First, social cognition
What is social cognition?
There are two kinds of information that affect individuals: natural information and social information. The perception formed by various social information is social perception.
Social perception includes individual perception of others, groups and themselves. The perception of others and groups is interpersonal perception, and the perception of oneself is self-perception. In addition, the perception of behavioral reasons also belongs to the category of social perception.
Social perception is a basic social psychological activity, and the process of people's socialization and the occurrence of people's social motives, attitudes and social behaviors are based on social perception.
(B) factors affecting social cognition
1. Cognitive experience
Different experiences of individuals will lead to different results in cognition of the same object. Modern social psychology explains this phenomenon with the concept of "schema". The so-called schema refers to the network of existing knowledge and experience in the human brain. In social perception, schema plays an important role in guiding and explaining the newly perceived information. If there is no schema in the brain to explain new information, a new schema needs to be formed.
Functions of the mode include:
(1) influences the choice of concerned objects;
(2) affecting memory;
(3) Affect self-perception;
(4) affect the individual's perception of others.
2. Cognitive motivation and interest
Because of different motives and interests, individuals will choose different cognitive objects.
3. Cognitive emotion
Cognition in a positive emotional state tends to give others positive qualities and perceive others with a positive eye; On the contrary, cognitive people who are in a negative emotional state tend to perceive others with negative eyes.
Second, impression formation and impression management.
(A) the definition of impression and impression formation
Impression is the image of cognitive object in the mind of individual (cognitive subject). When individuals come into contact with a new social situation, they generally classify people or things in the situation according to their past experience, clarify their meaning to themselves, and make their behavior clearly oriented. This process is called impression formation.
The first impression, also known as the first impression, is formed when two strangers meet for the first time.
(B) Several effects in the process of impression formation
(1) The phenomenon that the first information of recency effect is more influential than the latter information in the process of impression formation is called the first effect; The phenomenon that the latest information is more influential than the original information is called recency effect.
The first cause effect is the mechanism of first impression.
Generally speaking, familiar people, especially close people, tend to produce recency effect, while unfamiliar or unusual people tend to produce the first cause effect.
(2) Halo effect.
Once individuals form a tendentious impression on some qualities of cognitive objects, they will evaluate other qualities of cognitive objects with this tendentiousness. The initial tendentious impression is like a halo, which makes other characteristics covered by similar colors. This phenomenon is called halo effect, also known as halo effect.
Halo effect is a generalized phenomenon, which generally works without people realizing it.
(3) Stereotype.
People form a fixed view of a certain kind of people or things through their own experiences, which is called stereotype. Stereotype has the significance of social adaptation and can simplify people's social perception process. However, stereotypes formed on the basis of limited experience often have a negative impact, which will lead to prejudice and even discrimination against certain group members.
(C) Information integration model in impression formation
In the process of impression formation, individuals synthesize all kinds of specific information of cognitive objects according to the principle of maintaining logical consistency and emotional consistency to form an overall impression.
1. addition mode
It refers to the sum of all kinds of quality scores when people form the overall impression.
2. Average mode
It means that some people do not simply accumulate the evaluation scores of various characteristics of others, but average the scores of various characteristics, and then form an overall impression of others according to the average.
3. Weighted average mode
It means that many people not only consider the number and intensity of positive and negative features, but also logically judge the importance of various features when forming an overall impression on others. The overall impression of others is not based on a simple average score, but on a weighted average score.
4. Central quality model
It means that in the process of impression formation, people tend to ignore some minor features that are of little significance to individuals, and only form an overall impression based on several important features that are of great significance to individuals. Generally speaking, the central quality model is closer to the actual situation of the impression formation process in most people's daily life.
Impression management
1. Definition of impression management
Impression management, also known as impression decoration and impression control, means that individuals influence others' impressions of themselves in a certain way, that is, individuals control their own self-image and influence others' impressions of themselves in a certain way, so that others' impressions of themselves meet their expectations.
The difference between impression management and impression formation is that impression formation focuses on information input, which is to form an impression on others; The focus of impression management is information output, which exerts influence on the impression formation process of others.
2. The role of impression management
Impression management is a way for individuals to adapt to social life. The foundation of successful impression management is to correctly understand the situation, others, one's own state and the expectation of society for one's role. Different people have different ways of impression management.
3. Common impression management strategies
(1) Manage yourself according to social norms.
(2) hide yourself and raise yourself.
(3) Manage yourself according to social expectations.
(4) Do what you want to do.
Third, attribution
(A) the definition of attribution
Attribution refers to the process in which individuals infer and judge the causes of their own and others' behaviors according to relevant information and clues. Attribution is not only a psychological process, but also a universal need of human beings.
(B) the classification of behavior reasons
1. Internal and external reasons
When individuals attribute, the first thing to pay attention to is internal and external causes. Internal cause refers to the internal causes of individuals, such as personality, quality, motivation, attitude, emotion, effort and other personal characteristics. Attributing behavior reasons to personal characteristics is called internal attribution. External factors refer to the external conditions for the occurrence of behaviors or events, including background, opportunities, the influence of others, and the difficulty of tasks. Attributing behavior reasons to external conditions is called external attribution or situational attribution.
In many cases, actions and events are not caused by a single factor such as internal or external factors, but both have an impact. This attribution is called comprehensive attribution.
2. Reasons for stability and variability
Among the internal and external causes of behavior, some are variable and some are stable.
3. Controllable reasons and uncontrollable reasons
Some reasons can be controlled by individuals, while others are impossible for individuals to control. Because of controllable factors, it is easier for people to predict the change of behavior; Due to uncontrollable factors, it is easier for people to make accurate predictions about future behavior.
(C) Control point theory
Locus of control is a theory of attribution tendency put forward by American psychologist Ross in 1950s and 1960s. Ross found that individuals have different explanations for the control sources of what happened in their own lives and the results. Some people think that they can control the development and results of things, and the control point of such people is within the individual, which is called the internal controller; Others tend to give up responsibility for their own lives, and their control points are outside the individual, so they are called external controllers.
Because internal controllers and external controllers understand different sources of control points, their attitudes and behaviors towards things are also different.
Attribution principle
1. invariance principle
Hyde is the founder of attribution thought. He believes that people usually use the principle of invariance when attributing, that is, looking for an unchangeable relationship between a specific result and a specific reason.
2. Discount principle
The discount principle was put forward by Kelly, another major contributor to attribution theory. Kelly found that if there are other specious reasons, the effect of one reason on a particular result will be discounted.
3. Covariance principle
When attributing, people try to find out the regular covariation of various conditions under which an effect occurs. Kelly pointed out that people can attribute by examining three kinds of special information, so Kelly's attribution theory is also called the three-dimensional theory, and the covariant principle is regarded as the superficial attribution principle by him.
According to the three-dimensional theory, individual attribution needs to consider three kinds of information at the same time: specificity information, homogeneity information and consistency information, and individuals draw conclusions from the covariation of the above three kinds of information.
(5) Factors affecting isolation
1. Social perspective
2. Self-value protection tendency
Observation position
4. Time utilization coefficient