Social Cognition Flashcards
(29 cards)
Accommodations
Adjusting goals and aspirations to reduce the impact of negative self-evaluations in important areas
Age-based double standard
When an individual attributes an older person’s failure in memory as more serious than a memory failure observed in a young adult
Assimilative activities
Exercises that prevent or alleviate losses in domains that are personally relevant for self-esteem and identity
Causal attributions
Explanations people construct to explain their behavior, which can be situational, dispositional, or interactive
Cognitive style
A traitlike pattern of behavior one uses when approaching a problem-solving situation
Collaborative cognition
Cognitive performance that results from the interaction of two or more individuals
Collective or communicative memory
Refers to the recent past, particularly personal and autobiographical memories, and is characterized by a typical span of three to four generations (about 80 to 110 years)
Correspondence bias
The tendency to draw inferences about older people’s dispositions from behavior that can be fully explained through situational factors
Cultural memory
Memory created through symbolic heritage
Dispositional attribution
An explanation for someone’s behavior that resides within the actor
Emotional intelligence (EI)
People’s ability to recognize their own and others’ emotions, to correctly identify and appropriately tell the difference between emotions, and use this information to guide their thinking and behavior
Immunizing mechanisms
Control strategies that alter the effects of self-discrepant evidence
Implicit stereotyping
Stereotyped beliefs that affect your judgments of individuals without your being aware of it (i.e., the process is unconscious)
Impression formation
The way people combine the components of another person’s personality and come up with an integrated perception of the person
Labeling theory
Argues that when we confront an age-related stereotype, older adults are more likely to integrate it into their self-perception
Negativity bias
Weighing negative information more heavily than positive information in a social judgment
Personal control
The belief that what one does has an influence on the outcome of an event
Positivity effect
The tendency to attend to and process positive information over negative information
Primary control
The act of bringing the environment into line with one’s own desires and goals, similar to Brandtstädter’s assimilative activities
Resilience theory
Argues that confronting a negative stereotype results in a rejection of that view in favor of a more positive self-perception
Secondary control
The act of bringing oneself in line with the environment, similar to Brandtstädter’s accommodative activities
Self-perception of aging
Refers to individuals’ perceptions of their own age and aging
Situational attribution
An explanation for someone’s behavior that is external to the actor
Social cognition
Involves how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations, and how cognition plays a role in social situations
