1. AP Psychology 8-10% of AP Exam
Social Cognition
AP Psychology 8-10% of AP Exam

2. Quick Write:
Describe when a stereotype has caused you to have a wrong impression about someone, or caused someone else to have a wrong impression about you.
Has this wrong impression changed your behavior or the behavior of the other person?
What advice would you give to others when forming impressions about people?

3. Social Psychology
how thoughts and feelings influence behavior toward others, and how the behavior of others influences people’s thoughts
Social Cognition – mental processes associated with the ways people perceive and react to other individuals and groups

4. Social Influences on the Self
Self-concept – the beliefs we hold about who we are and what characteristics we have
Self-esteem – the evaluations we make about how worthy we are as human beings

5. Self Comparison Leon Festinger – people make two types of comparisons:
Temporal Comparison
Considering your present condition in relation to how you were in the past
Social Comparison
Evaluating yourself in comparison to others - using others as a basis for evaluating your attributes

6. Social Comparison
Reference Groups – categories of people to which you see yourself as belonging and to which you compare yourself
Downward social comparison – strategy of choosing someone as the target of comparison to oneself who is not as good on some dimension of importance
Upward social comparison – comparing yourself to people who do much better

7. Social Identity
Our beliefs about the groups to which we belong, and thus is a part of our self-concept
A group identity helps people to feel part of a larger whole (may foster an “us versus them” mentality)

8. Self-Schemas
Mental representations of people’s beliefs and views about themselves
Unified self-schemas – regard their attributes as stable across every situation and role
Differentiated self-schemas – regard their attributes as changing in different roles or situations

9. Impressions
First Impressions – quickly formed, difficult to change, long-lasting influence
People are confident about their judgment
Easier to remember
Forming Impressions – schemas create a tendency to infer a great deal about a person on the basis of limited information
Lasting Impressions – difficult to change, long-lasting influence

10. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Basis = Without our awareness, schemas cause us to subtly lead people to behave in line with our expectations
4 steps:
Adopting an attitude concerning a person
Behave as though your attitude is correct
Others react to your attitude
Your prophecy comes true, not because you were right, but because your behavior/attitude caused the prophecy to come true

11. Attribution
The process people go through to explain causes of behavior
People tend to attribute behavior in a particular situation either to:
Personal or Dispositional Attribution (primarily internal) causes
Situational Attribution (primarily external) causes

12. Biases in Attribution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkWTCXDCVvc
Fundamental Attribution Error: a tendency to over-attribute others’ behaviors to internal factors, such as personality traits
False Consensus Effect– tendency to overestimate the number of people who feel how you feel
Self-serving bias – tendency to take credit for success (internal) but to blame failure on external causes

13. Sources of Attributions
Harold Kelley’s 3 Elements:
Consensus – the degree to which other people’s behavior is similar to that of the individual. Ex: if it is similar, it has high consensus. If it is dissimilar, it has low consensus
Consistency – the degree to which the behavior occurs repeatedly in a situation. Ex: if it always occurs, it has high consistency. If it occurs intermittently, it has low consistency
Distinctiveness – the extent to which similar stimuli draw the same behaviors from the individual. Ex: if it is highly predictable, then it has low distinctiveness. If it is not predictable, it has high distinctiveness.
An internal attribution is most likely when there is low consensus, high consistency, and low distinctiveness.

14. Attributions

15. Attitudes
The tendency to think, feel, or act positively or negatively towards objects in our environment
3 Components:
Cognitive – set of beliefs about attributes of the attitude object
Affective – feeling about the object (emotional) – a like or dislike
Behavioral – involves a way of acting toward the object

16. 3 Components of Attitude

17. Forming Attitudes
Modeling (Bandura, Skinner)– children learn from their parents what one should believe and feel about certain objects
Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)– people are more likely to form a positive attitude toward an object when it is paired with stimuli that elicit good feelings
Mere-exposure effect – attitudes toward an object tend to become more positive as people are exposed to that object more often

18. Prejudice and Stereotypes
Stereotypes – Perceptions, beliefs, and expectations a person has about members of some group – schemas about the entire groups of people
Prejudice – undeserved, usually negative attitude toward an individual based on his or her membership in some group
Discrimination – action (based on prejudice attitude)
Out-group homogeneity – members of the “in group” see themselves as better than the “out groups”
Contact Theory – bring hostile groups together and give them a common goal = prejudice will be reduced

19. David Duez Video Lecture Link