What is a schema?
The term schema denotes a well organised structure of cognition about some social entity e.g. Person schemas: based on the personality traits of others e.g. your mother, Donald Trump etc.
e. g. Self-schemas: tend to be far more complex than person schemas
e. g. Group schemas (stereotypes)
e. g. Role schemas: paramedic, nurse, lawyer
e. g. Event schemas: first date, wedding
What is categorisation?
- Our tendency to perceive stimuli as members or groups or classes rather than isolated, unique entities
- The application of categorisation combined with schemas allows us to be more efficient with the way we process information
What are some advantages and disadvantages of schemas?
Advantages:
- Help us efficiently process information about the world
- Helps us remember information (we tend to remember information about schemas we already have)
- It can help us make judgements in social situations e.g. react appropriately in a social interaction even if sufficient information is not available
Disadvantages:
- Over relied upon; we accept information related to schemas too readily thus making stereotypes challenging to overcome
What is the flexible social theory?
- When the stakes are high, people use more sophisticated strategies and make more accurate judgements, than when stakes are low
e. g. we are more motivated when interacting with a new colleague than with a stranger so we will use more sophisticated strategies e.g. not rely on person schemas
What is controlled processing?
- thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary and effortful
- counteracts automacy
- controlled thinking = unbelieving
What is ironic processing?
- Can be used to suppress thoughts
- Relies on automatically monitoring when unwanted thoughts are going to enter our head, but also controlled, effortful and conscious attempts then to distract ourselves into thinking about something else
What are attribution theories?
A group of theories that describe how people explain the causes of behaviour
What are Heider’s two modes of attribution?
- Personal attribution: attribution to internal characteristics of an actor, such as ability, personality, mood or effort
- Situational attribution: attribution to factors external to an actor, such as the task, other people or luck
What is the correspondence interference theory?
- Sometimes we can make an internal attribution about from one single event providing certain criteria are met:
- The act was freely chosen
- The act produced a non-expected effect
- The act is not seen as socially desirable
- The act has a direct impact on the observer
- The act seemed intended to affect the observer
What is the covariation model?
- A model for determining whether a person’s actions are due to a personal or situational attribution when we have more information than just a single event
- Uses 3 Critieria:
1. Consensus: how do other people behave?
High = most people behave like this
Low = not many people behave like this
- Consistency: does the person usually behave like this?
High = The person nearly always behaves like this
Low = The person seldom behaves like this - Distinctiveness: is the person’s behaviour in this situation differ from their behaviour in other similar situation?
High = The person does not behave like this is most other situations
Low = The person does behave like this in most other situations
Internal attribution: behaviour is high in consistency and low in distinctiveness and consensus
Situational attribution:
behaviour is high in consistency, consensus and distinctiveness
What is Fundamental Attribution Error?
- The tendency for observers when analysing others behaviour to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of person disposition
What is an attribution Bias?
- When someone makes an attribution/other type of social judgement by using cognitive heuristics
- Cognitive heuristics = information=processing guidelines that allow us to think it ways that are quick and easy, but that often lead to error
What is an availability heuristic?
- the tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances of it come to mind
e. g. watching a lot of criminal minds may make you suspicious of strange noises late at night
What is a false-consensus effect?
- The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes and behaviour
e. g. being baffled when Pauline Hanson gets voted in; you realise people share values very different to our own, we over estimate how many people share our values
What is counter-factual thinking?
- The tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not.
e. g. thinking that maybe if you took a different route home you wouldn’t have gotten in an accident
What is confirmation bias?
- Only noticing info that agrees with our own beliefs
What is a literary bias?
- The tendency to believe things as true or more prevalent than they are because of the media
e. g. we may have a correlation between mental health and violence because it’s over reported in the media
What is a Gambling fallacy?
- believing that 2 chance events are related
What is the 2 step process of attribution?
- We tend to as a first step make internal attributions about someones behaviour
- If we have the time, energy and motivation we take the second step and considering situational/external attributions
What is the actor-observer difference?
- Observers tend to attribute actors’ behaviour to the actor’s internal characteristics
- Actors tend to see their own behaviour as due more to characteristics of the external situation
What are 3 factors to take into account when considering impression formation?
- Trait centrality: Some traits have more impact than others on the impressions we form (e.g. warm vs cold are central traits – they have a large impact on the impressions we make)
- Integrating information about others: we try to integrate information about many seemingly contradictory attributes to create a unified and coherent impression
- Heuristics: choosing schemas/mental shortcuts
- Availability: how available is the schema?
- Representativeness: how representative is the schema?
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to impressions?
- You have an expectancy or social theory about the target person e.g. you may be told that they’re a snob and be expecting this
- You behave towards the target person in a way that’’s consistent with your theory or expectancy
e. g. ignoring the person who you think is a snob - The target person responds to your behaviour in a similar manner
e. g. the person you ignored will ignore you also - You see the target person’s behaviour as proof that your expectancy/social theory about the person was right. You don’t realise the role you played in creating the target’s behaviour.
e. g. you see the person ignoring you as proof that they are a snob
