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Published byMonica Bradley Modified over 9 years ago
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Social Cognition How we think about others and how those thoughts influence us Attitudes and Attitude Formation Impression Formation Attribution Cognitive Dissonance
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Schemas Our concept of something
Example: children have schemas about what a dog is. At first they think a dog is all furry animals with tails.
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Social schema Organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people. Examples: Tell me about Nerds Jocks Firefighters Librarians
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Person Perception First impressions are powerful
Social Categorization- quickly assign a person to a group Tend to notice behaviors in others that already fit our preconceived notions. Notice the Asians who get straight As. Notice the White guy who can’t dance.
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Implicit Personality Theory
Assume certain things are related. Varies by culture Rich people are happy Attractive people are nicer Quiet people are shy Athletic people aren’t intellectual
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Stereotypes Type of schema
A specific characteristic we assume somebody has because of their social schema. Oh, you are from South Carolina. You must hate Northerners and have Confederate flags all over your house!
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Confirmation Bias Focus on what confirms our beliefs
Ignore events that do not fit with our stereotypes and tell ourselves that that is a rare exception. Educated, entrepreneur, millionaire
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Attributions Think of the word “attribute”
Attributions when we try to explain our own behavior and the behavior of others. What do you notice about the results of our attribution scales?
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Fritz Heider & Attribution Theory
Theory on how & why people choose particular explanations of behavior Situational Cause Dispositional Cause Behavior caused by outside forces He must have gotten stuck in traffic Behavior caused by personality, comes from within us. He is irresponsible!
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How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.
Effect of Attribution How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.
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Problems with Attribution
Fundamental Attribution Error- tendency to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes in others. They are stupid losers. Actor-Observer Bias- tendency to focus more on situational causes in explaining our own behavior. I am a victim.
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Fundamental Attribution Error
Teacher- that kid is so lazy and doesn’t care about anything! Student- I work 30 hours a week to help support my family
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More Attribution Problems
Self-Serving Bias- We attribute our success to personal/internal factors but attribute our failures to situational/external factors. Hindsight bias- tendency to, after learning the outcome, to believe we could have predicted the outcome
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Hindsight Bias “I knew that Asian kid would be valedictorian!
“I could have told you she’d meet a creepy guy on the Internet.”
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Situational or dispositional Attributions?
A teen crashes the car. One parent says it was because of the slippery road. Another says it’s because he wasn’t paying attention to driving. One parent uses dispositional attributes; the other uses situational attributes.
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Cognitive Dissonance How did that survey make you feel?
Why did you feel that way? Cognitive Dissonance Theory- when our attitudes and behaviors don’t match, we experience emotional discomfort.
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Dealing With Cognitive Dissonance
Change Behavior I’ll never cheat again Change Attitude Cheating isn’t wrong Rationalize/Justify The teacher stunk- I had to! You have a belief that cheating on tests is bad. But you cheat on a test!!!
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Cognitive Dissonance The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognition) are inconsistent. For example, when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.
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Festinger and Carlsmith 1957
Those told to lie for $1 felt cognitive dissonance, had to change attitude to feel better. Those told to lie for $20 didn’t feel dissonance, didn’t have to change their attitude.
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