

How someone looks and acts.

Question 5

How do physical cues impact person perception?

Answer 5

Person perception is based primarily on how someone looks and acts.

e.g attractive person is perceived as warm and kind

Question 6

How does attractiveness effect person perception?

Answer 6

If someone is attractive, more likely to perceive them as interesting, warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, etc.

Question 7

What is the halo effect?

Answer 7

A cognitive bias where the impression of one quality influences beliefs and expectations about other qualities.

Question 8

Reverse halo effect

Answer 8

Incorrect assumption that positive characteristic indicates presence of one or more negative characteristics

A pos. characteristic indicates negative ones.

Question 9

Horn effect

Answer 9

Negative characteristic indicates presense of one or more negative characteristics.

Neg.characteristic indicates more neg.

Question 10

How does body language impact person perception?

Answer 10

Can make often quick and accurate assumptions based on body language, e.g eye contact

Question 11

Define body language

Answer 11

Expression of behaviour enabling people to make quick, accurate judgements about others.

Question 12

Examples of body language

Answer 12

• eye contact
• tapping fingers showing impatience
• raising eyebrows in disbelief

shared understanding of what certain expressive behaviours mean.

Question 13

What is salience detection?

Answer 13

A characteristic that attracts attention

More noticable in context and therefore attracts attention.

Question 14

Examples of salience

Answer 14

A teacher with face tattoos vs most teachers.

Question 15

Social caterogisation

Define

Answer 15

the process of classifying people into different groups on the basis of common characteristics

Classification based on common characteristics.

Question 16

When does social categorisation normally occur?

Answer 16

Sometimes conciously, but mostly without concious awarerness.

Unconciously

Question 17

What is social categorisartion used for?

Answer 17

• Form impressions quickly using past experiences
• Learning through media and culture to guide new social interactions

Question 18

Ingroup and outgroups

Answer 18

Ingroup - any group you belong to or identify with
Outgroup - a group you do not belong or identify with.

Question 19

Attribution

Define

Answer 19

Process used to explain the cause of our or others behaviour.

Question 20

How do we explain the cause of a person;s behaviour?

Types of attribution

Answer 20

Internal and external attribution

Question 21

Internal attribution

Answer 21

Explanation of behaviour due to characteristics of person involved
e.g personality, ability, attitude, motivation, mood or effort.

Question 22

External attribution

Or situational

Answer 22

Explanation of behaviour due to factors of situation

Something to do with the situation

Question 23

What are the biases affecting attributions?

Answer 23

• Fundamental attribution error
• Actor-observer error
• Self-serving error

Question 24

Fundamental attribution error

Define

Answer 24

Tendency to overestimate influence of personal factors and underestimate impact of situational factors

Overestimate personal, underestimate situational

Attribute to internal rather than external factors.

Question 25

Why does fundamental attribution error occur?

Answer 25

Behaviour tends to be more visible (salient) than situation occuring, calledd salient bias.

Behaviour more noticeable than situation

Question 26

What is the just world belief?

Answer 26

Belief that world is a safe place and people generally get what they desierve.

Question 27

What does the just world belief achieve?

Answer 27

Allows us to undersand and feel safer in a world where we do not always have control over the situation and therefore can be exposed to twists in fate.

Question 28

What is actor-observer bias?

Answer 28

Judge/attribute own behaviour to situational causes, but other’s behaviour to internal factors.

e.g you failed the exam because the ‘test was too hard’ (external/situational) but your friend’s failure to internal factors, they did not study enough.

Question 29

What is self serving bias?

Answer 29

Tendency to take credit for positive evets (sucesses) and attribute failures to situational factors.

- Take credit for positive events, external factors for negative events

e.g you got an A+ because you are so smart (take credit for sucess, but you failed psycology because the teacher ‘doesn’t like’ you (attribute failures to situation.

Question 30

Why does self-serving bias occur?

Answer 30

Motivated by desire to protect self-esteem and dustance ourselves from failure.