social cognition and biases

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 behaviours

Question 3

what is attribution?

Answer 3

process of assigning cause to our own and others’ behaviours

Question 4

what are (social) schemas?

Answer 4

cognitive construct that represents out knowledge about concepts/something

make sense with limited information

facilitates top-down (theory-driven) processing

Question 5

what are categories?

Answer 5

organised hierarchically (associative network - stimuli connected)

in order to activate a schema

fuzzy set of features organised around a prototype

Question 6

what are prototypes?

Answer 6

cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category

average/typical category member

defining category stimulus

Question 7

what is causal attribution?

Answer 7

in trying to answer “why”, engaging in causal attribution

an inference process through which perceives attribute an effect to one of more causes

Question 8

what is the naive scientist belief?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

what is the biased/intuitionist belief?

Answer 9

but information limited and driven by motivations

leads to errors and biases

Question 10

what is the cognitive miser belief?

Answer 10

people use least complex and demanding information processing

cognitive short-cuts

Question 11

what is the motivated tactician belief?

Answer 11

think deeply when required and only then

thinking carefully and scientifically about certain things - when personally important or necessary

think quickly and use heuristics for others - when less important so can do things quickly and get more done

Question 12

what are the theories of attribution?

Answer 12

naive scientist

attributional theory

correspondent interference theory

co-variation model

Question 13

who created the naive scientist theory and when?

Answer 13

Heider

1958

Question 14

what is the naive scientist theory?

Answer 14

homo rationalis? - analytical, cogent, balanced, logical; hypothesis testing; attribute causes to effects to create a stable world that makes sense

ascribe human feelings to inanimate objects/pets to make sense of the world

Question 15

what are the three principles of need in the naive scientist theory (Heider, 1958)

Answer 15

need to form coherent view of the world (search for motives in others behaviour)

need to gain control over the environment (search for enduring properties that cause behaviour)

need to identify internal (personal) vs external (situational) factors

Question 16

who created the attributional theory and when?

Answer 16

Weiner

1979

Question 17

what is the attributional theory?

Answer 17

multi-dimensional approach

causality of success or failure - locus (internal/external), stability (are behaviours always the same), controllability (can we change things)

dynamic model

Question 18

what is the dynamic model of the attributional theory (Weiner, 1979)?

Answer 18

performance (success/failure)

feelings (positive/negative)

attributions

specific emotions (e.g. pride)

expectations

and then back round again

Question 19

what is attributional retraining (Weiner, 1979)?

Answer 19

people are encouraged to make more optimistic attributions - outcomes are controllable, successes attributed to internal causes

Question 20

who conducted a study on attributional retraining?

Answer 20

Parker et al (2018)

Question 21

what was Parker et al’s (2018) study on attributional retraining?

Answer 21

university athletes prone to difficult transition from school

Randomised Control Training (RCT) - attributional training or waitlist control

attributional retraining - better grades explained by increased perceived academic control

Question 22

who created the correspondent inference theory and when?

Answer 22

Jones and Davis

1965

Question 23

what is the correspondent inference theory?

Answer 23

internally or externally caused?

look at variety of cues to see if behaviour reflects internal behaviour - freely chosen

correspondent inference = acts reflects a true characteristic of a person

Question 24

what are the cues in the correspondent inference theory (Jones and Davis, 1965)?

Answer 24

act freely chosen

act produced a non-common effect

not socially desirable

hedonic relevance

personalism

Question 25

what is a non-common effect?

Answer 25

not a lot of behaviours would lead to that behaviour

Question 26

what is hedonic relevance?

Answer 26

important consequence to you?

Question 27

what is personalism?

Answer 27

whether directly intended to effect you

Question 28

what is a critique of the correspondent inference effect (Jones and Davis, 1965)?

Answer 28

overly focused on internal attribution

Question 29

who created the co-variation model and when?

Answer 29

Kelley 1967

Question 30

what is the co-variation model?

Answer 30

use multiple observations to try to identify factors that co-vary with behaviour - assign causal role to factor(s) whether behaviour internal or external is key look at consistency, distinctiveness, consensus

Question 31

what is consistency in the co-variation model (Kelley, 1967)?

Answer 31

does this behaviour always co-occur with the cause? low = discounting, look for different cause high = these are linked

Question 32

what is distinctiveness in the co-variation model (Kelley, 1967)?

Answer 32

is behaviour exclusively linked to this cause or is it a common reaction? high = attribute to external cause low = internal attribution

Question 33

what is consensus in the co-variation model (Kelley, 1967)?

Answer 33

do other people react in the same way to the cause/situation? high = strengthens attribution to external cause low = internal attribution

Question 34

what are the critiques of the co-variation model (Kelley, 1967)?

Answer 34

covariation really useful? salience of prior information? actually quite poor at assessing covariation covariation = correlation != causation

Question 35

what are attributional biases?

Answer 35

systematic errors indicative of shortcuts, gut feeling and intuition

Question 36

what are examples of attributional biases?

Answer 36

false consensus fundamental attribution error actor-observer bias self-serving bias

Question 37

what is false consensus?

Answer 37

how common is your opinion? people with extreme views often overestimate others who have similar views

Question 38

who did a study on false consensus and when?

Answer 38

Ross et al 1977

Question 39

what was Ross et al's (1977) study on false consensus?

Answer 39

would you walk about campus to advertise cafeteria? would others? yes (62% also yes) no (67% also no)

Question 40

why is there false consensus attribution bias?

Answer 40

seek out similar others salience of own opinion self-esteem maintenance

Question 41

what is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 41

tendency to attribute behaviour to enduring dispositions even when clear situational causes also known as correspondence bias robust but not universal

Question 42

who did a study on fundamental attribution error and when?

Answer 42

Ross et al 1977

Question 43

what was Ross et al's (1977) study on fundamental attribution bias?

Answer 43

knowledge quiz masters assign some to quiz master and some to contestants quiz master made questions participants (audience) rated quiz master as more knowledgeable than contestants

Question 44

why is there fundamental attribution bias?

Answer 44

focus of attention/saliency effect target most salient - internal attribution most accessible more likely to forget situational causes - dispositional shift

Question 45

who first reported actor-observer bias and when?

Answer 45

Jones and Nisbett 1972

Question 46

what is actor-observer bias?

Answer 46

more likely to make situational attribution for our behaviour - external more likely to make dispositional attribution about other people - internal

Question 47

why is there actor-observer bias?

Answer 47

perceptual focus informational difference - more information about ourselves

Question 48

what are the moderators of actor-observer bias?

Answer 48

positive behaviour - dispositional more likely perspective taking reverses effect

Question 49

who first reported self-serving bias and when?

Answer 49

Olson and Ross 1988

Question 50

what is self-serving bias?

Answer 50

attribute successes internally attribute failures externally Kingdom (1976) - self-serving bias in American politicians operates at a group level too

Question 51

why is there self-serving bias?

Answer 51

expectations and self-esteem motivational - maintenance of self-esteem (split into self-enhancing and self-protecting bias) cognitive - intend/expect to succeed - attribute internal causes to expected events

Question 52

what are heuristics?

Answer 52

cognitive short-cut avoid effort, resources expenditure rule of thumb, not complex mental judgements quick and easy judgements

Question 53

what are the different types of heuristic?

Answer 53

availability heuristic representative heuristic anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Question 54

what is the availability heuristic?

Answer 54

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

Question 55

what is the representative heuristic?

Answer 55

categorise based on similarity between instance and prototypical category members allocate a set of attributes

Question 56

what is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?

Answer 56

starting point (or initial standard) influences subsequent judgements