Social Psychology Glossary/Review
Chapter 3: Social Cognition
Social Cognition: How people think about themselves and the social world, more specifically, how people
select interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.
→includes automatic and controlled thinking
Automatic thinking: our immediate reaction or thought (can be wrong)
→generally unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless
➔ Ex: recognizing a common object (sunglasses) or situation (birthday party)
→helps us to understand new situations by relating them to our prior experiences
➔ Relies on schemas for this information
Schemas: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world; Influence the
information we notice, think about, and remember.
→our schemas are built upon each other to help us define our world
→it helps make our world predictable; we want a predictable world, so we tend to look at things and
categorize them to help us predict our future
→schemas help us to fill in gaps in our knowledge, to have continuity and to relate our new experiences
to our past, and help us know what to do in ambiguous or confusing situations
Jean Piaget: we construct schemas from a young age to better understand the world around us and to
make the world more predictable as we develop cognitively
2 components regarding formation, manipulation and management of schemas:
→assimilation: integration of new info into existing schemas
→accommodation: alteration of existing schemas to adapt to new info: when encountering conflicting
info, we have to adapt our beliefs
Frederic Bartlett: memories form our schemas. Memories are reconstructions and each reconstruction is
affected by our past experiences and viewpoints
Memory reconstruction is affected by:
- Selectivity of perceived relevant info
- Rationalization of details (we try to put meaning to things we see & experience)
- Cultural factors relating to interpretation of event
Which schema is applied in a situation depends on the accessibility
Accessibility: the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds, and thus
likely to be used when making judgements about the social world
3 reasons schemas may be accessible:
- Chronically: frequently used
- Temporarily: related to current goal OR as a result of priming
o Priming: exposure to one stimulus subconsciously alters the way we feel, behave, or think
about the proceeding event or stimulus. Effect usually happens right away.
,Embodied cognition: a form of priming where bodily sensations (smells, sounds, body positions,
temperature etc.) activate mental structures such as schemas.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: inadvertently make schemas come true by the way they treat others
➔ It happens when peoples’ expectations about another person influences their behaviour towards
that person, causing the person’s behaviour to become consistent with original expectation.
➔ Rosenthal & Jacobson’s (1968) classic experiment, in which teachers’ (manipulated) expectations
of their students’ potential influenced the students’ actual performance
➔
Heuristics: mental strategies and shortcuts
→A schema is an outline or image universally applicable to a general conception, while a heuristic is a
mechanism or principle for solving problems. A schema is more related to what topics a person might
make decisions upon, while a heuristic is more related to how a person makes those decisions.
→People use mental shortcuts, called judgmental heuristics, to make judgments and decisions quickly
and efficiently. Do not always lead to accurate conclusions but for the most part are quite helpful.
Availabilty heuristic: a mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which
they can bring something to mind.
, Representativeness heuristic: a mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how
similar it is to a typical case.
Base rate information: Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the
population.
Prior probabilities: how frequently events actually happen in the real world population
➔ When faced with base rate information and contradictory representativeness information,
people will rely more on the representativeness heuristic.
Hot Cognition: mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings
➔ We draw on our past experiences based on emotions, we do not only rely on logic to make
decisions
Affective forecasting: predicting how we will feel later
➔ Humans are very bad at this
Impact bias: how much the emotion will impact me
Durability Bias: how long the emotion will last
Cultural determinants of schemas:
NA and Eurocentric cultures have an analytic thinking style
➔ Focus on properties of objects/people without considering surrounding context (bottom up)
East Asian cultures tend to have a holistic thinking style
➔ Focus on person/object and context (top down)
Differences in the amount of information presented in the culture forces people to develop different
information search strategies
Study by Miyamoto et al., (2006)
– Japanese and American university students were primed with either Japanese or American city scenes.
, – Those primed with Japanese city scenes (which were busier) were more likely to notice changes to the
background between two images.
– The primed with American city scenes were more likely to detect changes in the main object of the
pictures.
– These results showed that people in all cultures are capable of thinking holistically or analytically; the
environment we’re in influences our thinking style.
Controlled social cognition: high effort thinking
→thinking that is conscious, voluntary, intentional and effortful
→provides checks and balances for automatic thinking
→requires mental energy
➔ Can only think about one thing at a time in a controlled conscious way
Counterfactual reasoning:
→counterfactual thinking: mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might
have been “If only…”
➔ Usually conscious and effortful, not always voluntary and intentional
→upward counterfactual thinking: focusing on how a situation could have been better
→downward counterfactual thinking: focusing on how a situation could have been worse
- People are more likely to engage in counterfactual thinking when they can easily imagine an
alternative to an event.
- The easier to imagine the alternative, the more stressed or distressed people feel.
- People also tend to feel more sympathy for others in near-miss situations.
Counterfactual thinking can be useful:
- If it focuses peoples attention on ways they can cope better in the future and motivates them to
take steps to prevent similar outcomes
CHAPTER 4 SOCIAL PERCEPTION
Social perception: the study of how we form impressions of other people and make inferences about
them
→what people are doing and why we think they may be doing it
→important source of information about others is their nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication: the way people communicaye intentionally or unintentionally without words
Nonverbal cues: include facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures, body position and movement, use of
touch, and eye gaze
- Facial expressions are most significant channel of nonverbal communication
- Charles Darwin believed that the primary emotions conveyed by the face are universal (happy,
sad, angry, scared
- Cross-cultural research by Ekman and his colleagues support the universality of at least six facial
expressions of emotion:
o Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness.
- Other researchers question the universal recognition of the basic facial expressions of emotion
(e.g., Russell et al., 1993)
- Context and culture both influence how facial expressions are interpreted
Chapter 3: Social Cognition
Social Cognition: How people think about themselves and the social world, more specifically, how people
select interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.
→includes automatic and controlled thinking
Automatic thinking: our immediate reaction or thought (can be wrong)
→generally unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless
➔ Ex: recognizing a common object (sunglasses) or situation (birthday party)
→helps us to understand new situations by relating them to our prior experiences
➔ Relies on schemas for this information
Schemas: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world; Influence the
information we notice, think about, and remember.
→our schemas are built upon each other to help us define our world
→it helps make our world predictable; we want a predictable world, so we tend to look at things and
categorize them to help us predict our future
→schemas help us to fill in gaps in our knowledge, to have continuity and to relate our new experiences
to our past, and help us know what to do in ambiguous or confusing situations
Jean Piaget: we construct schemas from a young age to better understand the world around us and to
make the world more predictable as we develop cognitively
2 components regarding formation, manipulation and management of schemas:
→assimilation: integration of new info into existing schemas
→accommodation: alteration of existing schemas to adapt to new info: when encountering conflicting
info, we have to adapt our beliefs
Frederic Bartlett: memories form our schemas. Memories are reconstructions and each reconstruction is
affected by our past experiences and viewpoints
Memory reconstruction is affected by:
- Selectivity of perceived relevant info
- Rationalization of details (we try to put meaning to things we see & experience)
- Cultural factors relating to interpretation of event
Which schema is applied in a situation depends on the accessibility
Accessibility: the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds, and thus
likely to be used when making judgements about the social world
3 reasons schemas may be accessible:
- Chronically: frequently used
- Temporarily: related to current goal OR as a result of priming
o Priming: exposure to one stimulus subconsciously alters the way we feel, behave, or think
about the proceeding event or stimulus. Effect usually happens right away.
,Embodied cognition: a form of priming where bodily sensations (smells, sounds, body positions,
temperature etc.) activate mental structures such as schemas.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: inadvertently make schemas come true by the way they treat others
➔ It happens when peoples’ expectations about another person influences their behaviour towards
that person, causing the person’s behaviour to become consistent with original expectation.
➔ Rosenthal & Jacobson’s (1968) classic experiment, in which teachers’ (manipulated) expectations
of their students’ potential influenced the students’ actual performance
➔
Heuristics: mental strategies and shortcuts
→A schema is an outline or image universally applicable to a general conception, while a heuristic is a
mechanism or principle for solving problems. A schema is more related to what topics a person might
make decisions upon, while a heuristic is more related to how a person makes those decisions.
→People use mental shortcuts, called judgmental heuristics, to make judgments and decisions quickly
and efficiently. Do not always lead to accurate conclusions but for the most part are quite helpful.
Availabilty heuristic: a mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which
they can bring something to mind.
, Representativeness heuristic: a mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how
similar it is to a typical case.
Base rate information: Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the
population.
Prior probabilities: how frequently events actually happen in the real world population
➔ When faced with base rate information and contradictory representativeness information,
people will rely more on the representativeness heuristic.
Hot Cognition: mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings
➔ We draw on our past experiences based on emotions, we do not only rely on logic to make
decisions
Affective forecasting: predicting how we will feel later
➔ Humans are very bad at this
Impact bias: how much the emotion will impact me
Durability Bias: how long the emotion will last
Cultural determinants of schemas:
NA and Eurocentric cultures have an analytic thinking style
➔ Focus on properties of objects/people without considering surrounding context (bottom up)
East Asian cultures tend to have a holistic thinking style
➔ Focus on person/object and context (top down)
Differences in the amount of information presented in the culture forces people to develop different
information search strategies
Study by Miyamoto et al., (2006)
– Japanese and American university students were primed with either Japanese or American city scenes.
, – Those primed with Japanese city scenes (which were busier) were more likely to notice changes to the
background between two images.
– The primed with American city scenes were more likely to detect changes in the main object of the
pictures.
– These results showed that people in all cultures are capable of thinking holistically or analytically; the
environment we’re in influences our thinking style.
Controlled social cognition: high effort thinking
→thinking that is conscious, voluntary, intentional and effortful
→provides checks and balances for automatic thinking
→requires mental energy
➔ Can only think about one thing at a time in a controlled conscious way
Counterfactual reasoning:
→counterfactual thinking: mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might
have been “If only…”
➔ Usually conscious and effortful, not always voluntary and intentional
→upward counterfactual thinking: focusing on how a situation could have been better
→downward counterfactual thinking: focusing on how a situation could have been worse
- People are more likely to engage in counterfactual thinking when they can easily imagine an
alternative to an event.
- The easier to imagine the alternative, the more stressed or distressed people feel.
- People also tend to feel more sympathy for others in near-miss situations.
Counterfactual thinking can be useful:
- If it focuses peoples attention on ways they can cope better in the future and motivates them to
take steps to prevent similar outcomes
CHAPTER 4 SOCIAL PERCEPTION
Social perception: the study of how we form impressions of other people and make inferences about
them
→what people are doing and why we think they may be doing it
→important source of information about others is their nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication: the way people communicaye intentionally or unintentionally without words
Nonverbal cues: include facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures, body position and movement, use of
touch, and eye gaze
- Facial expressions are most significant channel of nonverbal communication
- Charles Darwin believed that the primary emotions conveyed by the face are universal (happy,
sad, angry, scared
- Cross-cultural research by Ekman and his colleagues support the universality of at least six facial
expressions of emotion:
o Anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, and sadness.
- Other researchers question the universal recognition of the basic facial expressions of emotion
(e.g., Russell et al., 1993)
- Context and culture both influence how facial expressions are interpreted
