lecure 1 social cognition Flashcards
(32 cards)
what is social psychology
study of thoughts, feelings and behaviors influenced by the real, imagined or implied presence of others/a social situation
what is personality psychology
looks specifically at how a persons personality can influence their behaviour
what is social cognition
application of social and cog psych to interpret how people think about themselves and others in the social world
processing and storage of social info and how we perceive and interact with others
how our mental processes can be inferred through what we say and do and therefore how we are perceived by others
what is social categorisation
tendency to automatically assign people into basic categories upon perception of them - discrete groups of people based on shared characteristics ie race, gender, age, occupation etc
entirely automatic process
two kinds - automatic and controlled thinking
define automatic thinking
social views often rely on automatic judgement of people whereby simply perceiving leads to unintentional categorization
can be overridden but first impressions often acts as an anchor for subsequent behavior towards that person
define controlled thinking
spending time and exerting effort over forming own opinion about as person - intentional
what is out group homogeneity
tendency to perceive and cognitively represent those of different groups or ‘out groups’ as very similar to one another (often generalization of stereotypes and lack of experience with members of the out group)
what is a schema
a pocket of information about a specific topic of knowledge ie about the way the world works - they often affect the way people behave in social situations
brain learn to differentiate based on who we are surrounded by/experience
what are illusionary correlations
tendency to place stereotype on specific group due to ias repeated exposure to a situation even though it does not reflect the beaviour of the population
ie negative stereotype in UK towards muslims as ‘terrorists’ due to the attention extremests get - statistically infrequent but significantly reported in media
(tendency to focus/recall the unusual over typical everyday) - greater recall of terrorist experiences than everyday normal muslim experience
what are stereotypes
generalisation about a group of people in which certain traits are assigned to all members of a group despite variation within the group
how can schemas lead to stereotypes
schemas help to understand the world - reduce ambiguity/increase understanding
generalisations in schemas applied to whole outgroup
even positive ones can be discrimiating ie women in workplace “pretty face” > smart
describe consequences of stereotyping (correll et al 2002) police officers dilemma
40 undergrads asked to ‘shoot’ or ‘not shoot’ white or black holding or not holding a weapon in game simulation - recreation of payoff matrix by police:
deducted max points if not shoot person with gun - more fatal to self
describe the lexical decision task as a social cognitive method
prime to stimuli i,e. white/black person (activate schema)
ask to indicate if word or non word (schema/stereotype congruent or not)
pps faster to respond to schema congruent words
- activate neg schemas about diff outgroups
benefit of lexical decision task as a social cognitive method
allows researchers to test when social information cant be processed in depth
allows research to test uncontrollable decisions/unintentionsby activating negative schemas people have but often try to hide
what is thought to activate schemas
what is most salient in a situation causing schemas to become either chronically or temporarily accessable
what are chronically accessible schemas
very strong stereotypical schema ie racist/sexist opinions
what are temporarily accessible schemas
available due to motivations/goals/expectations at the time, often become accessible because of priming - dependent on the situation
what is priming
exposure to stimuli that not aware is activating a schema - activates idea in mind ie sterotype about someone
prime can be anything real or imaginary that influences the accessibility of a concept and leads to influence in the way a task is performed
how does a priming experiment work?
control where neutral and then placed in situation ie exposed to neutral words then asked to help someone
experimental condition where exposed to priming stimuli and then placed in situation ie exposed to words relating to helpfulness then asked to help someone
what are the limitation of priming studies
dependent on the context and the observer themselves - has to fit with their specific schema related to the prime etc
one prime can have many influences and there can be may primes in the environment (how do you know which is most salient in a situation?)
irwin, tripodi and bien 1967 outgroup homogeniety
perception of the outgroup as homogonours makes the outgroup more predictable and less anxiety provoking
outgroup homogeniety and prejudice
ackerman et al 2006
homogeniety bias where inrease recog of own group and decress outgroup appears to be eliminated when the outgroup shows anger
recog accuracy greater for angry black than angry white faces
define a schema
mental structures that organise info about people situations and events
provide greater understanding and prediciton of future situations and behaviours
not static but tend to be resilient to change
use to resuce ambiguity
types of schema
person specific, role speciifc, ,script (?event) specific, and self specific (ie self concept)
