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    7 views4 pages

    II - Social Psychology

    Uploaded by

    Sandra Jasińska

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 4
    SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Exercise 1 Read the text and do the exercise that follows. Social psychology studies how people's feelings, thoughts, attitudes and behaviours are influenced by other people and the social context in which they occur. It also studies how people collect, interpret and assess infor- ‘mation of other people. The study of how people perceive and think about one another is called social cognition and is @ major area of interest in social psychology. Forming first impressions about people is a complex phenomenon. Generally, ‘we form impressions about others using preconceived ideas based on past experience that help us categorise and define people. These preconceived ideas are called schemas or schemata (the concept of schemas introduced in chapter 6). For instance, if you see a man wearing blue scrubs and latex gloves, you may rightly categorise him as a surgeon. Closely connected with ‘the surgeon’ category is a schema of a certain set of beliefs and expecta- tions. For most people, surgeons are respected, highly trained and qualified ‘medical professionals who specialise in surgical procedures. This particular schema, in turn, influences how you perceive the man in scrubs and how you behave around him, Generally, schemas help us quickly categorise people and respond appropri ately to them, but not all schemas are helpful. Sometimes they are inacourate and lead us to view other people in inappropriate ways. This is because ‘our schemas are significantly influenced by the phenomenon known as the 121 primacy effect. Basically, it means that our first impressions influence later impressions. For instance when you take to a new acquaintance, you will probably discount, misinterpret or even ignore later contradictory information, unless they are too obvious to overlook, ‘Schemas can even help evoke expected behaviour in other people. For instance, i you believe that your new acquaintance is aggressive, you treat him as if he were really aggressive. In this way, your beliof provokes his ag-

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