social cognition and biases

• social cognition - how we process + store information and how this affects our perceptions + behaviour
• attribution - assigning a cause to our own and others' behaviour
• schemas - knowledge about concepts, using top-down processing
• prototype - cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category
• causal attribution - interference process where people attribute a cause to an effect
• motivated tactician - think carefully and scientifically about certain things (only when personally motivated or necessary)
• what are the four theories of attribution?

  1. naïve psychologist
  2. attributional theory
  3. correspondent interference theory
  4. covariation model
• naïve psychologist:

  • coherent view of the world
  • control over the environment
  • internal vs external factors