3. In social psychology, a stereotype is a thought
that can be adopted about specific types of
individuals or certain ways of doing things.
These thoughts or beliefs may or may not
accurately reflect reality. However, this is only a
fundamental psychological definition of a
stereotype. Within psychology and spanning
across other disciplines, there are different
conceptualizations and theories of stereotyping
that provide their own expanded definition.
Some of these definitions share commonalities,
though each one may also harbor unique aspects
that may contradict the others.
4.
5. Confirmation bias is the brain’s tendency
to look for information which supports
your initial hunch and ignores everything
else that contradicts it. Confirmation bias
is a type of cognitive bias and represents
an error of inductive inference toward
confirmation of the hypothesis under
study. Confirmation bias is a phenomenon
wherein decision makers have been shown
to actively seek out and assign more
weight to evidence that confirms their
hypothesis, and ignore or under weigh
evidence that could disconfirm their
hypothesis. Your brain is so judgemental.
6. You feel fantastic when your favourite football team
or tennis player has a great result. It’s as though
you have triumphed personally.
You wear your club’s shirt throughout the weekend,
read all the newspaper and internet match reports,
watch Match of the Day and initiate conversations
about the game with both fellow and rival fans.
This is known as ‘Basking in Reflected Glory’ (or
BIRGing). It is the process through which we let the
world know that we are associated with a successful
club while experiencing a warm glow as we
mentally revisit the experience.
7. In Social Psychology,
Social loafing is the phenomenon of people exerting
less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group
compared to when they work alone.
Social loafing can be mainly explained by the “free-
rider” theory and the resulting “sucker effect”.
- “Free-rider” theory : An individual’s reduction in
effort in order to avoid pulling the weight of a fellow
group member.
- “Sucker effect” : People feel that others in the group
will leave them to do all the work while they take the
credit.
8. Counterfactual thinking is a concept in
psychology that involves the human tendency
to create possible alternatives to life events
that have already occurred; something that is
contrary to what actually happened.
Counterfactual thinking is exactly as it states:
"counter to the facts." These thoughts consist of
the "What if?" and the "If I had only..." that
occur when thinking of how things could have
turned out differently. Counterfactual thoughts
are things that could never possibly happen in
reality, because they solely pertain to events
that have occurred in the past.
11. --BIRGing--
Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) is a self-serving cognition whereby an
individual associates themselves with known successful others such that the
winner's success becomes the individual's own accomplishment. The
affiliation of another’s success is enough to stimulate self glory. The
individual does not need to be personally involved in the successful action.
To BIRG, they must simply associate themselves with the success. Examples
of BIRGing include anything from sharing a home state with a past or
present famous person, to religious affiliations, to sports teams. For
example, when a fan of a football team wears the team's jersey and boasts
after a win, this fan is engaging in BIRGing. A parent with a bumper sticker
reading "My child is an honor student" is basking in the reflected glory of
their child. While many people have anecdotal accounts of BIRGing, social
psychologists seek to find experimental investigations delving into BIRGing.
Within social psychology, BIRGing is thought to enhance self-esteem and to
be a component of self-management.
--END--
12. --Confirmation bias--
It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display
this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret
it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply
entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their
existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to
explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though
the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs
persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a
greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation
(when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
--END--
13. -- Social Loafing—
In social psychology, social loafing is the
phenomenon of people exerting less effort to
achieve a goal when they work in a group than
when they work alone. This is seen as one of the
main reasons groups are sometimes less
productive than the combined performance of
their members working as individuals, but
should be distinguished from the accidental
coordination problems that groups sometimes
experience. (Explain “free rider” theory on slide)
(Explain “sucker effect” on slide)
--END--
14. --Counterfactual Thinkng--
Counterfactual thinking is thinking about a past that did not happen. This often happens in 'if
only...' situations, where we wish something had or had not happened. This can be so powerful we
can change our own memories, adjusting the facts and creating new memories. It can happen to
cover up trauma or may be just excuses to avoid facing uncomfortable truths. It can also be to
explain what is otherwise unexplainable.
This effect is increased by:
Replication: if we can easily reconstruct events as happened or as wished for.
Closeness: if the unwanted event is close, such as just missing winning the lottery by one number
or just missing a taxi.
Exception: if the event occurred because of a non-routine action that might well not have happened
('if only...').
Controllability: if something could have been done to avoid the event.
Action: in the short term, we regret actions that cause problems more than inaction that might
have the same effect (although in the longer term, this effect is reversed).
We can also do the reverse, thinking about bad things that did not happen, such as when we
narrowly avoid being in an accident. Counterfactual thinking often happens around situations of
perceived 'luck'.
--END--
