Lesson 3 Flashcards
It is an approach in social psychology that focuses on how cognition is affected by wider and more immediate social contexts and on how cognition affects our social
behaviour.
Social cognition
- is the internal language and symbols we use. It is often conscious and we are aware of it.
Thought
it refers to processing that can be mental largely automatic and unaware.
Cognition
He was one of the founders of modern empirical psychology.
He used self-observation and introspection to gain an understanding of cognition (people’s subjective experience), which he believed to be the main purpose of psychology.
Wilhelm Wundt (1897)
• e.g. Skinner, 1963; Thorndike, 1940; Watson, 1930
• Behaviourists focused on overt behaviour (e.g. a hand wave)
as a response to observable stimuli in the environment (e.g. an approaching bus), based on past punishments and rewards for the
behaviour (e.g. being picked up by the bus).
American behaviorism
He believed that social behavior is most usefully understood as a function of people’s perceptions of their world and their manipulation of such perceptions.
Kurt Lewin (1951)
- A model of social cognition in which people try to reduce inconsistency among their cognitions, because they find inconsistency unpleasant.
Cognitive consistency
- Model of social cognition that characterizes people as using rational, scientific-like, cause-effect analyses to understand their world.
Naive psychologist
A model of social cognition that characterizes people as using the least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviors.
Cognitive miser
- A model of social cognition that characterizes people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, which they choose among on the basis of personal goals, motives and needs.
Motivated tactician
It is the core of social cognition. It is the process of using background knowledge and clues to understand what is happening in a social situation. It involves making assumptions about how people are feeling, thinking, and behaving
Social inference
: A complex psychological state involving subjective experience, physiological response, and expressive behavior. This serve adaptive functions, influencing cognition and behavior (Ekman, 1999).
Emotion
: The process of interpreting, predicting, and attributing meaning to others’ behaviors, thoughts, and intentions based on available cues.
Inference in Social Psychology
It is a mental shortcut where people rely on emotions rather than logic to make quick judgments.
Example: If someone smiles while giving directions, we may trust them more, even if the directions are incorrect.
Affect Hueristic
- is the tendency to “catch” emotions from others.
Example: If a coworker is anxious, you may start feeling anxious too, affecting your inferences about the situation.
Emotional contagion
this is the universal indicators of basic emotions (Ekman,
1992).
Key Emotions: Happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust.
Facial expressions
While emotions are universal, display rules (social norms about expressing emotions) vary across cultures.
Cultural Differences
It is a set of interrelated cognitions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allows us quickly to make sense of a person, situation, event or location on the basis of limited information.
Schemas
- are knowledge structures about specific individuals.
Person schemas
are knowledge structures about role occupants.
Role schemas
- a schema about an event
Script
- a schema about a social group
Stereotype
- schema about yourself
Self-schema
- slow change in the face of accumulating evidence.
Bookkeeping
