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SUMMARISED NOTES
Social Cognition: How we think about the world Page 3
Social Perception: Perceiving and understanding others Page 7
The Self: Answering the question “Who Am I” Page 13
Attitudes: Evaluating and responding to the social world Page 19
Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination: The causes, effects and cures Page 25
Interpersonal attraction and close relationships Page 32
Social Influence: Changing others’ behaviour Page 40
Prosocial Behaviour: Helping others Page 46
Aggression: Its nature, causes, and control Page 50
Groups and Individuals: The consequences of belonging Page 56
EXAMS & ASSIGNMENTS
May/June 2015 Page 62
October/November 2015 Page 71
May/June 2016 Page 80
October/November 2016 Page 89
May/June (Paper 1) 2017 Page 98
May/June (Paper 2) 2017 Page 107
October/November 2017 Page 116
May/June 2018 Page 125
October/November 2018 Page 134
May/June 2019 Page 143
May/June 2020 Page 152
Assignments 2021 Page 161
Assignments 2022 Page 171
Assignments 2023 Page 176
Test Bank for Social Psychology by Greg Nichols (12th Edition) Page 182
Test Bank for Social Psychology by Greg Nichols (13th Edition) Page 496
, SOCIAL COGNITION: HOW WE THINK ABOUT THE WORLD
Schemas: Mental frameworks for organising – and using – social information
Schemas: Mental frameworks centering on a specific theme that help us to organize social information.
The impact of schemas on social cognition: Attention, Encoding, Retrieval
Schemas influence attention (the information we notice, for which schemas act as filters), encoding (the
process by which information gets stored in memory), and retrieval.
Information inconsistent with schemas is more likely to be noticed and to enter our consciousness.
We rely most on schemas when we are experiencing cognitive load (a lot of information at once).
Information that is consistent with our schemas is encoded. Information that is sharply inconsistent with
our schemas may be encoded into a separate memory location and marked with a unique “tag”.
Regarding memory: In general, people report remembering more information consistent with their
schemas, but information inconsistent with their schemas may be strongly present in memory too.
Priming: Which schemas guide our thought?
Priming: A situation that occurs when stimuli or events increase the availability in memory or
consciousness of specific types of information held in memory. Schemas can be temporarily activated by
priming.
Unpriming: Refers to the fact that the effects of the schemas tend to persist until they are somehow
expressed in thought or behaviour and only then do their effects decrease. If primed schemas are not
expressed, their effects may persist for long periods of time.
The stronger and better-developed our schemas are, the more likely they are to influence our thinking, and
especially our memory for social information.
Schema persistence: Why even discredited schemas? Can sometimes influence our thought behaviour?
Perseverance effect: The tendency for beliefs and schemas to remain unchanged even in the face of
contradictory information.
Evidence suggests that schemas can be self-fulfilling – they both shape and reflect the social world.
Schemas help us make sense of the social world and process information efficiently, but they can also lock
us into acting in ways that create the world we expect.
Reasoning by metaphor: How social attitudes and behaviour are affected by figures of speech
Metaphor: A linguistic device that relates or draws a comparison between one abstract thought and
another dissimilar concept.
Because metaphors can activate different kinds of social knowledge, they can influence how we interpret
events.
Heuristics: How we reduce our effort in social cognition
Social cognition: The manner in which we interpret, analyse, remember, and use information about the
social world.
Heuristics: Simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid and seemingly
effortless manner.
Affect: Our current feelings and moods.
When we are subjected to more information than what we are capable of processing at one time, this
results in information overload.
Processing capacity can be diminished by stress levels.
We rely on heuristics because they allow us to do more, with less effort.
Representativeness: Judging by resemblance
Prototype: Summary of the common attributes possessed by members of a category.
Representativeness heuristic: A strategy for making judgements based on the extent to which current
stimuli or events resemble other stimuli or categories.
Decisions based on the representative heuristic can be wrong, because they tend to ignore base rates.
Base rates: The frequency with which given events or patterns occur in the total population.
Cultural groups differ in the extent to which they rely on the representative heuristic and expect “like to go
with like” in terms of causes and effects.
Compared to North Americans, Asians rely less on the representative heuristic.
, Availability: “If i can retrieve instances, they must be frequent”
Availability heuristic: A strategy for making judgments on the basis of how easily specific kinds of
information can be brought to mind.
Use of availability heuristic can cause us to overestimate the likelihood of events that are dramatic but rare
because they are easy to bring to mind.
When using the availability heuristic, the amount of information we can recall is also influential.
If the judgement involves emotions or feelings, we tend to rely on the “ease” rule, whereas if the
judgement involves facts or if the task is inherently difficult, we tend to rely more on the “amount” rule.
Anchoring and Adjustment: Where you begin makes a difference
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: A heuristic that involves the tendency to use a number, value, or
personal experience as a starting point to which we then make adjustments. An example is when a seller
sets the price higher than he expects to get, and a buyer bids lower than he is willing to pay.
We have a tendency to let initial anchors influence our judgements.
Although we make adjustments to anchors, these adjustments are often not sufficient to overcome the
initial impact of the anchors.
The tendency to make insufficient judgements is greater when people are in a state in which they are less
capable of engaging in effortful thought.
Status quo heuristic: “What is, is good”
When people are asked to make judgements and choices, they seem to act as though they believe the status
quo is good. For example, the brand that has been on the market longer is better than the newer brand.
Automatic and Controlled Processing: Two basic modes of thought
Social thought can occur in either of two different ways: in a systematic, logical, and highly effortful
manner (controlled processing), or in a fast, relatively effortless, and intuitive manner (automatic
processing). Both may occur together.
Research suggests that people have two different neural systems for processing social information – one
that operates in an automatic manner, and one that operates in a systematic and controlled manner.
Automatic processing and Automatic social behaviour
Automatic processing: This occurs when, after extensive experience with a task or type of information,
we reach the stage where we can perform the task or process the information in a seemingly effortless,
automatic, and nonconscious manner.
Research also shows that once automatic processing is initiated (e.g. through priming), individuals may –
unconsciously – begin to prepare for future interactions with the people or groups who are the focus of this
automatic processing.
The benefits of automatic processing: Beyond mere efficiency
Research shows that we often attempt to deal with problems, and even complex decisions, while our
attention is directed elsewhere.
Recent research suggests that automatic processing may even be superior to conscious thought when it
comes to making good decisions.
Automatic thought has greater capacity, and may also reflect our real preferences more clearly.
Potential sources of error in social cognition: Why total rationality is rarer than you think
A basic “tilt” in social thought: our powerful tendency to be overly optimistic
Optimistic bias: Our predisposition to expect things to turn out well overall.
Negativity bias: We show greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive information. The
negativity bias is not universal, and may be eliminated if we find ourselves in situations in which paying
attention to positive information is useful.
Overconfidence barrier: The tendency to have more confidence in the accuracy of our own judgements
than is reasonable.
Most people believe they are more likely than others to experience positive events, and less likely to
experience negative events.
People who are least competent in a domain are often most likely to be overconfident of their judgements
in that domain.
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