4. Social beliefs and judgements

Question 1

Bias

Answer 1

Assumptions and prejudgements guide our perceptions, interpretations and recall.

Question 2

Priming

Answer 2

Activating associations in memory.

Question 3

Subliminal messaging

Answer 3

Sensory stimuli below an individual’s threshold for conscious perception.

Question 4

Categorical thinking

Answer 4

Using social cues to categorise.

Question 5

Perceiving the social world

Answer 5

Priming -> categorical thinking -> perceiving and interpreting events

Question 6

Belief perseverance

Answer 6

We become prisoners of our own thought patterns.
Strong evidence needed to correct our belief.

Question 7

Reconstructing memories

Answer 7

We reconstruct our past by using our current feelings to combine memory fragments.
We are highly susceptible to influence.

Question 8

Automatic processing

Answer 8

Maybe rooted in subconscious bias.
Controls majority of behaviour.

Question 9

Controlled processing

Answer 9

Might not feel as natural
Takes time to process
Takes time to develop

Question 10

Types of schemas

Answer 10

Schemas are cognitive frameworks that help us to organise information.
Self-schemas
Person-schemas
Role-schemas
Event-schemas

Question 11

Social stimulus and schemas

Answer 11

Social stimulus -> social encoding -> schema

Social stimulus -> pre-attentive analysis -> focusing of attention -> comprehension -> elaborative reasoning -> schema

Question 12

Overconfidence

Answer 12

The tendency to be more confident than correct.
Incompetence feeds overconfidence.
Can’t even predict our own behaviour.
Our ignorance of our ignorance sustains our overconfidence.

Question 13

Remedies for overconfidence

Answer 13

1. Seek immediate feedback
   
   2. Break tasks down into smaller parts
   3. Play devils’ advocate

Question 14

Heuristics

Answer 14

Mental shortcuts used to make quick decisions. Straightforward rules of thumb based on past experiences. Not about making the correct decision but a quick decision.

Question 15

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 15

The tendency to assume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling a typical member.

Question 16

Availability heuristic

Answer 16

Assuming the likelihood of something based on historical evidence.

Question 17

Recognition heuristic

Answer 17

To assume that what is easily recognised is important.

Question 18

Attribution theory

Answer 18

How people explain others’ behaviours; by attributing it to internal dispositions or external situations.

Question 19

Influences on attribution theory

Answer 19

Misattribution
Can be supportive if viewed as external
Gender differences

Question 20

Fritz Heider’s (1958) ‘theory of naïve psychology’

Answer 20

We assume people’s behaviour is motivated and intentional, not random. Leads to more internal attributions.

Question 21

Jones and Davis’s (1965) ‘theory of correspondent inference’

Answer 21

We assume people’s actions are the result of their intentions and dispositions.

Question 22

Harold Kelly’s (1973) ‘covariation model’

Answer 22

We assume internal or external causes based on 3 factors.

Question 23

The 3 factors in the covariation model

Answer 23

1. Consistency - how consistent is the person’s behaviour in the situation?
   
   2. Distinctiveness - how specific is the person’s behaviour to the situation?
   3. Consensus - to what extent do others in the situation behave similarly?

Question 24

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 24

Tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behaviour.

Question 25

Why do we make the attribution error?

Answer 25

Actor-observer difference
The false consensus effect
The self-serving bias (take the explanation which suits us best).
The just world hypothesis (assuming the world is just and good and everything happens for a reason).

Question 26

Factors that affect the just world hypothesis

Answer 26

Proximity (if you’ve experienced it, then can be more empathetic to it).
Empathy (different levels in different people. Less empathy, more judgy and less likely to help).
Personality characteristics - value security, conformity, and conscientiousness.
Locus of control (internal vs external).

Question 27

Attributional complexity

Answer 27

• Level of interest or motivation
  
  • Preference for complex rather than simple explanations.
  • Presence of metacognition concerning explanations.
  • Awareness of the extent to which people’s behaviour is a function of interactions with others.
  • Tendency to infer abstract or causally complex internal attributions.
  • Tendency to infer external causes operating at a spatial distance.
  • Tendency to infer external causes operating at a temporal distance.