social cognition

Question 1

what is social psychology

Answer 1

perceptions and behaviour and how influenced by others

Question 2

what is social cognition

Answer 2

• how we process and store social information
• how this affects our perceptions and behaviour

Question 3

what is attribution

Answer 3

process of assigning a cause to our own and other’s behaviour

Question 4

what is social schemas

Answer 4

knowledge about concepts
- make sense with limited information
- facilitate top-down processing

Question 5

what is category

Answer 5

organise hierarchically (associative network) - stimuli connected - patterns of connections can become activated

Question 6

what are prototypes

Answer 6

-cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category (average category member)

Question 7

what is causal attribution

Answer 7

• an inference process through which perceivers attribute an effect to one or more causes
• in trying to answer ‘why’ you are engaging in the process of causal attribution

Question 8

what is a native scientist

Answer 8

people are rational and scientific-like in making cause-effect attributions

Question 9

what is biased/intuitionist

Answer 9

but - information is limited and driven by motivations which leads to errors and biases

Question 10

what is a cognitive miser

Answer 10

people use least complex and demanding info processing - cognitive shortcuts

Question 11

what is a motivated tactician

Answer 11

• think carefully and scientifically about certain things - when personally important or necessary
• think quickly and use heuristics for others - when less important so that can do things quickly and get more done

Question 12

what are the 4 theories of attribution

Answer 12

• Naive psychologist
• attributional theory
• correspondent inference theory
• covariation model

Question 13

who came up with the Naive scientist theory

Answer 13

fritz Heider 1958

Question 14

what does the naive scientist theory suggest

Answer 14

• homo rationalis
• analytical, cogent, balanced, logical
• hypothesis testing
• attribute causes to effects to create a stable world that makes sense
• ascribe human behaviours to abstract objects

Question 15

what did Heider and Simmel 1944 find

Answer 15

• they presented a stimulus which was abstract geometrical figures - and asked to write down what they say - pps reported shapes e.g. big triangle

Question 16

what are the three principles of The Naive scientist theory

Answer 16

1. need to form a coherent view of the world - search for motives in others behaviours
2. need to gain control over the environment - search for enduring properties that cause behaviour
3. need to identify internal vs external factors - did they intend to do it

Question 17

who came up with the attributional theory

Answer 17

• Weiner 1979

Question 18

what is the attributional theory

Answer 18

• causality of success or failure
• locus (internal/external)
• stability (e.g. natural ability/mood)
• controllability (e.g. effort/luck)
• multi-dimensional approach

Question 19

what is attributional retraining

Answer 19

people encourage to make more optimist attributions
- outcomes uncontrollable
- successes attributed to internal causes

Question 20

who studied university athletes

Answer 20

Parker et al 2018

Question 21

what is the university athletes study

Answer 21

• randomised control trial
• attributional training or waitlist control
• attributional training - better grades explained by increased perceived academic control
• when people encouraged to contribute successes to internal causes they gained motivation to succeed

Question 22

who came up with the correspondent inference

Answer 22

jones and davis 1965

Question 23

what are the 5 cues in the correspondent inference theory

Answer 23

• act was freely chosen
• act produced by a non-common effect
• not socially desirable
• hedonic relevance
• personalism

Question 24

what does non-common effect mean

Answer 24

not a lot of other behaviours would lead to it

Question 25

what is hedonic relevance

Answer 25

- whether it has important consequences for you

Question 26

what is personalism

Answer 26

- whether it's directly intended to effect you

Question 27

who came up with the co-variation model

Answer 27

kelley 1967

Question 28

what is the co-variation model suggest

Answer 28

- use multiple observations to identify factors that co-vary with behaviour - assign causal role to the factors - whether behaviour internal or external is key

Question 29

what are the 3 key components of the co-variation model

Answer 29

- consistency - distinctiveness - consensus

Question 30

what is consistency in the covariation model

Answer 30

- does this behaviour always co-occur with the cause - if low - look for different cause - if high - they are linked

Question 31

what is distinctiveness in the co-variation model

Answer 31

is the behaviour exclusively linked to this or is it a common reaction - high - external cause - low - internal attribution

Question 32

what is consensus in the co-variation model

Answer 32

do other people react in the same way to the cause - high - external cause - low - internal cause

Question 33

how is attribution linked to mental health

Answer 33

- people with depression attribute negative events to internal, global and stable causes

Question 34

how can the co-variation model be criticised

Answer 34

- it could be salience of prior info - quite poor at assessing covariance - correlation doesn't = causation

Question 35

what is false consensus

Answer 35

- we think that other's feel the same as us - attributional biases - systematic errors indicative of shortcuts, gut feeling, intuition

Question 36

what did Ross et al find about false consensus

Answer 36

- if people said yes to a question they were also more likely to answer yes to the question 'would someone else say the same'

Question 37

why do we have false consensus

Answer 37

-we seek out similar others - bias view of the world - salience of our own opinion - our opinions stand out - they are obvious - self-esteem maintenance - validate our own behaviour

Question 38

what is fundamental attribution error

Answer 38

- tendency to attribute behaviour to enduring dispositions even when clear situational causes

Question 39

what is the knowledgeable quiz master study

Answer 39

- thought quiz master was more knowledgeable just because the pp got questions wrong even though all quiz masters were randomly assigned

Question 40

what is fundamental attribution error also known as

Answer 40

correspondence bias

Question 41

who came up with the actor-observer bias

Answer 41

jones and nisbett 1972

Question 42

what is actor-observer bias

Answer 42

internal causes for others, external causes for ourselves - perceptual focus - informational difference - we don't have all the information like we do with ourselves - positive behaviour - dispositional more likely - perspective taking reverses effects

Question 43

what is self-serving bias

Answer 43

we blame success on internal and failure on external - maintenance of self-esteem - split into self-enhancing and self-protecting bias - expect to succeed - internal causes - operates at a group level too

Question 44

who came up with heuristics

Answer 44

tverksy and kahneman 1974

Question 45

what is heuristics

Answer 45

- cognitive shortcut - avoid effort, resources expenditure - rule of thumb, not complex mental judgment - quick and easy

Question 46

what are the 3 types of heuristic

Answer 46

- availability heuristic - representative heuristic - anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Question 47

what is availability heuristic

Answer 47

- judge frequency or probability of events by how easy it is to think of examples - memory accessability

Question 48

what is representative heuristic

Answer 48

- judgment based on how relevant it is to other things in that category - category based on similarity between instance and prototypical members allocate a set of attributes

Question 49

what is anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Answer 49

- starting point influences subsequent judgments - judgments based on some starting point e.g. salesman more likely to start with showing expensive