What is social cognition and which place does it have in psychology? - ExamTests 1

Questions

Question 1

Solomon Asch came up with two models explaining how people form particular impressions of others they haven’t seen before. Name and explain the two models.

Question 2

What is the difference between the elemental approach and the holistic approach?

Question 3

In social psychology there are five general models of the social thinker that can be identified, one of which is the activated actor model. Explain this model.

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Question 1

1. The Configural Model: this model hypothesizes that people form a unified view of others which denies variation. This means that if a particular behavior does not fit into one’s overall impression of a person, one may interpret the behavior so that it aligns.
2. The Algebraic Model: this model does not begin with a unified whole, but starts with the observation of a number of isolated evaluations which are collected into a summary evaluation. It hypothesizes that people add up traits to form a total picture.

Question 2

According to the elemental approach (Wundt, Ebbinghaus), information comes to us, forming ideas. These ideas then become associated through contiguity in space and time. According to the holistic approach (Gestalt; Kant), the mind organizes the world according to an order of grouping.

Question 3

The activated actor model considers individuals as being activated actors. Without being aware of it, people’s social concepts are quickly cued by their social environments. As a result they also almost inevitably cue the cognitions, affect, evaluations, motivation and behavior that are associated with these social concepts.

What are the dual modes in social cognition? - ExamTests 2

Questions

Question 1

What model states that people have the tendency to rely on relatively automatic processes depending on situational demands?

Question 2

What is the difference between subliminal priming and conscious priming?

Question 3

What is meant by chronically accessible concepts?

Question 4

Name and explain three examples of a controlled process.

Question 5

Our tactics to move between unconscious, automatic thoughts and controlled, conscious thoughts depend on our motives. Name and explain our main motives.

Question 6

There are two main models on how we perceive others. Name and explain these models.

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Question 1

The motivated tactician model.

Question 2

Subliminal priming is when a concept will be activated in our mind by some environmental cue that doesn’t penetrate the surface of our consciousness. Conscious priming (postconscious automaticity) occurs when we are consciously aware of a prime, but we have no awareness of how that thing impacts our subsequent behavior.

Question 3

Chronically accessible concepts are those attributes we learn to associate with others through experience (via proceduralization).

Question 4

1. Goal-dependent automaticity: this is mostly automatic, yet requires some intentional processing and depends on the task being undertaken.
2. Goal-inconsistent automaticity: this occurs when our automatic processes steer us away from achieving our actual goals.
3. Intentional thought: this means rejecting the default, and overcoming instinct. It is enacted by paying attention and implementing intent.

Question 5

1. A sense of belonging: being accepted by other people, especially one’s own group.
2. Understanding: the need for socially shared cognition, the belief that one’s own views are shared and understood by those of their own group.
3. A sense of control and dependency: feeling like we are dependent on an outcome we do not influence, motivates us to seek out more controlled and deliberate processes.
4. Self-enhancement: seeing yourself in a positive light. We want to be optimistic for the future, feel more control than we have, and feel that we are better than we are.
5. Trusting the ingroup: trusting others within our social group.

Question 6

1. The dual-process model of impression formation: According to this model, we make an initial categorization. This is good enough if the person is not relevant to our goals. However, the more relevant they are to our goal, the more distinctions we make to our mental representation, especially if the individual exhibits traits that do not fit within our category. So we type, and then we subtype.
2. The continuum model of impression formation: According to this model we move people from one end of a continuum to the other. We place people initially in an automatic category, then re-categorize and specialize on closer inspection when we find data that contradicts our assumption. While we begin with category-based responses, we can advance to attribute-based responses.

Question 1

What model states that people have the tendency to rely on relatively automatic processes depending on situational demands?

Which role does attention and encoding have in social cognition? - ExamTests 3

Questions

Question 1

What is meant with encoding?

Question 2

How come salience is context-dependent?

Question 3

What makes a stimulus vivid?

Question 4

Our brains naturally categorize and organize information. On what does the accessibility of these categories depend?

Question 5

On what do assimilation and contrast effects depend on?

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Question 1

Encoding transforms a perceived stimulus into an internal representation.

Question 2

We are socially salient whenever we present some sort of novelty.

Question 3

A stimulus is vivid when it is emotionally interesting, concrete and imagery provoking, and close by in a sensory, temporal, or spatial way.

Question 4

Priming.

Question 5

The consciousness of the prime, features of the stimuli involved, and the goal of the perceiver.

Question 1

What is meant with encoding?

How are certain events stored in your memory and what is the role of its mental representation? - ExamTests 4

Questions

Question 1

There are four associative network models of social memory. Name and explain all four models.

Question 2

The activation of social categories can occur via either serial or parallel processing. What is the difference between these processes?

Question 3

What do the connections and connection strengths in parallel distributed processing (PDP) models represent?

Question 4

Why is the perceptual symbol systems (PSS) model particularly applicable to social cognition?

Question 5

Why is categorical person perception considered a top-down process?

Question 6

What does the exemplar approach suggest?

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Question 1

1. The PM-1 Model: this model works as a computer simulation. It predicts extra attention to impression-inconsistent material, resulting in extra associative links for those items and increasing their alternate retrieval paths.

2. The person memory model: this model suggests that we get an impression from a target’s behavior, which we interpret in trait terms, evaluate and review inconsistent behaviors.

3. The twofold retrieval by associative pathways (TRAP) model: this dual process model favors both inconsistent and consistent memory, depending on the strategy enacted.

4. The associated systems theory (AST): this model creates representations of others through four systems: the visual, verbal/semantic, affective, and action system.

Question 2

A parallel process activates many related pathways at once. A serial process occurs instead as a sequence of steps.

Question 3

The connections represent constraints about what units are associated, and connection strengths represent the type and magnitude of association.

Question 4

According to the perceptual theory of knowledge (model of perceptual symbol systems; PSS), our internal and external experience is encoded using perceptual symbols. This view is particularly applicable to social cognition because it does not merely focus on archiving memories, but on preparing for situated actions, embedded in context. Social psychology suggests that one’s social environment plays a major role in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The PSS model places the actor in their interpersonal context.

Question 5

Because we impose our previously assumed ideas onto reality.

Question 6

The exemplar approach suggests that one remembers separate instances that they have encountered rather than an abstract prototype. They then compare perceived stimuli against their own memories of exemplars of the same category.

Question 1

There are four associative network models of social memory. Name and explain all four models.

What is 'the self' in social cognition? - ExamTests 5

Questions

Question 1

Explain the following words; (1) self-concept, (2) self-schemas, and (3) self-esteem.

Question 2

Name and explain the two motivational systems that regulate our behavior.

Question 3

Higgins distinguished two types of self-guides: the ideal self and the ought self. What is the difference between these two self-guides? And how do discrepancies between the two serve as a motivator?

Question 4

In what way do self-improvement and self-enhancement differ?

Question 5

According to the simulation theory we self-reference. What does this mean?

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Question 1

A person’s self-concept is made up of their complex beliefs about who they are, and is influenced by cultural background. Self-schemas are cognitive-affective structures that represent the self’s qualities in any given domain. Self-esteem is the result of self-evaluations; it contributes to a sense of well-being, acts as a motivation for goals, and allows us to cope with difficult situations.

Question 2

1. The behavioral activation system (BAS); this appetite (desire) system causes us to approach other people and activities.

2. The behavioral inhibition system (BIS); this aversive (repulsive) system causes us to avoid others.

Question 3

The ideal self is the person one desires to be, and the ought self – often based on one’s beliefs about appropriate societal behavior and the expectations of others – is the person one thinks they should be. Discrepancies from the ideal self serve as a motivator: people strive to improve themselves.

Question 4

Self-enhancement is the effort to maintain or create a positive sense of self. Self-improvement is the goals we make that will bring us closer to our possible selves.

Question 5

That we infer the mental state of others by imagining what our own thoughts would be in a similar situation.

Question 1

Explain the following words; (1) self-concept, (2) self-schemas, and (3) self-esteem.

What are attribution processes? - ExamTests 6

Questions

Question 1

Name and explain the three elements of attribution testing (Kelley’s attribution theory).

Question 2

What is the difference in focus between early attribution theories and later attribution research? Name three theories that fit later attribution research.

Question 3

Name three factors on which the fundamental depends.

Question 4

Explain the self-serving attributional bias.

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Question 1

Three elements of attribution testing are:

1. Distinctiveness: Would the effect occur regardless of the presence of the actor?
2. Consistency over time/modality: Does the effect occur each time the actor is present, or during each different interaction?
3. Consensus: Do other people experience the same effect when the actor is present?

Question 2

Early attribution theories focused primarily on the logical principles of attribution processes. Later research focused primarily on the mental operations that cause attributions. Theories that fit later research are: (1) two-stage model of attribution processes; (2) theory of spontaneous trait inferences; (3) integrative stage theory.

Question 3

Behavior, setting and cognitive busyness.

Question 4

According to the self-serving attributional bias, people have a tendency to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure.

Question 1

Name and explain the three elements of attribution testing (Kelley’s attribution theory).

Which shortcuts can be distinguished in social cognition? - ExamTests 7

Questions

Question 1

Name and explain the four main heuristics.

Question 2

What are other shortcuts to decision making, besides heuristics? Name three.

Question 3

What does the discounted utility (DU) model stand for?

Question 4

What does temporal construal theory suggests?

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Question 1

Four main heuristics:

1. Representativeness heuristic: this heuristic is used to generate inferences about probability. We match the information we receive about a particular instance to the general category we have in our minds.
2. Availability heuristic: this is our assumption that something is more likely to occur if we can easily remember other times that something similar has occurred.
3. Simulation heuristic: this heuristic is an inferential technique in which we construct a hypothetical scenario to estimate how something will occur.
4. Anchoring: this is the use of a reference point in order to reduce ambiguity.

Question 2

Three other shortcuts to decision making:

1. Changing the decision frame
2. Use of knowledge
3. Integrating information

Question 3

The discounted utility (DU) model argues that the utility of any choice diminishes as consequences are spread over time. The farther ahead an event may be, the greater the weight of cognitive outcomes and the less the weight of affective outcomes.

Question 4

Temporal construal theory suggests that the greater the temporal distance to an event, the more one thinks about that event in abstract terms.

Question 1

Name and explain the four main heuristics.

What does accuracy and efficiency in social inference mean? - ExamTests 8

Questions

Question 1

Explain what is meant by the dilution effect.

Question 2

There are three perspectives on errors and biases. Name all three.

Question 3

When do biases in social inference don’t really matter?

Question 4

Explain why it can be psychologically advantageous to hold false beliefs.

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Question 1

When we are judging someone, the more information we have about them, the less likely we are to categorize them into a simple stereotype.

Question 2

Three perspectives on errors and biases:

1. Errors are consequential and real.
2. Errors are a byproduct of laboratory experimentation.
3. Heuristics might be superior to considerate reasoning.

Question 3

Biases in social inference do not matter when we make a snap judgment about a stranger that we will never meet again, because this will not impact our future behavior. If biases are consistent over time, this also reduces the impact they have.

Question 4

It can be psychologically advantageous to hold false beliefs, because false beliefs can be motivating. For example, we believe our marriage will last forever (potential false belief), even though it is statistically unlikely. But by believing it will last forever, you feel good about yourself and the choice you made to get married.

Question 1

Explain what is meant by the dilution effect.

What are the cognitive structures of attitudes? - ExamTests 9

Questions

Question 1

Name and explain the two main consistency theories that explain cognitive representation.

Question 2

What is understood by dual attitudes?

Question 3

How do social identity and self-categorization theories explain group polarization?

Question 4

What is the most important attitude function? Explain this function.

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Question 1

Two main consistency theories that explain cognitive representation:

1. Dissonance theory: This theory suggests that the experience of inconsistency between our beliefs and our behavior causes us to feel dissonant. Dissonance is a motivational state that we seek to relieve ourselves us. When we experience cognitive dissonance, we feel uncomfortable and try to relieve it in a number of ways: (1) by changing our behavior to fit our belief; (2) by changing our belief; (3) by finding an acceptable justification for our behavior that allows us to feel as if we have not broken our own code.
2. Balance theory: This theory posits that there are structures in the social perceiver’s mind that represent the perceiver, another person, and the mutual object. Liking and belonging are positive; disliking is negative. If you like someone and agree with them, then the relationship is balanced. But if you like someone and disagree with them, the relationship is imbalanced and can cause trouble.

Question 2

Dual attitudes are when an older, automatic attitude and a newer, explicitly accessible attitude interact. These two combating attitudes can create subtle forms of ambivalence and undermine confidence.

Question 3

Social identity and self-categorization theories combine informational and normative influences to explain group polarization. The first states that people interact along a continuum from interpersonal to intergroup identities. The latter builds on this theory, stating that people categorize themselves and others into distinct social groups, ingroup and outgroup members. According to this theory intergroup behavior is determined by social identities because people act as group members, categorized by normative and comparative fit in the meta-contrast ratio.

Question 4

The most important attitude function is object appraisal, which is comprised of two parts: (1) the knowledge function, which is cognitive and adaptive, allowing us to make sense and order of the world; (2) the instrumental function, which helps us achieve adaptive goals, to avoid pain and receive rewards.

Question 1

Name and explain the two main consistency theories that explain cognitive representation.

How does the cognitive processing of attitudes work? - ExamTests 10

Questions

Question 1

What does the heuristic-systematic model propose? Explain by using the terms heuristic processing and systematic processing.

Question 2

According to the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), there are two routes to persuasion. Name and explain both routes.

Question 3

How does a message itself influences persuasion?

Question 4

How come attitudes with high accessibility tend to have more influence on our perceptions of the attitude object than those with low accessibility?

Question 5

What is understood by embodied expressions of attitudes?

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Question 1

The heuristic-systematic model proposes that people engage in considerate, thoughtful processes when they are sufficiently motivated to do so, and when they are not overwhelmed with confounding information. Motivated people will engage in systematic processing whereby they weigh the pros and cons of an argument. People also engage in rapid, heuristic processing whereby they base attitudes and judgments on easy rules of thumb. These rules are often accurate enough to work with.

Question 2

Two routes to persuasion: (1) the central route, which involves elaborative thinking – Elaboration involves making relevant associations, scrutinizing arguments, inferring value, and evaluating overall message – and (2) the peripheral route, which includes attitude change that occurs outside of elaboration.

Question 3

The message influences persuasion by:

1. Repeated exposure. Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking.

2. Comprehension. When encountering a difficult message, one might have the tendency to put very little effort into it unless they are actively dependent on the outcome. Comprehension encourages persuasion if arguments are good – we need to be able to repeat a message to ourselves in order to elaborate upon it.

3. Relevance. Under low personal relevance, the number of arguments makes it seem to us like the communicator must know what they’re talking about. Under high relevance, we will look more at the quality of the arguments rather than the quantity.

Question 4

Attitudes with high accessibility resist contradiction and are enduring. They often ignore small variations in the attitude object, painting many unique samples with one big brush. People more consistently act on accessible attitudes. When we see an object to which we have an accessible attitude, we automatically make a strong evaluative association.

Question 5

Embodied expressions of attitudes are physical expressions that occur even when we are not conscious of the fact that we are evaluating stimuli.

Question 1

What does the heuristic-systematic model propose? Explain by using the terms heuristic processing and systematic processing.

What are the cognitive aspects of stereotyping? - ExamTests 11

Questions

Question 1

Under which circumstances does ingroup favoritism occur? And under which circumstances does it increase?

Question 2

What does the terror management theory (TMT) say about intergroup relations?

Question 3

What is understood by dehumanization? Name and explain the two forms it can take.

Question 4

What is the similarity between the indirect priming technique and aversive racism measures? And what is the difference between the two tasks?

Question 5

How can practice in suppressing stereotypes have an opposite effect?

Question 6

Peter is a black student who is made fun of by other students. However, he doesn’t know for sure if this is because the other students don’t like him personally, or if it’s because of his skin tone. What is this state of uncertainty called?

Question 7

Stereotype threat is driven by expectations about success and failure of other people. When performance seems to be diagnostic of one’s ability in a relevant domain, then the stereotype is more threatening than the normal threat that is associated with high-pressure performance. Explain this by using an example.

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Question 1

Ingroup favoritism occurs when group membership is the only information people have. It increases during conflict, social breakdown and ingroup importance.

Question 2

According to TMT, people identify themselves with their ingroups, which will outlive them, because they want to transcend death. When their self is under threat, people want to preserve what is familiar to them. This negatively influences their reactions to outgroups.

Question 3

Even though being human is the ultimate biological essence, people assign human essence more to their own group than to other groups. When it comes to emotions, we ascribe primary emotions to both our own groups and to others, and secondary emotions to the ingroup. This infra-human perception allows people to sympathize less with infrahumanized groups. Dehumanization takes on two forms:

1. Animalistic dehumanization: denying others the uniquely human culture, morality, logic, maturity, and refinement.

2. Mechanistic dehumanization: denying others the typical human nature, such as warmth, agency, and depth.

Question 4

The indirect priming technique and aversive racism measures both asses the speed-up in responses of people given a fit in the evaluation of a prime and stimulus. The tasks differ in the stimulus that follows the prime, as well as in the required response. In aversive racism tasks people have to make a lexical decision, as the words that follow the prime are either race-related or non-existing words. So participants have to choose between word or nonword. In indirect priming tasks the initial racial prime precedes a word that is unrelated to race. Participants now have to choose between good or bad.

Question 5

Practice can help reduce automatic stereotypical associations. However, if the goal is merely to suppress stereotypes, without adding alternative information, this can have an opposite effect. People merely trying to avoid stereotypes may experience a rebound, and will later have redoubled stereotypical associations. When people are concerned about appearing prejudiced, for example in interracial interactions, they inhibit their behavior. However, this inhibition brings up negative feelings about the interaction, which in turn causes the executive control capacities to deplete.

Question 6

Attributional ambiguity.

Question 7

Consider, for example, the stereotype ‘girls are bad at math’. Now if a girl fails on a math test, not only will she experience personal humiliation of failure, she will also experience shame of confirming stereotypes about the ingroup’s intrinsic abilities (in this case, that girls are bad at math).

Question 1

Under which circumstances does ingroup favoritism occur? And under which circumstances does it increase?

What is the interplay of cognitive and affective biases? - ExamTests 12

Questions

Question 1

What does the stereotype content model (SCM) argue?

Question 2

What are the four main claims of the integrated threat theory (ITT)?

Question 3

Explain how guilt is useful both in high- and low-prejudiced people.

Question 4

Racial prejudices are unusual in four ways. Name and explain these four ways.

Question 5

Often men are promiscuous, while women are choosy. How do parental investment models explain this?

Question 6

In what three ways do prejudices addressed to gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals differ from other prejudices?

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Question 1

SCM argues that stereotypes on the dimensions warmth and competence result from structural relations between groups. Perceived competition predicts warmth stereotypes, and perceived status predicts competence stereotypes. If the group’s position in society changes, so do the stereotypes associated with that group.

Question 2

There are four main claims of ITT.

1. It states that anxiety facilitates stereotyping.

2. It applies to an astonishing range of intergroup settings, attitudes toward various groups.

3. It poses a simple causal chain: antecedents  threats  prejudiced attitudes.

4. It suggests that both cognitive and emotional empathy can help to overcome anxiety and perceived intergroup threats.

Question 3

People that aren’t very prejudiced have high, internalized standards regarding their own interracial behavior. When they violate these standards, they feel conflicted and guilty. Highly prejudiced people have lower, more externalized standards. When they violate these standards, they experience anger. This awareness of the discrepancy causes them to inhibit behavior. It also triggers guilt. In time, the discrepancy-related stimuli and responses become associated with guilt, and they start to establish cues for control. So guilt is useful both in high- and in low-prejudiced people.

Question 4

Racial prejudices are unusual in four ways:

1. They are emotionally loaded; Whites experience both guilt and shame regarding racism.

2. They are aversive to most people who hold them; most people have good intentions with regard to race, as well as their rejection of their own potentially racist beliefs (aversive racism). The rejection of the presence of racism causes interracial interactions to be aversive, so people avoid them.

3. They aren’t plausibly evolved; People divide others into race categories, based on a configuration of socially defined cues. However, these categories are created by people and are in no way natural kinds (like species). Moreover, placing people in racial categories doesn’t fit a plausible evolutionary explanation.

4. Racial groups remain hypersegregated; racial prejudice is also segregated in modern society. There are many implications for social cognition and racial prejudice, with limited interracial contact as one of the primary effects.

Question 5

According to the parental investment models women always have had to invest more in reproduction than men. This is the reason that men are promiscuous, and women are choosy, according to these models.

Question 6

The prejudices addressed to gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals differ from other prejudices in at least three primary respects:

1. Sexual orientation is not as clear as race, gender, and age.

2. Sexual orientation is the most widespread prejudice.

3. Belief that homosexuality is biologically determined tends to correlate with tolerance, whereas with race, gender, and age, the belief that biology is destiny tends to correlate with prejudice.

Question 1

Under which circumstances does ingroup favoritism occur? And under which circumstances does it increase?

How does a person go from social cognition to affect? - ExamTests 13

Questions

Question 1

Explain why you have better chances at a romantic evening when you go watch a scary movie instead of a romantic comedy?

Question 2

Explain how emotion works according to the arousal-plus-mind theory.

Question 3

How do we make sense of our successes and failures according to Weiner’s attributional theory?

Question 4

How do self-focused people deal with discrepancies between their current state and some goal or standard according to the cybernetic theory of self-attention?

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Question 1

According to the excitation-transfer theory, arousal in one situation can bleed over into the following situation. So when you watch a scary movie, your heart rate and blood pressure increases. After the movie is over, this physiological arousal lingers, intensifying any positive emotions you experience and transferring to romantic or sexual attraction.

Question 2

The arousal-plus-mind theory sees emotion as a combination of physical arousal and the cognitive processes involved with evaluating that arousal. The physical provides the feel of the experience, while the cognition provides the quality of the emotion. This theory locates the origin of arousal in interruption – we are aroused when a perceptual or cognitive discrepancy occurs, or when ongoing action is interrupted. The bigger the goal being interrupted, the bigger the interference, the stronger the emotional response we feel. Arousal initiates cognitive interpretation, which determines whether what we feel is positive or negative.

Question 3

Weiner’s attributional theory describes some basic dimensions upon which we make our evaluation. These dimensions inspire particular emotions:

1. Internal vs. external locus of control: If positive, internal locus of control gives us pride while external locus of control inspires gratitude. If negative, internal locus of control gives us guilt while external locus of control makes us angry.
2. Stability over time: In case of success, attributions to stable causes lead to positive expectations for success in the future. In case of failure, attributions to stable causes can result in low expectations for the future. Attributions to unstable causes suggest the possibility of a different outcome in the future.
3. Controllability: If controllable and negative, behavior is met with anger from others. If uncontrollable and negative, it is met with pity and helping behavior.

Question 4

According to the cybernetic theory of self-attention self-focused people notice discrepancies between their current state and some goal or standard. To reduce this discrepancy, people try to adjust their behavior. People constantly continue adjusting and comparing until they meet the standard or give up

Question 1

Explain why you have better chances at a romantic evening when you go watch a scary movie instead of a romantic comedy?

How does a person go from affect to social cognition? - ExamTests 14

Questions

Question 1

Which four mechanisms underlie our tendency to help others when we’re in a good mood? Explain these mechanisms.

Question 2

What does mood-congruent memory effect state?

Question 3

Which two negative moods have strong effects on our judgment, and what are the consequences for our judgment?

Question 4

How does the separate-systems view consider cognition and affect?

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Question 1

Four main mechanisms underlie our tendency to help others when we’re in a good mood:

1. Attention: good moods caused by a focus on one’s own good fortune can inspire one to pay it forward.

2. Separate process: people in a good mood will help if the request emphasizes the rewards of helping rather than a guilt-inducing obligation.

3. Social outlook: a good mood can be caused by an improvement in one’s social outlook.

4. Mood Maintenance: Cheerful people are less likely to help if it would ruin their mood, avoiding negative affect.

Question 2

The mood-congruent memory effect states that we are more likely to remember happy things when happy, sad things when sad. We pay attention to stimuli that reflect our moods as well.

Question 3

Two negative moods with strong effects are fear and anger. Fear increases paranoia, risk-focus, and pessimism. When afraid, we seek to avoid and prevent trouble. Angry people, on the other hand, have an approach orientation. Angry people are risk-seeking, not avoiding. Anger facilitates prejudice and competition.

Question 4

The separate-systems view of cognition and affect suggests that cognition and affect exist as parallel pathways and do not actually influence one another that much. This view sees affective reactions as primary, instinctive, and inescapable, while cognition is a secondary response, considered and easier to ignore.

Question 1

Which four mechanisms underlie our tendency to help others when we’re in a good mood? Explain these mechanisms.

What does self-regulation mean? - ExamTests 15

Questions

Question 1

When constructing goal-oriented situations, we go through motivational and volitional stages. Describe this process.

Question 2

Several factors determine whether attitudes will predict behavior. Name and explain at least five of these factors.

Question 3

Through action identification we are able to place our actions in a hierarchy. When an action cannot stay at a high level, it drops to a lower one. Explain why the likelihood that waiting in line for the cash register at the supermarket would drop to a lower level of action identification is small.

Question 4

Some people blend into social situations easily (high self-monitors) while others are always themselves regardless of their social setting (low self-monitors). How does this manifest itself in social situations?

Question 5

What is understood by confirmatory hypothesis testing? And why is it particularly troubling in a situation like the courtroom?

Question 6

What is understood by the self-fulfilling prophecy?

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Question 1

We begin with a deliberative mindset in which we choose among alternative goals. This leads us to the implementational mindset, in which we decide when and how to act to implement the course of actions that will lead to our goal. We employ goal-shielding, an attentional focus that allows us to ignore deactivated alternative goals and pursue our activated goal single-mindedly. These two mindsets are marked by different cognitions, with a deliberative mindset being more pessimistic.

Question 2

Factors that determines whether attitudes will predict behavior:

1. Strength of the attitude; strong attitudes generally influence behavior.

2. Accessibility of the attitude; attitudes generally influence behavior if accessible.

3. Embeddedness of the attitude; cognitions are more likely to influence behavior when they have been rehearsed and practiced.

4. Expertise and knowledge; cognitions are more likely to influence behavior if they concern a domain of people’s relative expertise and considerable knowledge.

5. Experience; attitudes formed from direct experience predict behavior better than those based on indirect experience.

6. Vested interest; attitudes that involve self-interest are more likely to influence behavior.

7. Stability; stable cognitions that are easily remembered are more likely to predict behavior than less stable cognitions.

Question 3

Waiting in line for the cash register at the supermarket is not difficult to enact; it is familiar to most people, it is simple, it may take a short time, and it is not hard to learn. Consequently, the likelihood that waiting for a cash register would drop to an even lower level of action identification is small.

Question 4

A high self-monitor will be very sensitive to social norms and interpersonal cues related to appropriate behavior, becoming the person they need for the situation they are in. Low self-monitors will do the opposite, attempting to put their best self forward. High self-monitors tend to be more successful in social situations, and will have less of a problem behaving in a range of situations, while low self-monitors will tailor situations to fit their self-concepts, and focus on how they behave. When making attributions, high self-monitors will point to their situation while low self-monitors will look to themselves.

Question 5

We engage in confirmatory hypothesis testing when we have a hypothesis about another person’s personality; we ask them leading questions that only prove our hypothesis, rather than disprove it. This is particularly troubling in situations like the courtroom. In courtrooms, leading questions assume a history of certain (often aggressive) behavior, whether true or not. Conjectures within such leading questions can themselves be interpreted as evidence for the behavior in question. Having to answer such a leading question forces you to provide information that further confirms the behavior.

Question 6

A self-fulfilling prophecy is any positive or negative expectation about circumstances, events, or people that may affect a person's behavior toward them in a manner that causes those expectations to be fulfilled. So an initially false definition evokes behavior that makes it true (behavioral confirmation).

Question 1

When constructing goal-oriented situations, we go through motivational and volitional stages. Describe this process.