8/27 The Rise of Social Cognition (why) Flashcards
Zeitgeist becomes an incrased focus on what?
Process
Research start asking about underlying mechanism
Attribution work (70s/80s) moved beyond normative models of Kelley and Jones and Davis into what?
Taylor/Fiske: **SALIENCE. **Causality ascribed to salient agent in interaction. Simple research two people in convo, altered camera perspective.
Fazio/Zanna/Snyder: Desire to understand when and how attitudes guide behavior. **Process of attention memory –> behavior. **
Petty/Cacioppo/Chaiken: mechanisms underlying persuasion. Not an “is’ HOW go we go to attitude change. Systematic process, different ways. Heuristic expert = true, look at arguments, stronger argument = change.
Zanna/Cooper: **Dissonance as process, misattribution of arousal. Misattribute arousal to pill, then don’t feel dissonance and don’t change attitude. **
Tversky/Kahneman: JDM(?), availability heuristic: we draw inferences from how easy it is to think of occurances.
Two significant early developments in social congition were (don’t both with the names of the first one)
- Person memory
- Priming
Priming paradigm: method by which we can ask how accessible something is in memory and judgments
Higgins, Rholes, & Jones (1977)
Priming “2 experiment ploy”
1 experiment: Color perception experiment
Stroop task, but remember the word we told you afterwards.
2 experiment ploy
10 trials, 4 were primiing. Positive and negative words.
2 experiment: Reading comprehension study. 4 ambiguous statements about person equally positive or negative depending on interpretation of behavior. Then asked “What’s one word to describe this”
3/4 words given +, + characterization.
Primes positive, 7 subjects +, 2 mixed, 1 neg
Same results for negative. 10 subjects per condition. A rare thing these days.
Sentence Scramble Task
Big intital priming study. Make sentence from 4/5 words, Words associated with elderly. They claim this makes them walk slowly.
Higgins, Bargh, & Lombardi (1985): What did they think accessibility was a function of?
Frequency and Recency of Activation
In general:
More frequent prime = more effect
Less delay after prime shown = more effect
Higgins, Bargh, and Lombardi (1985) have a problem: Frequency or recency? What dominates in a situtation where you have conflicted primes and one is more recent but one is more frequent?
Before we get into the experiment, tell me about the three stupid theories.
- Storage Bin: constructs are in bins previously activated, search from to pto bottom. Top more likely to be used. Frequency effect through recency. Recency dominates.
- Battery Model: Frequency dominates, decay over time.
- **Synapse Model: It’s the one and it’s the worst. Activation all or none, decays BUT more frequency activation = slower decay.
**RECENT > when BRIEF delay
Frequency > longer delay **
Higgins, Bargh, & Lombardi (1985) Experiment to test the differences in frequency and recency of priming.
2 (type of priming) x 2 (delay) design.
Frequency words on early trials, recent on last trial. Filler task of counting backwards. Delay manipulated by having filler task consume 15 or 120 seconds.
Then labeling tasks for one word, could be good or bad.
High Score = more positive
Results:
BRIEF: Recency wins
Long: FREQUENCY WINS
Also look at number of participants using recent, frequent, or ambigous to categorize, same results.
Subliminal Priming- beyond conscious
Bargh & Pietromaonaco (1982) Parafoveal Vigiliance Task
Brief prime, immediately masked with other stimulus. Awareness check: post task and trial by trial.
Flash only 60 ms. Mask XLKJKLJDLKFJ might detect flash, but that’s it.
Post task: did you see this word
Trial by trial: “rude vs. anxious” presented or neither.
Priming: 0, 20, or 80 of the tirals invovle hostility-related words.
More of Donald task. Rate on hostility words.
**Higher ratings of hostility when 80 primes vs. the other two. **
Herr, Sherman, and Fazio (1983)
The assiimilation, the contrast, all nice. The priming literature is all about assimilation….
BUT! in social judgement literature, CONTRAST predominates
What to do, what to do. What is the deciding factor? Contrast or assimilation? Depends on what two factors?
Target ambiguity and prime extremity
What does assimilation require? When is it more likely?
Target to be judged as instance of primed category
Likely when target AMBIGUOUS AND primes are moderate.
Ambiguous target needs assignment, but Bruner thought extreme primes were rare and wouldn’t fit.
When is contrast likely?
When constrast, what are the primes?
Constrast if target not encoded as instance of primed category, primes are standard of comparison.
Likely when target NOT AMBIGUOUS, no interpretation needed for judgment
Liekly when primes EXTREME
According to Bruner, if target not encoeded as instance of primed category, primes were anchor to which you’re comparing comparing the target.
So what happens in primes extreme and target NOT ambiguous
Contrast.
Primes extreme, unlikely.
Target Ambigous- no need
(No need for what? I don’t know. He talks way too fast during lecture).
Herr, Sherman, and Fazio (1983) Exemplers of size and their mean ratings
The various sized animals
DV: moderately sized animals.
Prime with one of the four other columns and two fictional animals.
Priming: Color experiment, put animal names in the 10 trials.
Rate 4 moderate animals and two unreal animals on size, height, weight.
Participant leaves, but before they go, asked to help grad student out with this.
RESULTS:
Unreal Animals: Rated as bigger for large moderate or extreme small animals.
Real: rated as bigger for small moderate condition, but also moderate large and extreme small.
ASSIMILATION EFFECT ONLY FOR UNREAL ANIMALS COMPARED TO MODERATE SIZE.
Assimilation = Large were bigger. Why? “can’t be that big” when compare to the larger.
Constrast all other conditions, small animals were rated as larger. Why? “not as big as that” or “bigger than that”
Higgins Rholes & Jones (1977).
Priming Manipulation: Applicability x Valence
Applicable: trait relevant to behavior “adventerous or reckless”
Fit between accessible info. 2 additional conditiosn to show importance of relevant terms. Non application: + or -, but doesn’t FIT
Four conditions: Applicable or Non applicable, positive or negative.
Results:
Applicable: matches positive or negative. Impression = primes
Nonapplicable: no matching. Just noise.
Higgins 1996 review paper: Knowledge activation, accessbility applicability and salience.
Concept of Judged Usability
What does that mean?
Whether they judge it to be apporpriate to think about stimulus as accessible category. Appropriatness or applying CONSTRUCT to stimlus.
Not conscious, but sounds that way.
Elephant and whale, then show animal. Now it might look big, but not approriate to apply big to simulus. **this is NOT applicability. Applicability is Goodness of fit. **Might judge or not judge regardless of goodness of fit or not.
Salience vs. Accessbilitiy
Salience: environment (example: camera angles)
Accessibility is in the mind
Croizet & Fiske (2000)
Why lack of general evaluative priming effect after nonapplicable priming? Is it because nonapplicable primes don’t activate?
No, they activated BUT not useable
Senmantic content so poorly matches target that the activated construct is not perceived as about or stemming from target
Croizet & Fiske (2000) Feelings entitled to judge renders activated evaluation more useable despite goodness of fit. Why?
Increase percieved appropriateness of basing a judgement on feelins of general +/-
Renders it appropriate because YOU have judgement power.
Croizet & Fiske (2000): Entitled to judge experiment
False feedback on personality measure: you can judge
Primed through scrambled sentence procedure
Gary is idealistic/unrealistic or persistent/stubborn. BUT you get the other paragraph. Primes not applicable. Rate Gary’s likeability. Characterize with a single trait.
Zero fit, BUT…
Illusion of Expertise, more likeability for positive primes and more positive characterization.
Other experiment: got Speical information that made them entitled. Same effect.
Higgins and Chaires (1980) had to prove social not just cognitive.
Studying effects of interference on memory. Participants exposed to series of objects to remember, but will work on a problem as an interference task before recalling the objects.
15 slides.
10 objects labeled with phrase.
OF, AND, and NONE conditions (no label)
Bowl of cereal
Bowl AND cereal
Then we have the Duncker Candle Problem
RESULTS: AND condition was better at the candle problem and they were faster
Herr (1986): Exemplars of Hostility and their mean ratings
Extreme Nonhostile, Moderate nonhostile, Moderate hostile, Extreme hostile characters. Appear in word search.
Then you get the paragraph about Donald. Assimilation and Contrast.
How will you rate the target’s hostility?
Assimiliation happens when you have a moderate target. It’s more hostile by comparison, rate as more hostile. ALSO: more competitive choices, whatever that means for hostile/moderate. Also More for extreme/nonhostile.
Contrast with extremes: “Not as bad as hitlar, but as great as Shirley temple”
When shown extreme examples, targets are “nonhostile” by comparison.
Major Developments in priming
- Disambiguate information
- Frequency and receny that interact with delay
- Contrast and assimilation effects
- Priming effective only if primes are applicable.
- Judged usability is also relevant (entitled to judge)
Priming procedures: Memory words in color perception, scrambled sentence task, subliminal parafoveal priming, word search
Resulting construals or impressions influence behavior.
