Social cognition Flashcards
(42 cards)
What types of social cognition can we have?
- Automatic thinking
2. Controlled thinking
What are the features of automatic thinking?
- fast
- non-conscious
- unintentional
- uncontrollable
- effortless
What are the features of controlled thinking?
- slow
- conscious
- intentional
- controllable
- effortful
What is social categorisation?
Grouping people based on shared characteristics common to all of them
What is out-group homogeneity?
The tendency to perceive out-group members as similar to one another
What do schemas allow us to do?
- let us quickly make sense of a person/event/place on the basis on limited info
- help us understand the word
- help us reduce ambiguity
What do we tend to do more - seek info from the context/environment or fill in gaps with prior knowledge?
We tend to fill in gaps with prior knowledge & preconceptions rather than seek info from the immediate context
Once schemas are evoked, what kind of processing do they facilitate?
Top-down, cognitive-driven or theory-driven processing
What types of schemas are there?
- person schemas
- role schemas
- scripts
- content-free schemas
- self-schemas
What are person schemas?
Knowledge structures about certain people
What are role schemas?
Knowledge structures about role occupants (types of behaviours/function)
What are content-free schemas?
They don’t contain rich info about a category but rather a limited number of roles for processing info
What are self-schemas?
Schemas about yourself
They form part of the self-concept
What are scripts?
Schemas about events
When schemas are incorrect, what can it lead to?
Stereotypes
What are stereotypes?
Generalisations about a group where certain traits are assigned to all members, regardless of actual variation
What are some characteristics of stereotypes?
- slow to change
- hard to change
- applied quickly & automatically
- acquired at an early age
- more pronounced & hostile when social tension & conflict exists between groups
- not always wrong
Why/when do stereotypes change?
They usually change in response to wider social/political/economic changes
When are stereotypes typically acquired?
At a young age, often before the child has much knowledge about the groups being stereotyped
What do stereotypes serve to help us do, in relation to groups?
They serve to make sense of intergroup relations (& aren’t always wrong)
Where do stereotypes come from?
- cultural learning
- illusionary correlations
What are ‘illusionary correlations’?
Perceiving a relationship between variables, if even if there isn’t one
Which research investigated illusionary correlations & what did they find?
Hamilton & Gifford (1976)
Pps read sentences describing undesirable or desirable behaviours that were attributed to group A or B (most were associated with A = majority group)
Desirable behaviours weren’t seen as distinctive, so pps were accurate in their associations (allocating them to each group)
Pps overestimated how much the minority group displayed undesirable behaviours
Correll et al. (2002) used a videogame to simulate encounters with potentially hostile targets
Their 3 studies tested whether a racial bias in shoot/don’t-shoot decisions reflected accessibility of the stereotype linking Black people to danger
What did they find in each study?
Study 1: pps read stories about Black criminals –> this increased their bias in the decision to shoot Black targets in the game
Study 3: changed the number of White & Black targets with & without guns in the game –> frequent presentation of stereotype targets (Black targets with guns) increased bias (to shoot) (2) & made stereotypes more accessible (3)
