Social Cognition

1. Social Cognition Chapter 20

2. What are Attitudes? • Beliefs and feelings about objects, people and events that lead people to behave in certain ways.

3. How do Attitudes develop? • Conditioning • Observational Learning • Cognitive evaluation • Cognitive Anchors • Persistent beliefs that shape the ways in which he/she sees the world and interprets events

4. When you combine attitudes and behavior what happens? • When behavior follows attitudes Employees usually avoid jobs they don’t like to do. People usually watch what they like on TV!

5. When you combine attitudes and behavior what happens? • When attitudes follow behavior prejudice towards a particular race do not predict accurately actual behavior Attitude to your church Doesn’t necessarily correlate with your church attendance

6. What is Persuasion? • Direct attempt to influence other people’s attitudes Telephone Sales Used Car Salesman Campaign Supporters

7. What are some Methods of Persuasion? • Central Route- using evidence and logical arguments to persuade people • Peripheral route- indirect, attempts to associate objects, people, or events with positive or negative cues.

8. How do some people deliver such messages of persuasion? • Two sided Argument -people present not only their side of the argument but also the opposition’s side. • Emotional Appeals -persuade by arousing such feelings as loyalty, desire, or fear rather than by convincing through evidence and logic.

9. What type of people deliver these messages of persuasion? • Experts • Trustworthy • Physically attractive • Similar to their audience

10. When are people more receptive to persuasion? When they are in a good mood or a bad mood? • A good mood, they are more likely to accept the persuasive message. • Wouldn’t you ask your parents something when they are in a good mood?

11. Are persuasive appeals specific to the audience they are targeting? • Yes. • Take the presidential elections, do they run the same messages on MTV as they would on the Food Network?

12. Are people always persuaded by appeals made to them? • No. • There are some people that have Sales resistance. • Sales resistance is the ability to turn down requests to buy products or service or make donations.

13. What is prejudice? • A generalized attitude toward a specific group of people

14. What are stereotypes? • Unchanging oversimplified, and usually distorted beliefs about groups of people

15. How many blondes does it take to milk a cow? • Five - one to hold the udder, and four to lift and the cow up and down.

19. What are two reasons people develop stereotypes? • A way to organize information about their social world • They assume that those who are different are similar

20. How can stereotypes be harmful? • They ignore people’s individual natures and assign traits to them on the basis of the group which they belong.

21. Are there positive stereotypes? • Yes • Belief that the members of a particular group are good at something

22. What is discrimination? • The unfair treatment of individual because they are different

23. What is likely to happen to people that experience discrimination? • They may begin to see themselves as inferior.

24. What are five causes of Prejudice • Exaggerating differences • Justifying economic status • Social learning • Victimizing • Scapegoating

25. Exaggerating Differences • People tend to prefer people that are similar to themselves. • People who different in one or several ways- in skin color or religion, for example- are often assumed to have attitudes and customs that are more different than they really are.

26. Justifying economic status • People tend to develop prejudice against those who are not in the same economic group. • May believe that people who are worse off than themselves work less hard or are less motivated to succeed.

27. Social Learning • Children, like adults, acquire many attitudes from other people. • They are especially likely to acquire the attitudes fo their parents. • Children tend to imitate their parents, and parents reinforce their children when they do.

28. Vicitimization • Sometimes people who are the victims of prejudice feel empathy for others who are discriminated against. • However, this is not always the case. In fact, some victims of prejudice try to gain a sense of power and pride by asserting their superiority over groups that are even worse off then themselves.

29. What is scapegoating? • An individual or group that is blamed for problems of others because the real cause of the problems is too complex, powerful. Or remote to be addressed.

30. W.E.B.DuBois • Why did the incident described by W.E.B. DuBois affect him so deeply? • It was the first time that DuBois realized he was different and that many opportunities were denied him as a result. • How was DuBois’ reaction to racial inequality the same as that of other African American youths of his time? • Many other African American youths of his time responded by fitting in, giving up, or becoming bitter and angry. • How was DuBois’ reaction to racial inequality different from that of other African American youths of his time? • His reaction was to try to earn, through hard work and cleverness, the things he was denied because of his race, and to fight inequality

31. How can prejudice be overcome? • Increased contact among members of different groups • Speak up when others act out • Make a conscious effort to treat others courteously

32. What is social perception? • The ways which people perceive one another

33. What is the primacy effect? • The tendency for people to form opinions of others on the basis of first impressions.

34. What is the recency effect? • Occurs when people change their opinions of others on the basis of recent interactions.

35. What is the attribution theory? • People tend to explain the behavior of others in terms of either dispositional or personality

36. What is the Actor-observer bias? • People who attribute the behavior of others to dispositional or external behaviors.

37. Why does the actor-observer bias occur? • It occurs when we judge people only by the behavior we witness and people’s behavior may not always be a true reflection of their personalities.

38. What is fundamental attribution error? • The tendency to overestimate the effect of dispositional causes for another persons behavior and to underestimate the effect of situational causes.

39. What is self-serving bias? • The tendency to view one’s successes as stemming from internal factors and one’s failure as stemming from external factors

40. What are some forms of nonverbal communication? • Facial expressions • Gestures • Posture • The distance we keep from others

41. Who is more likely to use physical contact in Americans, Men or Women? • American women are more likely to use physical contact.

42. When is touching inappropriate? • When it is forced and when it is done in certain places or in certain ways.

43. What are two types of eye contact and what do they convey? • Gazing • Eagerness or attention. It shows liking or friendliness • Staring • Anger. It does not show that someone likes someone and its is not friendly.

44. What is attraction? • A kind of attitude of liking.

45. What is universal trait that is widely shared in the ideals of beauty? • A smiling person is more attractive than a frowning person

46. What is the matching hypothesis? • The view that people tend to choose other people similar to themselves in attractiveness and attitudes in the formation of interpersonal relationships.

47. Friends and partners tend to be similar in what ways (according to Michael)? • Race • Ethnicity • Age • Level of education • Religion

48. What are two reasons that we tend to choose friends and partners with backgrounds that are similar to our own? • We tend to live among people who are similar to ourselves • They tend to have the same attitudes as the person

49. What is reciprocity? • The mutual exchange of feelings or attitudes

50. Why do most people value friends? • Because of the rewards that friendships offers