Social Cognition

Question 1

social cognition

Answer 1

• how people think about themselves and social world
• how they select, interpret, remember and use social information
• purpose is to make judgments and decision
• includes automatic and controlled thinking processes

Question 2

automatic thinking

Answer 2

• generally unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, effortless
• helps understand new situations by relating them to prior experiences
• relies on schemas

Question 3

schemas

Answer 3

• mental structures used to organize knowledge about social world
• influence info we notice, think about and remember

Question 4

schema functions

Answer 4

• help create continuity + relate new experiences to past
• helps to know what to do in confusing/ambiguous situation
• organize + fill gaps of knowledge

Question 5

schemas: Jean Piaget

Answer 5

1. suggested we construct schemas from young age to:
   - better understand world
   - make world more predictable as we develop cognitively
2. formation, manipulation, management of schemas components
   - assimilation
   - accomodation

Question 6

schemas: assimilation

Answer 6

integration of new info into existing schemas

Question 7

schemas: accommodation

Answer 7

alteration of existing schemas to adapt new info

Question 8

schemas: Frederic Bartlett

Answer 8

• argued memories = reconstructions
• each reconstruction = affected by past experiences and viewpoints

Question 9

schemas: reconstruction of memories are impacted by ____

Answer 9

• selectivity of information
• rationalization of details
• cultural factors related to interpretation of the event

Question 10

accessibility of schemas

Answer 10

extent to which schemas/concepts are likely to be used when making judgments

Question 11

schemas can be accessible because ____

Answer 11

• due to past experience
• because they are related to a current goal
• due to priming

Question 12

schemas and priming

Answer 12

where a recent experience increases likelihood that a particular scheme will be accessed

Question 13

priming

Answer 13

exposure to stimulus subconsciously alters way we feel, behave and think

Question 14

embodied cognition

Answer 14

• other form of priming
• bodily sensations activate mental structures, such as schemas

Question 15

self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 15

• people make their schemas come true by how they treat others
• Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) academic performance experiment

Question 16

heuristics

Answer 16

• use mental shortcuts - judgmental heuristics
• to make judgments quickly/effectively
• do not always lead to accurate conclusions
• usually quite useful

Question 17

types of heuristics

Answer 17

• availability heuristics
• representativeness heuristics
• base rate information
  between contradictory representativeness and base rate, people tend to rely on representativeness

Question 18

availability heuristic

Answer 18

• mental rule of thumb
• people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

Question 19

representativeness heuristic

Answer 19

• mental shortcut
• people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

Question 20

base rate information

Answer 20

information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

Question 21

hot cognition

Answer 21

mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings

Question 22

making predictions

Answer 22

affective forecasting can have issues
- impact bias
- durability bias

Question 23

impact bias

Answer 23

• way things will be impacted
• not able to predict as well as we think we can

Question 24

durability bias

Answer 24

bad at predicting how long these feelings will last

Question 25

influence of culture on schemas

Answer 25

pay most attention to/remember information that is important to our culture

Question 26

influence of culture on schemas: North American and Eurocentric thinking styles (powerpoint, slide 42)

Answer 26

- analytic thinking style - don't think of context - focus on properties of people and objects

Question 27

influence of culture on schemas: East Asian thinking styles (powerpoint, slide 42)

Answer 27

- holistic - focus on whole picture + surrounding context

Question 28

controlled thinking

Answer 28

- thinking = conscious, intentional, voluntary, effortful - requires mental energy - provides checks and balances for automatic thinking - can only think in a controlled conscious way about 1 thing at a time

Question 29

counterfactual thinking

Answer 29

- mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been (if only...) - usually conscious and effortful - not always voluntary and intentional

Question 30

upward counterfactual thinking

Answer 30

focusing on hypotheticals on how a situation could have been better

Question 31

downward counterfactual thinking

Answer 31

focusing on hypotheticals on how a situation could have been worse

Question 32

increase of counterfactual thinking

Answer 32

- more likely when they can easily imagine alternative to an event - easier to imagine alternative = the more stress people feel - people tend to feel more sympathy for others in near-miss situations

Question 33

use of counterfactual thinking

Answer 33

- if it focuses people's attention on ways that they can cope better in the future - if it motivates them to take steps to prevent similar outcomes from occurring in the future

Question 34

overconfidence barrier

Answer 34

arises when people have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments

Question 35

limiting overconfidence barrier

Answer 35

- ask people to consider other points of view than their own - teach people basic statistical and methodological principles