Chapter 2 Social Cognition and Social Thinking

Cognitive processes and structures that influence and are influenced by social behaviour. 

An emphasis on explaining observable behaviour in terms of reinforcement schedules. 

Perspective in which the whole influences constituent parts rather than vice versa. 

A model of social cognition in which people try to reduce inconsistency among their cognitions, because they find inconsistencies unpleasant. 

Model of social cognition that characterises people as using rational, scientific-like, cause-effect analyses to understand their world. 

The process of assigning a cause to our own behaviour and that of others.

A model of social cognition that characterises people as using the least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviours. 

A model of social cognition that characterises people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, which they choose among on the basis of personal goals, motives and needs. 

Exploration of brain activity associated with social cognition and social psychological processes and phenomena. 

Asch's Gestalt-based model of impression formation, in which central traits play a disproportionate role in configuring the final impression. 

Traits that have a disproportionate influence on the configuration of final impressions, in Asch's configural model of impression formation. 

Traits that have an insignificant influence on the configuration of final impressions, in Asch's configural model of impression formation. 

An order of presentation effect in which earlier presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition. 

An order of presentation effect in which later presented information has a disproportionate influence on social cognition. 

Idiosyncratic and personal ways of characterising other people. 

Idiosyncratic and personal ways of characterising other people and explaining their behaviour. 

Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members. 

Perception of whether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target. 

Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relation among those attributes. 

A schema about an event. 

Patterns of behaviour that distinguisg between different activities within the group, and that interrelate to one another for the greater good of the group. 

Categories are considered to be fuzzy sets of features organised around a prototype. 

Cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category. 

Defining property of category membership. 

Specific instances of a member of a catergory. 

Model of memory in which nodes or ideas are connected by associative links along which cognitive activation can spread. 

Categorization accentuates perceived similarities within and differences between groups on dimensions that people believe are correlated with the categorization. The effect is amplified where the categorization and/or dimension has subjective importance, relevance or value. 

Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorization, social comparison and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup-defining properties. 

Turner and associates' theory of how the process of categorizing oneself as a group member produces social identity and group and intergroup behaviours. 

Ease of recall of categories or schemas that we already have in mind. 

Gradual schema change through the accumulation of bits of schema-inconsistent information. 

Sudden schema change as a consequence of gradual accumulation of schema-inconsistent information. 

Schema change as a consequence of schema-inconsistent information, causing the formation of subcategories. 

Property of a stimulus that makes it stand out in relation to other stimuli and attract attention. 

An intrinsic property of a stimulus on its own that makes it stand out and attrackt attention. 

Activation of accessible categories or schemas in memory that influence how we process new information. 

Ideal processes for making accurate social inferences. 

Set of normative models (ideal processes) for making accurate social inferences. 

Tendency for initial observations of instances from a category to be more extreme than subsequent observations. 

Pallid, factual, statistical information about an entire class of events. 

Cognitive exaggeration of the degree of co-occurence of two stimuli or events, or the perception of a co-occurence where none exists. 

Illusory correlation in which items are seen as belonging together, because they 'ought' to, on the basis of prior expectations. 

Illusory correlation in which items are seen as belonging together because they share some unusual feature. 

Cognitive short-cuts that provide adequately accurate inferences for most of us most of the time. 

A cognitive short-cut in which instances are assignes to categories or types on the basis of overall similarity or resemblance to the category. 

A cognitive short-cut in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is based on how quickly instances or associations come to mind. 

A cognitive short-cut in which inferences are tied to initial standards or schemas. 

Cognition is infused with affect such that social judgements reflect current mood. 

Explanation of a phenomenon in terms of the language and concepts of a lower level of analysis, usually with a loss of explanatory power.