Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Chapter 10.Social Cognition

Attitudes are beliefs and feelings about objects, people, and events that can affect how people behave in certain situations. A person´s attitude about strangers, for example, can influence how that person feels and behaves around people he or she does not know. Cognitive evaluation is when people evaluate evidence and form beliefs on the basis of their evaluations. Part of this process is learning and evaluating data. Cognitive anchors or persistent beliefs that shape the ways in which he or she sees the world and interprets events. This anchors tend to keep people from changing.
Persuasion is a direct attempt to influence other people´s attitudes or views. Parents, for example, may try to persuade their children to adopt the same values that they hold. Central route uses evidence and logical arguments to persuade people. Peripheral route attempts to associate objects, people, or events with positive or negative cues. Two sided arguments is where people present not only their side of the argument but also the opposition´s side. Emotional appeals persuade by arousing such feelings as royalty, desire, or fear rather than by convincing through evidence and logic. Most messages are aimed at a specific audience. People with sales resistance have no trouble turning down requests to buy products or services.
Prejudice is a generalized attitude toward a specific group of people. People who are prejudice judge other people on the basis of their group membership rather than as individuals. Stereotypes are unchanging, oversimplified, and usually distorted beliefs about groups of people. Discrimination refers to the unfair treatment of individuals because they are members of a particular group. For example, people may denied jobs, housing, voting privileges, or other rights because of their skin color, sex, or religion. Some causes of prejudice are: exaggerating differences, justifying economic status, social learning, victimization and scapegoating.  Primacy effect is the tendency for people to form opinions of others on the basis of the first impressions. Recency effect occurs when people change their opinions of others on the basis of recent interactions instead of holding on their first impressions. Attribution therapy; according to this people tend to explain behavior in terms of either dispositional, or personality, factors or in terms of situational, or external, factors.
 Actor observer bias occurs because we tend to judge others only by the behavior we witness, and people´s behavior may not always be a true reflection of their personalities. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate the effect of dispositional causes for another person’s behavior, and to underestimate the effect of situational causes. Self-serving bias allows individuals to place the blame for their failures on circumstances outside to place the blame for their failure on circumstances outside their control. Attraction is a kind of attitude. Attraction to another person often leads to friendship or love. Physical appearance tend to influence in the choosing of our friends and partners. Matching hypothesis is where people tend to choose as friends and partners those who are similar to themselves in attractiveness.

Love and friendship have important roles in social cognitive. Both of these words are used in our daily lives. We tend to attach to people, who we trust, respect and have affection for.  For every love relationship there should be passion, commitment, and intimacy. 

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