Feb+18+meeting

topics covered last night:

Social Cognition: Chapter 18 Terms sheet

Priming: exposure to things in our environment influence how we think, our behavior, we are not aware we are being influenced ex. men shown picture of women in bikinis are more likely to treat women interviewing for a job in a sexist manner Primacy effect: first information we receive has the most effect, this is known as a first impression, which is usually wrong because there is not time to Gestalt the person and their personality ex. the story of Jim first presents him as sociable, then as anti-social, most people will say he is sociable Inferences: Judgements or assumptions beyond information given ex. if someone knows one person of a group, they will judge other people of that group based on that person Self-fufilling prophecy: unconsious, part of stereotypes, you see what you expect to see, a person becomes what others think they should become, all based on stereotypes, what you or others think affects what you do or who you become ex. the Pygmallion effect, people will live up or down to expectations Individuation: treat people on an individual basis, instead of stereotyping, requires control and discipline, this is the goal that goes beyond all the terms above Attributions: traits, personal or dispostional, situational Fundamental Attribution Error: we think things happen because of dispotional attributes but they are usually situtational attributes ex. someone fails a test because they didn't study but the teacher will think they failed the test because they are not smart (this can lead to a self-fufilling prophecy and the error is self-erasing) Attitudes: reactions (favourable or unfavourable) to people or situtations Cognitive: animal testing of cosemetics is cruel Affective: I feel terrible when I wear make-up Behavorial: I'll follow my beliefs and won't wear make-up dissonance occurs when the three parts of attitude don't match up

Read: Interpersonal Attraction (pages664-674)