Social Perception and Cognition PDF

Social Psychology Summary of Key Concepts Social Perception o Ways in which people try to make sense of themselves and others Self-knowledge: depends, at least in part, on interactions with other people o Self-perception theory ▪ Bem...

Social Psychology Summary of Key Concepts Social Perception o Ways in which people try to make sense of themselves and others Self-knowledge: depends, at least in part, on interactions with other people o Self-perception theory ▪ Bem ▪ When internal cues are weak or difficult to interpret, people make inferences about their own attitudes and feelings by observing their own behavior and the situation in which the behavior takes places ▪ Supported by Schachter and Singer’s epinephrine studies and research on overjustifiction hypothesis Epinephrine studies o Given epinephrine, one group was misinformed about the effects, given no information about the effects, and provided accurate information. Those in the misinformed group and ignorant group were more likely to act angry or euphoric when waiting in a room with another individual who acted angry or euphoric Cognitive-arousal theory of emotion o Experience of emotions depends on a combination of physiological arousal and a cognitive explanation for that arousal Overjustification Hypothesis o External reward to people for performing an intrinsically rewarding activity reduces their intrinsic interest in that activity ▪ Ex. Study showed that the children who were naturally interested in drawing with markers were told they would get a reward for playing with the markers were then less interested in playing with the markers o Social comparison theory ▪ Learn about self by comparing self to others ▪ Especially when objective information is not available ▪ People compare themselves to others who are similar in relevant ways by in some situations make downward comparisons Ex. Comparing themselves to others who are less successful or less fortunate o Self-verification theory ▪ Predicts that people seek confirmation of their self-concept regardless of whether their self-concept is positive or negative ▪ People typically prefer to interact with others who confirm their self-concept ▪ People are more likely to pay attention to, recall, and believe information that is consistent with their self-concept  ▪ People are more satisfied with self-verifying relationships ▪ Important in understanding depression Impression management o People use several strategies to manage or control the impression that others have of them o Self-monitoring ▪ Involves adjusting one’s behavior to fit the situation o Self-promotion ▪ Conveying positive information to others through actions or statements o Self-handicapping ▪ Purposely sabotaging one’s performance in order to save face Put off studying for an important test so that he or she can attribute poor performance to lack of preparation rather than lack of ability Social judgement o Research has shown that accuracy of social judgement may be affected by cognitive errors and biases ▪ Cognitive errors and biases Commonly include confirmation bias and illusory correlation, Heuristics o Confirmation bias ▪ Tendency to seek and remember information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs ▪ Used to explain the Barnum effect, self-fulfilling prophecy effect, Pseudopatient study Pseudopatient study o 8 people admitted themselves to mental hospitals with complaint that they were hearing voices. Once admitted they acted normal. Patients recognized that the pseudopatients were not mentally ill but the staff did not. Self-fulfilling prophecy effect o Peron’s expectations of others’ behaviors can lead to the expectations being fulfilled ▪ Teacher told specific students that they were going to experience an intellectual growth spurt and 8 months later they had significant gains in their IQ scores Barnum effect o Accept vague descriptions of one’s self ▪ Horoscopes, psychic readings o False consensus bias ▪ Overestimate the degree to which others are similar to us in terms of their beliefs and behaviors Students asked to wear a sandwich sign around campus advertising a cafeteria. Then asked how many of the students either said yes or no. Majority of the students said that the other students picked their same answer regardless if they agreed to do it or not o Illusory correlation ▪ Over estimate the relationship between variables that are unrelated or only slightly related A friend calls you exactly when you are thinking about them and you put more weight into that experience than all the other times you were thinking about them but they did not call o Gambler’s Fallacy ▪ Thinking that the probability of a random event occurring is more likely to occur just because it happens to occur a few times in a row In roulette you start to believe that the ball is more likely to land on black than red because it landed on black the last 5 times o Heuristics (mental shortcuts) ▪ Kahneman and Tversy ▪ Mental shortcuts used to quickly form judgements and make decisions Representativeness o Judging the likelihood of an event based on its resemblance to the typical case rather than on base rate information ▪ You are told that this person is timid and withdrawn, helpful but not interested in people, prefers order and structure. You are more likely to think that she is a librarian rather than a salesperson Availability o Judging the likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to recall information about the event ▪ Even though there are more words that have an r as the  third letter than words that start with an r, people are more likely to choose to identify words that start with an r because it is easier for them to recall. Stimulation o Likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to mentally stimulate (imagine) the event. ▪ Olympic athletes were happier with winning the bronze medal compared to winning the silver medal because the silver medal winners were more easily about to imagine themselves as gold medal winners. Anchoring and Adjustment o Identifying an initial starting point and then making adjustments up and down from the point when estimating a frequence or other quantity ▪ When asked what temperature Vodka freezes as most used the anchor of 32 degrees and adjusted downward from there Casual Attributions o Several biases affect the attributions that people make about their own behaviors and the behaviors of others o Fundamental attribution bias ▪ Occurs when people overestimate the impact of dispositional factors and underestimate the impact of situational factors when making attributions about the behavior of others o Actor-observer effect ▪ People tent to attribute the behaviors of others to dispositional factors but also that they attribute their own behaviors to situational factors o Self-serving bias ▪ Modifies the predictions of the actor-observer effect by predicting that people attribute their failures to situational factors but their successes to dispositional factors