5. Social Cognition Flashcards
Define schema
mental framework
What categories of schemata are there?
- social categories (e.g. gender, nationality)
- person (nerd, athlete, librarian)
- role (student, professor, physician)
- event (first date, exam, restaurant)
How are categories organised?
by levels of inclusiveness
e.g. european = more inclusive
scottish = less inclusive
Functions of schemata
- selection of relevant information
- disambiguation
- prediction and control
- reconstruction
Advantages of schemata
- frameworks for encoding, storing and retrieving information
- saves mental effort
- guidelines for judgement and behaviour (social)
Disadvantages of schemata
- schematic stereotypes
- persistence even in the presence of dis-confirming evidence (perseverance effect)
- act as self-fulfilling prophecies
- biased interpretations
Describe an example of the perseverance effect
inadmissable evidence continues to have effect on jury
Describe an example of “biased interpretations”
- football match
- fans from either side complain that there were more fouls from other team
Higgins, Rholes and Jones (1977)
PRIMING MANIPULATION
- perception study: memorize words while identifying different colours
- either positive traits or negative traits
- next, rating of Donald after a story
RESULTS:
those who had to memorise the positive traits, ated Donald much more positively
Define stereotype
An inference made according to the assignment of a person to a particular category
Factors of schema activation and use
- priming (recency of use)
- accessibility (frequency of use)
- situational factors and individual differences
What goes “hand in hand” with schemata?
Heuristics
Compare heuristics with schemata
schemata - emphasis on knowledge base on which procedure operates
heuristics: emphasis on mental procedure
The Representativeness Heuristic
Deciding whether an example belongs to a certain group depending on how similar it is to the other members of that group
Problem: similarity ignores multiple biases
The Base-Rate Fallacy
If presented with related base rate information and specific information, you tend to ignore the former and focus on the latter
Representativeness Bias in Concepts of Randomness
People expect random sequences to be representative
E.g. a coin toss run of HTHTTH is judged to be more likely than HHHTTT
e.g. The Gambler’s Fallacy: after a run of reds in roulette, black is more likely to come up next
Availability Heuristic
- Frequency of an event is assessed by the ease of retrieval of instances in it…
BUT: - availability is influenced by many factors (other than frequency)
Explain an example of the availability heuristic.
Physicians’ diagnoses are influenced by how easily they can bring different diseases to mind.
What factors (other than frequency) can influence availability?
- familiarity
- salience
- effectiveness of retrieval strategy
Situational Factors:
Costs of being wrong
- outcome dependency
- accountability
Situational factors:
Costs of being Indecisive
- anxiety and stress
- performance pressure
- communication goals
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
people create consequences that align with the predictions toward that specific subject
- evidence stronger for “social” effects than for “achievement”
When are self-fulfilling prophecies most likely to occur?
When people are distracted
Representativeness
Judging by resemblance
Availability
Judging by the ease with which examples come to mind
Anchoring Heuristic
- people often estimate by adjusting to an initial value, the anchor
- biased towards anchor
The Framing Bias
- changing the description of a prospect changes the decision
What are the two explanations for “The Framing Bias”?
- Prospect Theory
- Priming effect
Prospect Theory
re. the framing bias
- negative effect of a loss is larger than the positive effect of a gain
- losses loom larger than gains
How does the Priming Effect explain the Framing Bias?
- positive framing elicits favourable associations
Name examples of counterfactual thoughts.
- what if your parents never met?
- how might your life have unfolded differently?
Define counterfactual thinking.
cognition that involves the simulation of alternatives to past or present factual events/circumstances.
can be directed:
-upwards
-downwards
What is meant by downwards-directed counterfactual thoughts?
- simulated alternatives are better than the facts
What is meant by upwards-direct counterfactual thoughts?
- simulated alternatives are worse than the facts
Name the triggers of counterfactual thoughts.
- failure
- accidents
- illness
- bare misses
Name the functions of counterfactual thoughts.
- avoidance of negative outcome in the future
- escape negative affect e.g. anger/depression
- causal analysis - especially sensible when a desired or feared outcome was just barely missed
What are the cognitive outcomes of dual possibility of an event?
- perceived causality of an antedecent condition
- assessed probabilities of future, similar events
- perceived controllability of the event
Behavioral Priming
— individuals for whom the Schema for rudeness had been primed were much more likely to interrupt an experimenter‘s conversation than were individuals for whom the Schema for „politeness“ had been primed. This was true despite the fact that both groups rated the experimenter the same in terms of politeness
— age experiment: people primed by sorting words associated with age/youth —> subsequent speed of exit measured
- priming with old words —> slower gait (like elderly)
- priming with young words —> faster gait (youthful)
Consider the Opposite strategy
Beforehand deciding
