Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is social cognition?
The study of how come to believe what they do
The development of people’s understanding, storage and application of information about themselves, others, and social situation s
How do we gain self knowledge?
Introspection
Introspection
Process where people look inward and examine their own thoughts feelings and motives
We only do this 8% of the time
Self perception theory (Bem)
We learn about others by observing their behaviour , but we also do this with ourselves when we take step aside from our body look at our previous actions and decide the reason why we did that
For ourselves we know we can behave based on situations but for others we assume it part of personality even though people can behave in a way for a host of reasons —> fundamental attribution error can come from this
Why do we use self enhancement?
Is situations where our self esteem might be affected like if something bad happens
Bias blind spot
Bias that we are more objective and less biased than other people. We know the context of our own behaviour so we can make excuses but not the content of others.
How do you beat bias blind spot
realize we are biased and there is context about others we don’t know
Naive realism
The belief that we see the world precisely as it is and people who disagree must be irrational or biased
Confirmation bias
Tendency to seek out information that supports our hypothesis while neglecting contracting evidence
Ego centric bias
We tend to place ourselves in the centre of our own universe, you know the most about yourself
Self referential effect
Anything involving you you remember better
Spotlight effect
The perception that people are paying more attention to you than they are
Cloak of invisibility
Belief we notice others more than they motive us
Barnum effect
All purpose answers that could fit anyone but you feel like it perfectly matched for you (personality test answers)
Negativity bias
Things of equal intensity, we pay more attention to the bad over good thing, bad more attention grabbing
Name the brain’s built in biases
Bias blind spot Naive realism Confirmation bias Egocentric bias Negativity bias Spotlight effect Cloak of invisibility illusion
Central social motives
Need for belonging Accurately predicting/understanding other Need for control Need for matter Trust
Need for belonging
Most important
Desire for stable meaningful connections with others, have people to fall back on
Need for accuracy
We want to know what’s going on, optimize our relationships, like to predict what will happen
A need for control
Want to feel like we have control over our destinies (best way to do so if we have accurate info)
That we are competent
A need to matter
Esteem motivations, worthiness results in self enhancement
How much we admire ourselves is based on our perception of we think others see us
Need for trust
Motivated to trust the world is safe, benevolent and fair
Related to confirmation bias
Attribution
Process by which we explain people’s behaviour from personal attribute of situational
Correspondent inference theory
People make assumptions about others disposition from 3 factors:
Targets degree of choice: choice or no choice, if they chose to do it we think it was related to personality
Expected ness of the behaviour: is the behaviour close to social norms or does it deviate? If deviated we assume bc personality
Effect or consequence: when comparing 2 different choices if something stands out that’s the reason why, you can find the pinpoint reason when comparing 2 similar choices with only a few differences to the choice s
Kelley attribution theory: covariation principle
People attribute behaviour to factors that are present when a behaviour occurs and absent when it does not. kinds of info it used:
Consensus: do all people respond to the stimulus the same way as the target
Distinctiveness: does the target respond the same way to other stimuli as well
Consistency: does the target respond the same way to this exact same stimulus
What are the 2 ways people depart from the logic of attribution theory
Cognitive heuristics and fundamental attribution error
Availability heuristic
The tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur by how easily instances come to mind
False consensus effect
The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which other share their opinions, attributes and behaviours, occurs for your in group
Base rate
How common a behaviour or characteristic is in the population
Base rate fallacy
Neglecting to consider base rates, if we think things are common we are more likely to overestimate
Counterfactual thinking
The tendency to imagine alternative event or outcomes that might have occurred by did not
Is attribution a 2 step process?
Yes automatic first step and effort full second
Contrast effects
We change how we value thing when we compare to higher and lower anchor points
The target on its own will be compared to whatever comes to mind, unless we have an example
When do we engage in social comparison
When there is no objective standard for you measure yourself against and when you experience uncertainty about yourself
Whom do choose to compare yourself with
Someone similar to yourself
What did Wilson and Ross find in terms of downward social comparison with our old selves?
When we compare ourselves with our old self we can get a self esteem boost of time when we were worse
