Exam 3: Social Cognition: Understanding Ourselves and Others

People who have_________________are greatly concerned with the self-implications of life's everyday events and are particularly likely to respond to these events with attempts to enhance or protect the self.

Unexpected events tend to lead people toward more complex thinking.

What is a benefit of engaging in upward social comparison?

Home assignment: Search through newspapers and magazines for "advice" columns in which people ask for help with personal problems or discuss their experiences and insights about life. Collect several examples and conduct an analysis of the kinds of attributions people make when discussing their own behavior and the behavior of others.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

The strategy of basing a judgment on the felt ease with which one can bring to mind particular instances of an event is known as the

In Western societies, people tend to perceive the behaviors of others as largely driven by factors; in Eastern societies, people tend to perceive the behaviors of others as stemming largely from_________________factors.

Which of the following people is most likely to make self-serving attributions?

Imagine that you participate in an experiment in which you are shown an essay supporting legalized abortion. The experimenter tells you that the essay was written by a student who was forced to write an essay that supports abortion. According to the results of similar studies, you would be likely to conclude that the author of the essay was

According to fundamental attribution error, not only do we have a tendency to see others' behavior as arising from their personality, but this tendency sometimes leads us to under- appreciate the role of situational influences. Why?

A mental shortcut through which people begin with a rough estimation as a starting point and then revise this estimate to take into account unique characteristics of the present situation is

Is positive self-regard a universal desire? A recent study by Sedikides, Gaertner, and Toguchi (2003) found that

Individuals tend to seek information that can potentially disconfirm their expectations.

People who have high self-esteem engage in_________________, whereas people who have low self- esteem tend to focus on_________________.

Researchers who investigated cultural aspects of the fundamental attribution error found that as a primary cause of behavior.

Discuss the role of culture, and the individualism/collectivism dimension in particular, on social cognition. Include discussion of research on attributional and self-enhancement processes.

In contrast to individualistic cultures, collectivistic cultures emphasize

Elaine watches a news program which covers several violent incidents as well as two murders. Later, when Elaine is asked to estimate the general rate of incidence of homicides in the United States, these examples quickly come to Elaine's mind, and she estimates the incidence rate to be higher than it actually is. This example illustrates the

How does the availability of cognitive resources impact accuracy motivation?

Name and describe the four core processes of social cognition.