PSY220H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Comparison Theory, Eugenius Warming, Conjunction Fallacy
Document Summary
Social cognition (borrowing heavily from cognitive psychology) has become the dominant paradigm in social psych in the past 20 years. With invention of personal computer, a new analogy to compare cognition to (mental operations performed as people solve problems of daily life). A different from behaviourism, where cognition is not studi-able because we can"t see it. Concept: a unit of knowledge (usually about a category). Aka schema: bundle of info about a category. A great deal of subjectivity in mental concepts. Helps us classify and label things (need a word for something for it to exist in someone"s mind) What do concepts do: reduce the amount of processing we need to do when there is too much information available, allows you to process information without scrutinizing every detail. (see a dog, know you can pet it. That it"s a dog, don"t need to put together furry panting animal every time).
