Social cognition and thinking Flashcards
For all of these need to work through Tessa's worksheets too
How did Allport define social psychology?
Scientific investigation of how thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by actual, imagined or implied presence (entirely constructed, social convention based on assumptions of implied people stopping us from condemnable behaviours) of others
What are social cognitions?
A stimulus can draw to mind an image (perception or recall from memory) - individuals within the same social groups will generate similar social cognitions to each other
Social cognition can be thought of as the mediator between the real world and our interactions with it - not entirely synonymous with thinking which is a conscious process, and this is more subconscious and automatic (which explains why errors and biases are so rife!)
What is the interesting thing about social cognitions?
Our input is so small e.g. simply the word lecturer, yet the additional info we infer from this is vast and holistic e.g. we could come up with features such as wearing and glasses and not going to parties
None such details are explicitly stated but we include them in our impression formation - how and why does this happen?
What is the social cognition approach within psychology?
Approach focusing on how cognition is affected by immediate and wider social contexts, and also how cognition affects our social behaviour
What was Asch’s approach to explaining impression formation?
Configural model - participants shown one of 4 possible lists of personality traits, each of which had one focal word changed; demonstrated that these lists would be used to infer other things about people, e.g. how generous or wise they were
What are central and peripheral traits according to Asch?
Central traits have a bigger influence on impression formation than peripheral traits, leading to stronger inferences of additional traits and stronger influence on how we INTEGRATE our sources of info (responsible for the “integrated configuration of the impression”)
e.g. warm and cold are central traits, while polite/blunt are peripheral - significantly greater proportion of people assumed someone was generous when warm was in list than when polite was in list
What was a more recent adaptation of Asch’s seminal study, which did lack ecological validity due to being lab based?
Kelly’s study in which participants actually received a lecture from an individual
Prior to lecture, guest lecturer was introduced using lists of words similar to those in the original study
When lecturer was, for example, described as cold, students didn’t interact with them as much and had more negative overall impressions after the lecture than when warmth included
What do Asch’s and Kelly’s studies suggest?
Support gestalt view that impressions are formed as integrated wholes based on central cues
How do we decide that a trait is central?
Gestalt theorists suggest that centrality rests on intrinsic degree of correlation with other traits
Others have argued that centrality is a function of context - in Asch’s study, warm and cold were central because distinct from other trait dimensions and semantically linked to response dimensions –> people tend to employ two main and distinct dimensions for evaluating others: good/bad social and good/bad intellectual - warm/cold is good/bad social, and so are the traits used to evaluate the impression e.g. generous, wise etc
Other cue traits e.g. intelligent, skilled etc in list are good/bad intellectual
What is the Cognitive Consistency Approach to explaining social cognition and impression formation?
After WW2 much research was done into attitude change, and theories all shared assumption that people strive for cognitive consistency i.e. motivated to reduce any perceived discrepancies between cognitions because discrepancies are aversive
This theory lost momentum when further research indicated we are actually quite tolerant of inconsistencies
What is the naïve scientist idea?
All of us act in the capacity of a naïve scientist when forming impressions, using scientific analyses to understand the world and needing to attribute causes to behaviours; assumes we are rational in doing this.
Any errors we see are caused by limited/incorrect information available to us and to motivational considerations such as self-interest
This model underpins attribution theories
What is the cognitive miser perspective?
We don’t have an infinite processing capacity, so we have to make cognitive SHORT-CUTS to help us in understanding the world
Errors are not deliberate/motivated departures from scientific processing, but rather are intrinsic to social thinking and the need to make short-cuts; short-cuts mean we don’t process everything in detail and thus we make errors
MOTIVATION ABSENT FROM THIS APPROACH
What is meant by “motivated tactitians”?
This theory suggests that motivation is actually important - many cognitive strategies are available to us and the ones we use are motivated by our needs and goals at the time
Sometimes choices will be wise, in the interest of adaptability and accuracy, and sometimes they will be more defensive and in the interests of speed/self-esteem
What do all 5 approaches to impression formation have in common?
The same core idea that we have the capacity to form complex theories on the basis of very little information
What is confirmatory bias?
Once we form a “theory”/impression, we can test it but confirmatory bias occurs during the non-scientific testing wherein we aren’t actually looking to disprove anything but rather we are looking for evidence to SUPPORT the impression we have formed
What is implicit personality theorem?
Describes way in which traits are clustered in our minds such that one can allow inference of the others
e.g. goodness traits are clustered so one good trait leads to others, assume they are a fundamentally good person
Resistant to change and can be idiosyncratically based on personal experiences
Similar to personal constructs, with additional feature of explaining behaviour of others as well as simply characterising them
What has been found regarding primacy effects in impression formation?
When positive traits are at start of list, they disproportionately influence final impressions –> more likely to form a positive first impression
Supports idea that “first impressions count” - first traits unduly influence impressions formed, biasing way we process subsequent info
Does this early info act like central cues, or do we simply pay more attention to it?
When do we see a recency effect?
Recent information can influence when it is salient e.g. we see a group of people but only notice peripheral details, don’t take any significant notice. If one person becomes salient e.g. becomes partner for project, any first impressions will be insignificant and impression will form on basis of context of new saliency
What did Fiske suggest about positive and negative features?
Reflex to think favourably of others unless proven otherwise, so when we learn anything negative this info is more notable and memorable, subsequently disproportionately influencing impression formation i.e. we are biased towards negativity
Negative impressions are very hard to shift once formed and require considerably greater record of positive impressions to counteract them
What are personal constructs?
Idiosyncratic and personal ways of characterising others, formed over time, intrinsic to our identity and very difficult to change
Impressions of the same individual will vary between individuals depending on the constructs that are relevant to us e.g. one person may form an impression of a person on the basis of how fun they are, while someone else may form their impression on the basis of generosity
These are linked to implicit personality theories we form, general principles determining the types of characteristics that might go together to form certain types of personality
What is probably one of the most influential sources of bias when it comes to forming impressions?
Physical appearance - one of the first things you notice about a person before you find anything out about their personality
Strongly linked to primacy effect and implicit personality theorem - attractive people elicit more positive first impressions and from this other positive qualities will be inferred (more attractive, more positive the inferences made) - this is the HALO EFFECT, and it works particularly well for men in the workplace (not women so much)
What is stereotyping?
When we meet people we automatically assign them to a particular group and form an impression consistent with that pre-set stereotype - widely shared assumptions about personalities and behaviours based on group membership, one of the most salient characteristics when meeting someone e.g. an old person
It is difficult to incorporate stereotype-inconsistent information once impression formed, so any of that info may get ignored or distorted
What is meant by social judgeability?
We form impressions of people to help us make judgements about them, but this impression-to-judgement formation is unlikely when someone is deemed not to be socially judgeable in a given context i.e. if it is deemed to be politically incorrect
If a target is judgeable, judgements are more polarised and confident
What are the key factors influencing social cognition and impression formation?
Large influence from stereotyping, context, timing (primacy/recency) and physical appearance
Other influence from previous experiences, culture, personal values and priming
What is cognitive algebra?
An approach to study of impression formation that focuses on how people combine attributes that have valence (positive and negative) into an overall impression
What does impression formation involve?
Integrating sequential pieces of information about a person i.e. traits presented over time –> formation of complete image
Image is EVALUATIVE and so are the pieces of info themselves (rather than simply descriptive)
What are the 3 principle methods of cognitive algebra?
Summation
Averaging
Weighted averaging
What is meant by summation?
A method of forming positive or negative impressions by summing the valence of all constituent attributes i.e. overall impression is cumulative sum of each piece of info
Relies on imagining traits being associated with mental rating scales e.g. someone could fall as +3 on boring and +5 on fun
To present the best first impression it is advisable to present as many positive attributes as possible so cumulative total as high as possible
What is averaging?
Method of forming positive/negative impressions by averaging valence of all constituent attributes - to project a favourable image you should only present your single best asset, as additional positives actually reduce the cumulative average (dividing by a larger number)
