Social Cognition Flashcards
According to Heider, what two needs are people motivated by?
1 - To form a coherent view of the world.
2 - To gain control over the environment.
What is Fiske and Taylor’s definition of social cognition?
The process by which people think about, and make sense of, other people, themselves and social situations.
What is an attribution?
An explanation for the cause of behaviour.
What is a locus of causality?
A person’s perception of whether the cause of their success or failure is internal or external.
What is an internal locus?
An explanation of behaviour or an event that attributes a person’s internal characteristics to the outcome.
Generally controllable: ‘It’s my fault’.
What is an external locus?
An explanation of behaviour or an event that attributes external factors to the outcome.
Generally uncontrollable: ‘It’s not my fault’.
What are the 4 dimensions of attribution?
1 - Internal and external.
2 - Stable and unstable.
3 - Global and specific.
4 - Controllable and uncontrollable.
What is a stable attribution?
What about an unstable attribution?
An attribution that infers that an event or behavior is due to stable, unchanging factors.
Unstable -> temporary factors.
What is a global attribution?
What about a specific attribution?
Global: An attribution that infers that an event or behaviour is due to a global characteristic of a person’s personality.
‘I’m hopeless at everything’.
Specific: Due to a specific characteristic.
‘I’m hopeless at icing cakes’.
What is Kelley’s covariation theory?
A model for judging whether behaviour should be attributed to a characteristic of the person (internal) or the environment (external)
In Kelley’s covariation theory, what are the three types of information needed to arrive at internal or external attribution?
1 - Consensus.
Do other people do the same in this situation?
2 - Consistency.
Does the behaviour occur in the same way on different occasions in the same situation?
3 - Distinctiveness.
Does the behaviour occur in the same way in other situations?
What is a fundamental attribution error?
The tendency to:
attribute behaviours to a person’s internal qualities,
whilst
underestimating situational influences.
What is actor-observer bias?
The tendency to:
attribute other people’s behaviour to internal causes,
whilst
attributing our own behaviour to external causes.
What is self-serving bias?
AKA hedonically-biased attributions.
The tendency to:
take credit for success (internal attribution),
whilst
denying responsibility for failures (external attribution).
What is a representative heuristic?
The tendency to allocate a set of attributions to someone / something if they match the prototype of a given category (usually stereotypical).
e.g. see a black cab -> assume it’s a taxi.
