Social Thinking: Key Concepts and Theories

Content Category 8b: Social Thinking Attributing Behavior to Persons or Situations (PSY) Attributional processes (e.g., fundamental attribution error, role of culture in attributions) Beliefs about others Attribution theory – line of research into the causes that people use to explain the observed behaviors of others Dispositional attribution – assigning the cause of an action to an inherent quality or desire Situational attribution – deciding that environmental forces were responsible Fundamental attribution error – tendency to automatically favor dispositional attributions over situational ones when judging other people; dispositional attribution happens quickly, requires less information and attention Only refers to others Self-serving bias – tendency to attribute one’s success to internal factors while attributing one’s failures to external factors; thereby functions to serve self-esteem Different cultural patterns of thought affect the process of attribution; the fundamental attribution error may be characteristic of Western viewpoints (individualistic). East Asian show a lower bias towards dispositional attributions, and may have a tendency to be biased towards situational attributions, when situational factors are emphasized How self-perceptions shape our perceptions of others Influence of our self perceptions: group identification also has an effect; in-group members are viewed more positively and are thought to have a greater variability on assorted personality traits. When put ourselves in other people’s shoes and assume they feel the same way we feel. Bem’s original experiment: test subjects see a video of a man raving about doing a boring task. If Bem told the subjects the man was bribed $20 to do this, the subjects came to the conclusion that the man hated the task in reality. On the other hand, if Bem told them the man was only paid $1, the subjects assumed the man actually enjoyed the task. Note, all these are assumptions based on self-perception, as the subject never met the man in the video. How perceptions of the environment shape our perceptions of others Perceptions of the environment also affect our attributions and perceptions of other people Examples: body language changes the way you feel about someone. You are also more likely to perceive someone positively if you are in a relaxed, comfortable environment. Prejudice and Bias (PSY, SOC) Processes that contribute to prejudice In group – group with which an individual shares identity and toward which she feels loyalty Out group – group with which she does not identify and toward which she may feel competition or hostility Bias – individual favors the in-group and devalues out-groups Prejudices – strict generalizations about other groups of people • developed through schemas – organizing patterns of thought used to categorize and interpret information • Schematic processing is relevant to explaining response times during IAT because the speed with which memory schemas (organized clusters of knowledge) are activated and processed is presumed to indicate the participant’s implicit attitude • • Power, prestige, and class (SOC) o Power – ability to get other people to do something o Prestige – reputation in society o Privilege – set of unearned benefits one receives because of some attribute largely outside of their control, like • • The role of emotion in prejudice (PSY) The role of cognition in prejudice (PSY) gender, race, class, sexual identity, citizenship status, or ability Emotion and Cognition in Prejudice (which is an attitude) At the core of prejudice is often fear or frustration, when someone is faced with something intimidating or unknown • Displaced aggression often falls on marginalized people, or Scapegoats When you see an unfamiliar person of another race, emotion processing centers in the brain become more active automatically. It is only through active self-monitoring that people are able to inhibit prejudiced responses. These self-inhibitions weaken with age, which explains your racist grandma Cognition – our brains seek to categorize and organize data based on similarities—lead to stereotypes • Our brains also hone in on differences. People who are seen as distinctive draw more attention and are often likely to be seen as representative of groups (seeing Michael Jordan, concluding that black people are athletic) • illusatory correlation – created between a group of people and a characteristic based on unique cases Attributional biases – the sick or disadvantaged often face prejudice because others believe that they have done something wrong Stereotypes Stereotypes – oversimplified ideas about groups of people, based on characteristics; can be positive or negative; basically putting things/people into categories Discrimination – involves acting a certain way toward a group (prejudice involves thinking) • Processes like affirmative action can lead to reverse discrimination Racism – prejudices and actions that discriminate based on race Institutional discrimination – refers to unjust and discriminatory practices employed by large organizations that have been codified into operating procedures (“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy) Stigma (SOC) Stigma and Deviance Deviance – violation of society’s standards of conduct or expectations • can involve negative or positive (Rosa Parks) acts Stigma – assigning demeaning labels to devalue deviant members (ex: fob) Ethnocentrism (SOC) • Ethnocentrism vs. cultural relativism • • • Ethnocentrism Versus Cultural Relativism Ethnocentrism – tendency to judge people from another culture by the standards of your own. An example of favoritism for one’s in-group of out-groups Cultural Relativism – judging another culture by its own standards • Processes Related to Stereotypes (PSY) Self-fulfilling prophecy if a race is stereotyped a certain way, people will have those expectations from you and create conditions to fit those stereotypes. Eg: if the stereotype is your race being good at basketball, people will expect you to be good at it without even knowing you, TV ads will show your race playing basketball / wearing Air Jordans. In the end, this makes it easy for you to become that stereotype, thus, a selffulfilling prophecy Stereotype threat Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Stereotype Threat Self-Fulfilling prophecy – stereotypes can lead to behaviors that affirm the original stereotypes. Refers to the individual making the stereotypes—that he will engage in behaviors that strengthen his beliefs Stereotype Threat – refers to self-fulfilling fear that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype • Females performing worse at a math test after getting told that males are better at math