MOOC "Social psychology". Module 2

Every week we need to pass a new module of the course of social psychology. So, the 2^nd module was devoted to the topic of forming ideas, concepts about people. All the lectures were very informative and they seriously gripped my all attention because it is always interesting to learn more about people’s interaction. Now I want to tell briefly about them.

In the 1st lecture the lecturer talks about categories of  society in which people have similar features and peculiarities. We can classify individuals into different social groups according to age, sex, profession, nationality. There is an interesting term as a social category. It means that we have particular expectations of people and wait from them to be this or that way. For example, professors are usually are very strict, old, they wear glasses. However, reality can be different from our expectations. Thus,  professors are sometimes young, friendly and easy-going.

In the 2^nd  lecture there was given information about the structure of social categories.

There are such elements of a social category:

·        Scheme is a number of features that are typical for representatives of a social category;

·        Examples are descriptions of real people;

·        Prototype is an ideal perception of a person.

Social categories are formed in our mind also gradually and develop with enhancing our experience. However, they are quite stable. I got to know about amazing effect which is called self-fulfilling prophecy effect. I can bring the example of this effect. We think that a person is angry, we show that we are cautious about his behavior. Consequently, he reacts to this badly and proves that he was angry.

The 3d lecture was devoted to the topic of stages of social knowledge. The 1st stage of social knowledge is getting acquainted with a person. Firstly we perceive information about a person. We do it in a selective way. We pay attention to the people who are outstanding or important for us or who are always around us. We can remember remarkable individuals whom we see quite often.

In the 4^th  lecture the professor keeps talking about primary categorization which is -- 2nd stage of social knowledge. We start to use our knowledge of different social categories, its peculiarities. Besides, one tends to base on his individual preferences in the process of primary categorization. Moreover, the lecturer told about the 3d stage: attribution of features. We form an idea about a person. If we form an idea about people according to our knowledge of a social category, it is called a descending strategy. If we build our perception of a person according to his appearance and behavior, it is called an ascending strategy. We use an ascending strategy if we have a strong motivation to know a person, we do not pay attention to stereotypes about certain social groups, we think of a person as an individual personality.

In the 5^th  lecture I learnt about different kinds of heuristics.

Heuristic is a rule of making statements if we lack information.

·        Heuristic of representativity  is a phenomen when we rely on the prototype when we analyze a person. It causes the effect of neglecting important features of a person;

·        Heuristics of accessibility (one relies on easiness of perception of information). It causes  the effect of delusive correlation- formation of associations between two rare features;

·        Heuristic of adjustment (one relies on criterion of comparison). It causes the effect of anchoring- changings of judgements depending on criterion of comparison . E.g, We compare new colleagues with our old ones.

·        Heuristic of modeling. It relies on various possible consequences of events. According to this heuristic people start to think that anything can happen. For example, if we think that the situation could be better, we perceive this person and the event that happened to him in a more negative way.

The 6th lecture was about types of features of people. They can be active and social. We consider these features when we meet new people and try to make an opinion about them. However, it is more important for us to pay attention to social features. Besides, I got to know from the lecture factors that influence to the importance of information we get about a person.

In the 7th lecture I learnt information about causal attribution. It is explanation of different actions of people, of attribution of reasons to their behavior. Those reasons can be: internal and external, controllable and uncontrollable, stable and unstable. There are certain rules that are related with reasons of a person’s behavior: the rule of depreciation, the rule of intensification.

The topic of the 8th lecture was attributive prejudice.

 The fundamental mistake of attribution happens when a person judges another one taking into account internal reasons, but not external reasons.  

I also found interesting the effect of an agent and an observer. The person who does the action and the person who watches him explain the events differently. For example, an agent can think that he failed doing a task because it was hard, whereas an observer can think that it was because of his weakness.

There is another effect that is worth mentioning, which is called the effect of success-failure attribution. We all tend to praise ourselves when we do something successfully and regard that it happened because of our knowledge, skills, talent etc, but not because of luck. But when we do something wrong, we do not blame ourselves, we try to find other reasons of our failures. On the other hand, a person explains achievements of individuals whom he does not like much by external reasons, and their failures- by internal ones. It was funny to realize that I do it too very often.

I answered to the questions of the test at the end of the 2^nd module. Here is the result:

From my point of view, the course of social psychology gets more and more fascinating which makes me so excited. It was interesting to find common things in examples that the lecturer gave to describe various psychological terms and notions. Can’t wait to study the material of the 3d Module!

What do you think about this module? Share your opinions about it in the comments down below, please!