Social Cognition

Describe three ways in which social cognition appears to be qualitatively different from nonsocial cognition.

(a) Social and nonsocial cognition may be mediated by different brain modules or systems. (b) Social cognition blurs the subject-object distinction, because the self is both the knower and the object of knowledge. (c) In social cognition the object of cognition is a sentient being, with intelligence, consciousness, and purposes. (d) In social cognition, the object of cognition may be aware his/her status, and seek to manipulate (manage) the perceiver's impression through strategic self-presentation. [Introduction]

What is an implicit attitude and why is this concept important?

A bad item. I didn't talk about implicit attitudes at all, but Fiske & Taylor spent a lot of time on the concept (if you're really interested, we discuss implicit attitudes a little in my consciousness course). Traditional theory assumes that people are aware of their attitudes -- which is why they try to achieve balance among their attitudes, experience states like cognitive dissonance when they engage in counterattitudinal behavior. However, it is possible that people have attitudes of which they are unaware, and which affect their behavior outside of conscious awareness and control. On simple logical grounds, it's difficult if not impossible to change an attitude that you don't know you have. [F&T, Chapter 10]

What makes people socially salient?

A person can become salient by being novel or distinctive in the immediate context; by violating prior expectations or beliefs; or by being relevant to the perceiver's goals, or otherwise the object of directed attention. [F&T, Chapter 3]

In Malle's "folk-conceptual" theory of causal attribution, what is the difference between a reason and a cause?

A reason is an explanation for intentional action, while a cause is an explanation for an unintended behavior. Reasons refer to beliefs, desires, or values, or some combination of these; there is a rational connection between the reason and the action, and it is assumed that the actor is aware of the reasons for his action. Causes apply to both social and nonsocial events, the connection between cause and effect is essentially mechanical, and the actor is not necessarily aware of the cause. [Social Judgment and inference]

15. What is a cognitive schema? What are the effects of mental schemata (otherwise known as schemas) on person memory?

A schema is a relatively abstract knowledge structure which guides perception and memory. As a result of schematic processing, person memory favors schema-relevant events over schema-irrelevant events, and schema-incongruent events over schema-congruent ones. At the same time, however, schemata can distort memory, leading people to falsely remember events that are congruent with a schema, but which did not in fact occur

What is a mental schema? What are the effects of mental schemata (otherwise known as schemas) on person memory

A schema is a relatively abstract knowledge structure which guides the acquisition and retrieval of new knowledge about schema-relevant objects and events. As a result of schematic processing, memory favors schema-relevant knowledge over schema-irrelevant knowledge. In particular, the schema appears to provide categorical cues that facilitate access to schema-congruent information at the time of retrieval. But in addition, schema-incongruent information violates our expectations: subsequent attempts to explain the unexpected event leads to elaborate processing at the time of encoding, which also favors memory.

Individuals described with two highly positive traits are more likable than those described with two highly positive traits and two moderately positive traits. Why?

According to Cognitive Algebra, impressions are formed by averaging the values of individual traits, along an estimate of perceiver's initial bias. The relatively low values accorded the moderately positive traits are effectively lower the average value of the entire impression.

What are the basic elements of an implicit theory of personality?

According to Cronbach, an implicit theory of personality looks just like a scientific theory, except that it is naive and implicit. Accordingly, based on the model of traditional psychometric (trait) theories of personality, an IPT will specify the important dimensions of personality (e.g., social and intellectual good-bad or the Big Five), estimates of central tendencies and variability within the population (e.g., means and variances) on each dimension, and estimates of the correlations (or covariances) among the dimensions.

Why are individuals described with two highly negative traits rated as less likable than those described with two highly negative traits and two moderately negative traits?

According to the weighted averaging model of cognitive algebra, impressions are formed by averaging the values of individual traits, along an estimate of perceiver's initial bias. Assuming a default value of zero for bias, the relatively low values accorded the moderately positive traits are effectively lower the average value of the entire impression -- that is, they make the person with two highly negative traits and two moderately negative traits seem less dislikable

What are the premises of symbolic interactionism?

Action depends on the meaning of the object toward which the action is directed. (2) The meanings of objects are derived from social interaction. (3) Meanings are not inherent in the objects themselves, but are constructed through cognitive processes

According to Jerome Bruner, (a) The perceiver must _____; (b) Every act of perception is _____; and (c) The purpose of perception is _____.

Any two can be correct, one point per aphorism: (a) The perceiver must go beyond the information given in the stimulus. (b) Every act of perception is an act of categorization; (c) The purpose of perception is action. [Hey, I had to get to 50 points somehow: last time we were reduced to giving students five points for writing their names on every page of the exam. And if you haven't heard me recite the first two Brunerian aphorisms about a dozen times each in lecture, then you've been sleeping. Admittedly, I don't think I mentioned the third one at all, though it's an easy inference to make -- and now you know yet another Brunerian aphorism!]

According to Kelley's "covariation" model, what information is needed to make causal attributions concerning events in the social world? What pattern of information leads observers to attribute behavior to the actor? To the target? To the context?

Application of the covariation calculus requires three kind of information about an event: the consistency of the actor's behavior toward the target, observed across a number of occasions; the distinctiveness of the actor's behavior, behavior, compared to other targets; and the consensus among actors, with respect to the target. A pattern of high consistency, low distinctiveness, and low consensus leads to actor attributions; a pattern of high distinctiveness, high consistency, and high consensus leads to target attributions; a pattern of low consistency, high consensus, and high distinctiveness leads to context attributions. Whatever, the pattern of information, distinctiveness and consensus are the most important cues to distinguishing between actors and targets; consistency is most important in determining attributions to the context. But regardless of the pattern of avaialble information, we tend to attribute behavior to the actor -- this is the fundamental attribution error.

Which is remembered better: schema-congruent or schema-incongruent information about a person? Why?

As a rule, schema-incongruent information is remembered better than schema-congruent information, thus correcting a view that goes back as far as Bartlett (1932). Hastie argued that schema-incongruent information received extra processing at the time of encoding, resulting in a more elaborate memory trace. Srull argued that, by virtue of this extra processing, schema-incongruent items are linked both with other schema-incongruent items, and with schema-congruent items as well, in memory.

What is a central trait and what makes it central?

Asch defined a central trait has a psychosocial characteristic that, when changed, alters the entire impression of a person. Central traits appear to be more highly correlated with other traits compared to peripheral traits; thus, central traits carry more information about the person than peripheral traits do. In particular, central traits appear to be closely aligned with the two major dimensions of person perception: social good-bad (like warm-cold) and intellectual good-bad (like intelligent-unintelligent).

What is a central trait and what makes it central?

Asch defined a central trait has a psychosocial characteristic that, when changed, alters the entire impression of a person. Central traits carry more information about the person than peripheral traits do, because they are highly correlated with major dimensions of person perception, such as social and intellectual evaluation.

18. What is the difference between autobiographical memory and collective memory? In what sense is collective memory episodic? In what sense is it semantic?

Autobiographical memory is an individual's memory for events and experiences in his or her own life. Collective memory refers to memories that are shared by entire groups (or communities) of people. Some collective memories refer to specific events in the group's past; they thus have an episodic character to them, even though they may not have been personally experienced by every member of the group. Other collective memories are more impersonal as in myths, archeological sites, and postage stamps; like semantic memories, they are more abstract, and preserve context-free knowledge about the group.

What characteristics distinguish an automatic process from a controlled one?

Automatic processes occur in the absence of conscious intent; once begun, they cannot be consciously controlled; they consume little or no cognitive resources; and they are unconscious, in the sense that the person lacks awareness that they are operating. Depending on the precise arrangement of these qualities, there can be different degrees, and different kinds, of automaticity.

Distinguish between attributional ambiguity and stereotype threat. What do these phenomena have in common?

Both of these are effects of stereotyping on the target -- the stereotyped individual, rather than the perceiver who holds the stereotype. In attributional ambiguity, the target is uncertain whether to attribute the perceiver's behavior to his or her own personal qualities, or to the stereotype. Stereotype threat is a variant on the self-fulfilling prophecy in which awareness of the possibility of being stereotyped leads the individual to behave in a stereotype-confirming manner. [F&T, Chapter 11]

Distinguish between salience and vividness. What are their effects on social perception?

Both salience and vividness attract attention, so that salient and vivid stimuli play a relatively large role in person perception. Salience is a product of the relation between an object and its surrounding context. Vividness is inherent in the object itself.

Distinguish between the prototype and exemplar views of social categorization

Both the prototype and exemplar views of categorization are alternatives to the classical view of categories as collections of objects which share certain defining features in common. According to the prototype view, the summary representation is a list of "characteristic" features shared by many category members, but not necessarily all of them. The exemplar view eliminates the notion of "category as summary of features", and asserts instead that a category is simply represented by a list of the objects (exemplars) that are in the category.

9. How does social categorization aid in social perception?

Categorization provides a cognitive framework guiding our attention to, and our interpretation of, stimulus events. Further, by relating what we perceive to what we already know, categorization allows us to make inferences about features of the stimulus that we cannot perceive directly. That is, by categorizing an object, we can infer that it possesses the features that are characteristic of other members of the category. In this way, categorization allows us to go "beyond the information given" in the stimulus.

What role do central traits play in impression formation?

Central traits play a critical role in shaping the perceiver's impression of the target because they carry more implications for unobserved features of the person. Thus, a change in standing on a central trait implies a change in many other traits as well. Central traits appear to be closely related to major "superordinate" factors of personality, such as intellectual and social "good-bad", or the "Big Five" personality traits. [Social Perception]

What evidence bears on the proposition that memory for a person's behaviors is organized by knowledge of the person's traits?

Certainly knowledge of a person's traits affects memory for that person's behaviors -- that's what schema-dependency is all about: the trait ensembles constitutes a schema for the person). But so far as we can tell, memory for behaviors is not strongly organized by traits. Although Hamilton found some evidence of trait-based clustering, the levels of clustering weren't very high. And other research finds that trait categories don't seem to organize the recall of either trait terms or trait-related sentences. (It's also the case that the retrieval of trait information doesn't prime the retrieval of behavioral information, which should happen if traits organized behaviors in memory. Either the clustering data or the priming data constitute a sufficient answer).

Where does cognition fit in Lewin's formula, B = f(P, E)? In the General Social Interaction Cycle, what factors influence the Target's impression of the situation?

Cognition can be thought of as a behavior -- that is, as something that some person does, even if subjectively, privately, and covertly, in some particular environment. Alternatively, cognition can be thought of one mode of person-by-situation interaction -- as one means by which the person can change the environment in which his or her behavior takes place. At a minimum, the Target's impression of the situation is influenced by the fund of social knowledge that he or she carries into the situation; the Target's interpretation of the Actor's action; feedback from the Target's own behavior in response to the Actor's behavior.

What causes cognitive dissonance, and what can we do about it?

Cognitive dissonance refers to the individual's perception of inconsistency between his or her attitudes and behavior -- not to an objective inconsistency, but to the subjective experience of inconsistency.. The perception of inconsistency causes arousal and creates an unpleasant emotional state. This unpleasant state can be reduced by changing the behavior, or changing the attitude, or -- most likely -- by avoiding or altering attitude-relevant cognitions. [F&T, Chapter 9]

What are cognitive misers? How do we know that they exist? What are the effects of cognitive miserliness on impression formation?

Cognitive misers are exert minimal amounts of mental effort when performing cognitive tasks such as impression formation. Evidence of cognitive miserliness comes from studies indicating a reliance on judgment heuristics, or rules of thumb, such as representativeness, simulation, and availability. In addition, impression-formation seems to be biased toward processing information that is consistent with our expectations. Relatedly, we tend to maintain our first impressions of people, even in the face of corrective evidence that arrives later. As a result, our impressions of other people are often inaccurate.

How does the perspective of cognitive sociology differ from that of cognitive psychology?

Cognitive psychology is concerned with the acquisition, representation, and use of knowledge by individual minds (and brains). Cognitive sociology is concerned with individuals as members of thought communities, and with the role of cognitive socialization in shaping the individual's thought processes. Cognitive sociology begins with the assumption that different historical epochs, different cultures, and different subcultures are characterized by distinct differences in both the content and the mode of thought. [Zerubavel, Chapter 1]

How does the perspective of cognitive sociology differ from that of cognitive psychology?

Cognitive psychology takes either a universalistic or an individualistic perspective on cognition. That is, it is concerned either with uncovering principles of cognitive processing that are common to everyone, or with the personal idiosyncracies of individual percepts, memories, and thoughts. By contrast, cognitive sociology is concerned with individuals as members of thought communities, and with the role of cognitive socialization in shaping the individual's thought processes. Cognitive sociology begins with the assumption that different historical epochs, different cultures, and different subcultures are characterized by distinct differences in both the content and the mode of thought.

What is the perspective of cognitive sociology?

Cognitive sociology is concerned with individuals as members of thought communities, and with the role of cognitive socialization in shaping the individual's thought processes. Cognitive sociology begins with the assumption that different historical epochs, different cultures, and different subcultures are characterized by distinct differences in both the content and the mode of thought.

20. In what ways do communities and other groups differ in their classification of the world?

Communities differ in their social norms for classification -- the rules applied to the process of sorting objects into various categories (e.g., edibility or marriageablity). For example, Jews and Muslims classify pork as inedible, while Christians by and large do not. Communities also differ in terms of the rigidity of their categories -- whether the boundaries between categories are rigid (promoting "either-or" styles thinking) or fuzzy (thus, tolerant of ambiguity, if not just fuzzy-minded), or flexible (promoting "both-and" styles of thinking).

What is the evidence for the universality of facial expressions of emotion?

Darwin himself noted that human facial expressions of certain emotions, such as anger and fear, bore a striking resemblance to those of nonhuman animals, especially primates and mammals. If these facial expressions are part of our human evolutionary heritage, then they are likely to be universal. In fact, research by Ekman and his colleagues, involving about two dozen different cultures, show that people are remarkably accurate in labeling the emotional expressions of members of different cultures in terms of such "basic emotions" as joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. This is so even when the culture has had little or no exposure to Western media, as in the case of a "Stone age" tribe in New Guinea.

How did Asch define a "central" trait? Are certain traits always central to impression formation? How can we predict in advance which traits will be central to impression formation?

Empirically, central traits make large differences to the impression that the subject forms of a target. Although Asch found that intelligent-unintelligent was central in some experiments, this trait did not prove to be central in others. In general, though Wisher suggested that central traits are substantially intercorrelated with many other traits, while Rosenberg suggested in addition that central traits are highly correlated with broad dimensions of social or intellectual desirability.

What evidence suggests that categorization is socially constructed?

First and foremost, it appears that different cultures and social groups "carve up" reality into different pieces. That is, some cultures acknowledge categories that other cultures do not. Even when some categories appear to be universal, the boundaries between categories are drawn somewhat differently from one culture to the next. Moreover, it appears that cultures may differ in terms of the very structure of their categories, with some gravitating toward "either/or" schemes

What does it mean to say that social memory has a "normative dimension"?

From the perspective of cognitive sociology, memory is not just a matter of an individual remembering and forgetting past events. In sociological terms, each individual is part of a "remembrance community", consisting of people with shared memories. Such a community enforces "rules of remembrance" that indicate which events members should remember, and which they should forget.

How does the fundamental attribution error relate to the correspondent inference theory?

I didn't talk about this at all, either, though Fiske & Taylor spent a lot of time on it. Correspondent inference theory argues that perceivers assume that targets have attitudes and dispositions that correspond to their behavior. These attributions are rarely qualified by the situational context in which the behavior occurs. By attributing behavior to actors' dispositions, rather than to situational factors, correspondent inference theory assumes that people are prone to making the fundamental attribution error of attributing behavior to internal, personal dispositions rather than to external, situational demands. [F&T, Chapter 6]

What is implicit personality theory?

Implicit personality theory is the individual's "naive" theory of personality, which forms the background for impression formation. It is a person's description of the "Generalized Other", as opposed his or her mental representations of particular other people. IPT consists of assumptions about the important dimensions of personality, the relations among them, and population tendencies along these dimensions, such as central tendency and variation. IPT may be inferred from actual experience with people, or it may be acquired in the course of cognitive socialization (or both). Accordingly, there may be wide individual and sociocultural differences in implicit personality theories.

Who is more likable? A person described with 2 highly positive traits, or a person described with 4 highly desirable traits -- and why?

In Norman Anderson's "cognitive algebra", a simple adding rule would mean that more is better; however, an averaging rule would render the two people equally likable. However, neither rule adequately accounts for the entire pattern of data from experiments on likeability judgments. A "weighted" averaging rule, which takes account of the perceiver's initial bias -- if you will, his or her implicit theory of personality -- as well as stimulus information also predicts that more is better, but provides a better account of the entire pattern of experimental data.

How is person memory organized in a generic associative-network model of memory?

In an associative-network model of memory, each fact about a person -- his or her identity, traits and other general characteristics, and specific behavioral episodes are represented as nodes connected by associative links that represent the relations among them. Evidence from both clustering and reaction-time (priming) studies is consistent with a model in which items of trait (semantic) and behavioral (episodic) information are represented independently of each other.

What evidence favors the idea that person categories are structured as fuzzy sets?

In the first place, it appears that all other natural categories are structured as fuzzy sets, and even those categories that have explicit proper-set structure, like geometric figures, seem to be treated as if they were proper sets. For example, categorization does not always make use of defining features, which are singly necessary and jointly sufficient for category membership. Further, some category members seem to be better -- more "typical" representatives of their category than others. So, why should person categories be an exception? In fact, research on person categories like personality types and psychiatric diagnoses suggests that they don't have any defining features either, and that examples of the categories vary in "prototypicality".

In what sense do personality traits function as categories?

In the hierarchical structure of personality, superordinate traits subsume subordinate traits, and subordinate traits subsume habitual behaviors. Therefore, superordinate traits (like extraversion) can serve as categories of subordinate traits (like talkativeness and sociability), while subordinate traits (like talkativeness) can serve as categories of behaviors (like talks a lot to strangers and talks a lot in class).

What is the self-fulfilling prophecy? What are the modes by which the self-fulfilling prophecy occurs?

In the self-fulfilling prophecy, a person acts in such a way as to make an originally false conception of a situation come true. In behavioral confirmation, the target's behavior is viewed by an objective, unbiased observer as confirming the actor's expectancies. In perceptual confirmation, the target's behavior is ambiguous, but is interpreted by the actor as confirming his/her expectancies. [Cognitive Perspective]

What is the self-fulfilling prophecy? Distinguish between perceptual and behavioral confirmation effects.

In the self-fulfilling prophecy, a person acts in such a way as to make an originally false conception of a situation come true. In perceptual confirmation, the target's behavior is ambiguous, but is interpreted by the actor as confirming his/her expectancies. In behavioral confirmation, the target's behavior would be viewed by an objective, unbiased observer as confirming the actor's expectancies.

Compare localist and distributed theories of the neural representation of person memory.

Localist theories hold that items of knowledge are represented by the activity of single neurons, or perhaps small clusters of neurons, centered on a specific location in the brain. Distributed theories of memory hold that individual items of knowledge are represented by patterns of neural activity distributed widely across the cortex. Localist theories predict the existence of "grandmother cells", which invariably fire in the presence of a particular stimulus. Distributed theories are supported by evidence that the specific location of brain damage is not critical to determining the loss of learned responses.

Define naive realism. How does naive realism relate to false consensus?

Naive realism is the view that we perceive the world the way it actually is, without mediation by cognitive and other processes that might bias and distort our perceptions. In other words, that there is an isomorphism, or one-to-one correspondence, between objective reality and our subjective awareness of that reality. One consequence of naive realism is the false consensus effect: that everyone else perceives, remembers, and thinks about the world the way we do. If everybody sees the world the way it is, then everyone will see the same things in the world.

What are the effects of expertise on categorization

Novices tend to categorize objects, including other people, by matching their features to those of a abstract category prototype -- a summary representation that contains many features that are highly correlated with category membership, and few features that are correlated with membership in contrasting categories. However, experts tend to categorize objects and people by matching them to concrete category instances - -specific exemplars known to be members of a category.

When we perceive someone as happy or sad, angry or fearful, what is the stimulus information for perception?

Of course, people can tell us what their emotional states are. Beyond that, there are various nonverbal cues to a person's emotional state, particularly facial expressions of emotion. These facial expressions, in turn, are produced a relatively small number of facial muscles that move the lips, eyebrows, etc. [Social Perception]

What are the consequences of dividing the world into "Us" versus "Them"?

One consequence is ingroup favoritism: In the "minimal group paradigm", in which subjects are divided arbitrarily into groups, subjects will favor other members of their own group in the distribution of rewards. Ingroup members will also boost the status of their own group, compared to outgroups. And they will perceive outgroup members as more similar to each other, compared to ingroup members -- what is known as the outgroup homogeneity effect.

19. What does Zerubavel mean when he speaks of optical communities? What is optical pluralism? What are optical traditions?>

Optical community, a variant on the notion of a "thought community", refers to a group of people who share a particular way of perceiving objects and events -- a particular "worldview", if you will. Optical tradition refers to the group's historical tendency to "see" things in a particular way -- a tendency imparted to the individual through socialization processes. Optical pluralism refers to the fact that each group or community in society will view the world in a somewhat different way. Alternatively, because each individual is a member of a number of different groups, people must shift perspective when they move from group to group.

Define "optical pluralism" and "optical community". How are "social optics" related to attention.

Optical pluralism refers to the fact that there are different "mental lenses" through which we can "see" an event, resulting in a number of different possible perceptions, or interpretations, of an event. "Optical communities" are groups of people who have come, through a process of "optical socialization", to perceive events through the same set of "mental lenses"

Define "optical pluralism" and "optical community". How are "social optics" related to attention.

Optical pluralism refers to the fact that there are different "mental lenses" through which we can "see" an event, resulting in a number of different possible perceptions, or interpretations, of an event. "Optical communities" are groups of people who have some to "see" events through the same set of "mental lenses". Through a process of "optical socialization", members of an optical community develop a common "mental horizon" by which they focus on some aspects of events, and ignore others.

12. How do causal attributions influence attitude change in response to persuasive communications?

People respond to persuasive communications, in part, based on their analyses of the causes of the communication. Communicators who might be biased by their own personal opinions (a personal attribute), or influenced by situational factors (a feature of the environment), are less credible than those whose communications appear to be independent of both dispositional and situational constraints -- and thus less persuasive, as well.

How is person memory organized?

Person memory is, first and foremost, organized by persons. Evidence from both reaction-time studies of individuation and reference, and "clustering" studies of person memory, is consistent with an associative-network model in which persons are represented as nodes, associatively linked to other nodes representing their characteristics and behaviors. Studies of priming effects indicate that schema-incongruent behaviors are associatively linked both with other schema-incongruent behaviors, and with schema-congruent behaviors, providing a structural basis for the memory advantage enjoyed by the former. Beyond this, some theorists have favored a scheme in which nodes traits are associatively linked to nodes representing the behaviors that exemplify them. Evidence on this point, however, is mixed, with clustering studies providing weak evidence favoring such an organization, but priming studies generally negative

Compare distributed and localist theories of the neural representation of person memory.

Person memory is, first and foremost, organized by persons. Evidence from both reaction-time studies of individuation and reference, and "clustering" studies of person memory, is consistent with an associative-network model in which persons are represented as nodes, associatively linked to other nodes representing their characteristics and behaviors. Studies of priming effects indicate that schema-incongruent behaviors are associatively linked both with other schema-incongruent behaviors, and with schema-congruent behaviors, providing a structural basis for the memory advantage enjoyed by the former. Beyond this, some theorists have favored a scheme in which nodes traits are associatively linked to nodes representing the behaviors that exemplify them. Evidence on this point, however, is mixed, with clustering studies providing weak evidence favoring such an organization, but priming studies generally negative.

How does collective memory differ from personal memory?

Personal memories are stored (somehow) in the minds (and brains) of individuals, and reflect the individual's more or less idiosyncratic mental representation of some episode of experience or behavior. Collective memories are shared by members of an entire "mnemonic community", such that each member of the community has the same representation of the event in question - -regardless of whether he or she personally experienced the event. Moreover, collective memories are jointly remembered by members of the mnemonic community on particular occasions (such as September 11), in a phenomenon known as "mnemonic synchronization". [Zerubavel, Chapter 6]

Distinguish between priming and chronic accessibility.

Priming is an automatic process in which processing one stimulus facilitates (or inhibits) the processing of another stimulus, by momentarily activating prime-related concepts. For example, "subliminal" presentation of words like angry and fight can lead subjects to interpret a target's behavior as hostile and aggressive. Chronic accessibility is like priming, except that the "prime" is not a stimulus in the environment, but rather a chronically activated construct inside the perceiver's head. Thus, a person who is concerned about hostility may be set to interpret other people's behavior as hostile.

8. What is the significance of the minimal group paradigm invented by Henry Tajfel?

Prior analyses of ingroup-outgroup relations had assumed that groups formed based on physical differences, such as gender or race, ethnic differences (such as national origin), or competition for limited economic resources -- as in Sherif's "Robbers Cave" experiment. But Tajfel formed groups based on entirely arbitrary distinctions, such as preferences for paintings, or even a coin-toss, and still found that subjects preferred their own ingroup to the outgroup. This suggests that social categories can have purely cognitive origins, as well as physical, ethnocentric, or economic ones. [Social Categorizataion]

What is the primary difference between the "prototype" model and the "exemplar" model of social categorization? How does expertise play a role in social categorization?

Prototype models share with the classical proper-set view the assumption that concepts and categories provide a summary description of category members. However, the exemplar model abandons the view of concepts as summary representations, and describes categories simply as collections of instances without any summary prototype. As a rule, novices in a domain rely on prototypes to make category judgments, while experts tend to rely on exemplars.

How does cognition of the social world differ from cognition of the nonsocial world?

Quantitative differences: Ambiguity of structure; importance of context or background. Qualitative difference: the object of social cognition is typically another person, a sentient being who is engaged in impression management at the same time that the perceiver is engaged in impression formation. Full credit if the answer includes at least one quantitative difference and the qualitative difference.

What are social stereotypes and how are they activated?

Social stereotypes are social categories, shared by members of a social ingroup, and applied to members of social outgroups. Stereotypes consist of features that are presumed to be characteristic of members of social outgroups. These are not defining features, believed to be possessed by all and every outgroup member, or even by most outgroup members. Rather, they are characteristic features, which are believed to occur more frequently in outgroup members than in other groups. They appear to be automatically activated by the presence of certain outgroup characteristics, such as physical features centrally associated with gender, race, or ethnicity.

How do social stereotypes function as social concepts?

Social stereotypes are social concepts: they represent the person's beliefs about the characteristics of some definable group of people. Like concepts, stereotypes are abstracted from instances. And like concepts, the features shared by the entire class are attributed to individual members. As in the prototype view, however, nobody thinks that all members of stereotyped groups have all the features of the stereotype -- but they do think that the typical -- that is, the prototypical group member has most of them.

What makes a face attractive? Why?

Somewhat paradoxically, faces that are close to the average of all faces are perceived as more attractive than faces that depart from the average. This is not because average faces are symmetrical: averageness and symmetry make independent contributions to facial attractiveness; and the effect of averageness is greater than that of symmetry. It may be that average faces better represent our prototype of the category of "attractive face". Or, it may be that average faces, being by definition more frequently encountered in the population, benefit from the "mere exposure effect" on preference judgments.

What do we mean when we stereotype Germans as industrious?

Stereotyped traits need not be present in all, or even most, group members, and they may even be less frequently present than nonstereotyped traits. However, stereotyped traits are believed (this is important) to be relatively more likely to be observed in members of the stereotyped group, compared to the population as a whole (or perhaps to the perceiver's ingroup). [Social Categorization]

What is the Doctrine of Interactionism? How do people construct their environments?

The Doctrine of Interaction states that individuals construct the environments which in turn influence their experience, thought, and action. There are four modes by which this construction can occur: Evocation, where the appearance and behavior of the person unintentionally evokes a response from the environment; Selection, where a person chooses to place him/herself in one environment rather than another; Manipulation, where a person changes the objective environment through overt behavioral activities; and Transformation, where the person acts cognitively to alter the subjective, mental representation of the environment. basis of all knowledge.

What is the "Thomas Theorem" and why is it important?

The Thomas Theorem states that "if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences" (paraphrase OK). The focus on the "definition of the situation" implies that the subjective, mental representation of the situation, rather than the "objective" situation (as it might be described by a third party), is decisive for behavior. If you want to understand the person's behavior, you have to understand the situation from the actor's point of view. [Cognitive Perspective]

Briefly describe three (3) of the following models of social cognition: Consistency-seeker, Naive scientist, cognitive miser, motivated tactician, or activated actor

The consistency-seeker is motivated to reduce any dissonance between attitudes, and between attitudes and behavior. The naive scientist engages in a rational analysis of events in the social world. The cognitive miser is motivated to reduce information-processing demand by relying on cognitive strategies that simplify complex problems. The motivated tactician chooses among available cognitive strategies based on goals. The activated actor relies on automatic, unconscious processes rather than conscious, deliberate ones.

Briefly distinguish among describe three (3) of the models of social cognition described by Fiske & Taylor: Consistency-Seeker, Naive Scientist, Cognitive Miser, Motivated Tactician, or Activated Actor.

The consistency-seeker is motivated to reduce any dissonance between attitudes, and between attitudes and behavior. The naive scientist engages in a rational analysis of events in the social world. The cognitive miser is motivated to reduce information-processing demand by relying on cognitive strategies that simplify complex problems. The motivated tactician chooses among available cognitive strategies based on goals. The activated actor relies on automatic, unconscious processes rather than conscious, deliberate ones. [Fiske & Taylor, Chapter 1]

Briefly describe the "elaboration likelihood" model of persuasion

The elaboration likelihood model assumes that there are two routes to attitude change: a central route involving careful deliberation, or elaborative thinking, about the persuasive communication; and a peripheral route, in which attitude change occurs without much thought -- for example, by virtue of automatic priming from mere exposure. The answer should include either of the following: (a) Attitude change which occurs via the central route is likely to last longer than change that occurs via the peripheral route. (b) The likelihood of elaboration is a function of certain qualities of the communicator (e.g., credibility), message (e.g., argument quality), audience involvement, and individual differences in such factors as "need for cognition".

What kinds of physical stimulus information contribute to the "perception" that a person is in a particular cognitive or emotional state?

The face is of course the biggest cue, as reflected in Ekman's work on facial expressions of emotion and the detection of deception. Full credit for mentioning any other "physical" cues as well, including vocal (prosodic or paralingistic) cues, independent of the content of the person's speech; and other visual cues, such as bodily posture, gesture, and eye contact, interpersonal distance. You could look at other aspects of the person's physical appearance, including his or her dress. And you could also look at the person's local behavioral environment, including his or her home, room, or office, locker, anything that is more or less under the person's control.

What is the fan effect and why should we care about it?

The fan effect demonstrates the "paradox of interference", meaning that the more we know about a topic (such as a person), the longer it takes to retrieve any single piece of information about that topic. This provides evidence for an associative-network model of declarative social memory, in which persons are represented by nodes connected by associative links to other nodes representing their traits, attitudes, behaviors, and other facts. When the person node is activated, activation spreads throughout the network of associated links, but the process of information-retrieval searches the network serially, one link at a time. [Social Memory]

What is the fundamental attribution error? What is the evidence that we make it? How does this misjudgment relate to correspondent inferences?

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute causal responsibility for some event to the actor, rather than to the target or the context or some more complex combination of causes, even when the pattern of available information indicates that the actor is not responsible. The evidence that we make it comes from studies of the attitude attribution paradigm; also evidence from departures from the covariation calculus for causal attribution. Correspondent inferences are good examples of the fundamental attribution error. By assuming that actors intend the outcomes of their actions, and that these intentions correspond to the actor's internal dispositions, we attribute responsibility for those outcomes to the actors themselves, rather than to the context, target, etc.

What does it mean to say that person memory is "embodied"?

The general idea behind embodiment is that the purpose of perception, memory, and other cognitive faculties is action. Bodily action does not just result from cognition -- it also contributes to it. Thus, people who nod their heads while processing a persuasive communication are more likely to agree with it. And when people imitate the facial expressions of emotion, they are likely to actually feel the corresponding emotion themselves. Thus, motor perceptions, and motor representations, are important elements in social cognition.

What advantage do procedural models of person memory have over declarative models? What disadvantage?

The processing of declarative memories tends to be slow and effortful, consuming limited cognitive resources in working memory. In procedural models, certain aspects of person perception and memory have been automatized by repeated practice, so that information is processed rapidly and efficiently. However, procedural memory is less flexible than declarative memory, more closely tied to the particular domain (verbal or nonverbal, visual or auditory) in which the information is acquired, or the specific operations used to process the information.

How does the exemplar view of conceptual structure differ from the prototype view?

The prototype view holds that categories are groups of objects which share a family resemblance -- they tend to have a set of characteristic features in common, even though there is no set of features. The concept, or mental representation of the category, consists of a summary list of these characteristic features, which constitute the category prototype. The exemplar view abandons the view of concepts as any kind of summary, or average, representation of category members, but rather holds that concepts are represented as a "list" of the instances, or exemplars, in the category itself. [F&T, Chapter 4]

How does Lewin define the total psychological field?

The total psychological field in which behavior takes place consists, first, of the person in the situation; and, second, of cognition and motivation. Both elements in each pair are required for the successful prediction of behavior; neither element, alone, is sufficient for this purpose

What role does social cognition play in social psychology? What is the distinction between social cognition and cognitive sociology?

To the extent that social psychology studies situational influence, social cognition studies the processes by which people assign meaning to the situation they're in. Social cognition studies the cognition of social objects, while cognitive sociology studies the social basis of all knowledge. Full credit if the person also elaborates on any one of the following: Universalism or individualism vs. thought communities; Objectivity or subjectivity vs. intersubjectivity; Commonalities or idiosyncracies vs. group differences.

How is trait (semantic) and behavior (episodic) information about a person represented in memory, and how do we know?

Trait and behavioral knowledge are represented independently in memory. That is, specific behavioral episodes (like "adopting a child") are not organized by the generic traits (like "kindness") that they exemplify. Any one of the following will do: (a) We know this from studies of the organization of recall: when recalling a target's behaviors, subjects do not cluster trait-related items together (at least, not very much). Also, amnesic patients can describe what they're like in general, in terms of their traits, even though they cannot remember specific episodes of behavior or experience. But mostly we know this from studies of priming. Presenting a trait term (like "kind") does not facilitate the retrieval of trait-related behavioral episodes (like "adopted a child"). [Social Memory]

How do studies of emotion and babyfacedness bear on the ecological perspective on social perception?

We can "read" people's basic emotional states, such as fear and happiness, on their faces; and organisms with enlarged eyes, chubby cheeks, and large craniums tend to elicit caretaking and inhibit aggression. According to the ecological view, our perceptual systems evolved to automatically extract information about basic emotions and competence or vulnerability. All the information needed to form these impressions is in the stimulus -- no "higher" inferences or judgments are needed

Why, do we think, Paul is loathed by Ted, and why do we think that?

We think that Paul is loathed by Ted because of something about Paul, probably that he is loathsome. We don't attribute Ted's loathing to Ted, e.g., that he is the kind of person who loathes people, because loathing is a "mental state" verb that invokes the "stimulus-experiencer" stimulus, which drives attributes toward the stimulus, rather than the experiencer. [Social Judgment and Inference]

In making decisions affecting student or personnel selection, how do human judges, acting individually or collectively, compare to statistical decision algorithms?

When information is expressed in quantitative form that can be processed according to a constant decision rule, computers or other statistical aids always do as well, and usually do better, than human judges forming "clinical" impressions. This is because "statistical" decision-making employs empirically valid weightings of various data sources, and is more accurate and consistent in applying the decision rules. [F&T, Chapter 8]