Ch. 10: Cognition and Information Processing

Question 1

The Enchiridion

Answer 1

greek philospher Epictetus wrote “People are disturbed by things but by the view they take of them”
- people are disturbed by their cognitive interpretation

Question 2

Hamlet speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Answer 2

said “…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Act 2 Scene 2)
-it’s an interpretation, cognitive imposition of our beliefs on these behaviors

Question 3

Paradise Lost (1667)

Answer 3

John Milton observed “the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

• we can’t see what is going on inside people’s heads to find out where these interpretations are coming from
• how do we get inside people’s heads and get a better understanding of how they work and how any of us can approach our relationships in a healthier way?

Question 4

Neil Jacobson, 1981 (quote)

Answer 4

“the fact that two spouses living in the same environment perceive such different worlds suggests that in functional terms, spouses are operating in vastly different environments”

• relationships are interdependent but even though it looks like they are coordinating with one another, there are major cognitive differences btwn the two
• the words that come out of my partners mouth aren’t the words that actually reach my brain (there’s a filter in there)

Question 5

What do all of these quotes imply

Answer 5

we add an interpretation of events

Question 6

Why do we interpret?

Answer 6

because behaviors and events can be ambiguous, we are always making meaning all of the time (we’re engaging in cognitive processes that give meaning and predictability to the world that we’re navigating)

interpreting means linking a specific experience to a particular global meaning (leaving the toilet seat up - is this an accident or an act of disrespect?)

• when your partner does something nice for you, you give it a more global meaning (this isn’t just nice a nice thing, you make it about something more inclusive and global)
• when something negative happens you don’t want that to interfere with your global judgment

we often have some “choice” in how we do this. these choices matter, because our emotions and actions are often guided by the meanings we infer
-we register an event, think of it in a broader context and our emotions follow on the basis of that inference

Question 7

The Story of Us Clip

Answer 7

“What is that supposed to mean?”

• she already knows what that means - she’s linked it up to some global interpretation (“In Europe we would’ve made love”)
• he’s implying that she’s not spontaneous

“if I can just finish the letter, I could be more spontaneous”
“that’s not spontaneous, that’s making an appointment”
-their interpretations have escalated

they are making choices about the interpretations that they have - but their emotional override that they’ve made restricts the range of interpretations that they’re willing to make (she could say “how lucky am I that I have a husband that wants to make love to me?” - she doesn’t say that; he could say “am I the luckiest guy to be married to a woman that wants nothing more than to write a cute note to our children telling them that we’re back?”)
-they’ve extracted global interpretations that are getting them in trouble

This is bigger than the situation we’re dealing with:
everything has to be scheduled - global interpretation
-not only does this affect you and me…it affects our children as well (kitchen sinking)

you get a specific exchange that contains ambiguity within it (what does it mean that my wife doesn’t want to make love right now - she’s rigid and over controlling or she’s the best mom)

• we usually pick pro-relationship interpretations but there are ruptures in our conversation that, because of ambiguity, land and register feeling like we’re going to be rejected and old ghosts come in
• the walls around these negative emotions start falling down
• isn’t productive in anyway and could’ve ended up in such a different place

they are staking out their territory - this is the Justification

Question 8

What determines which meaning is imposed?

Answer 8

Our motives in the moment - motivated processes - why would we do that if we love our partners?
-there is a history
our search for meaning is said to be “motivated”
-we are motivated to see the world in particular ways (our cognitive processes have agendas)

Question 9

Three main motives

Answer 9

enhancement
accuracy
justification

these things don’t always work together - they are used to achieve different goals

Question 10

enhancement

Answer 10

believing the best
affects the way partners process information about their relationships leading to an enhancement bias—a preference for information that supports and strengthens positive beliefs about a partner and a relationship

shading things in a more positive way than most people would see it
we want to be confident in our relationships and not harbor doubts about them
the enhancement bias serves this function
we prefer info that supports and strengthens positive beliefs about a partner and a relationship
-in fact, we view our partners more favorable than they do AND more favorably than their friends do (we see them as having a bit of a glow around them when we are in a good place in our relationship)
-we view our relationships more favorable than we view others’ relationships

Question 11

accuracy

Answer 11

knowing and being known - more protective
-the desire to understand a partner and be understood in turn is important
-we want to think well of our partners, but we also want to know them as they truly are. we want to protect ourselves against being exploited
-accurate info enables us to predict and control our relationships
-desire for accurate information about the partner, so that the individual can judge whether a relationship is likely to be worth pursuing
-there are times when accurate info is highly desirable. transition points prompt searches for such info
perceived threats to the relationship can instigate the search for accurate info: we become detectives - should I be jealous or am I being immature - don’t wanna be the stupid one and let someone walk all over me

Question 12

Dear Ann Letter

Answer 12

data: used to have sex 5 times a week, now it’s about once a week
global meaning: “I have a hunch he is having an affair” - this is not an affectively neutral inference
this sounds like a bias that has been chosen with no evidence

Ann says, there are other options, don’t just go down that accusatory avenue
she needs accurate info to figure out what is going on
sometimes our suspicions are wrong, sometimes they’re not

Question 13

Justification

Answer 13

being right - everyone likes to be right - no one likes to be wrong

we look out for ourselves in relationships, and we are motivated to protect our interests

this is especially true when we perceive that the relationship is not going well. if there is a problem, who is at fault? not me!
-your goals are your goals and mine are mine and I can’t wrap my head around your goals…I have to be right

Basic aspects of how we perceive the world support this motive. for example, there is a well-known self-serving bias tat leads us perceive our own behavior in more favorable terms than the behavior of others
-take a step back, is there a way that we can both be right? in a relationship there is a lot of room for compromise and we usually under-utilize it

-in a troubled relationship, attending to a partner’s negative qualities may, paradoxically, increase self-esteem by relieving the individual of any responsibility for the failure of the relationship
-If you believed your partner to be a terrific person,
it would be possible that the problems in the relationship were your fault.
-If your partner is a terrible person, however, then at least you have the comfort of knowing that, despite the problems in your relationship, you remain the moral, reasonable, blameless person that most of us wish to be

Question 14

First line of defense

Answer 14

keep negative info out of awareness

• enhancement bias says “everything is going to be alright”
• to preserve a positive view of the relationship, and to promote positive interactions, we are often selective in ‘deciding’ which info to focus upon in our relationships
• Selective attention does this
• memory bias does this

Question 15

Mayonnaise slide

Answer 15

Wife comes home with a HUGE jar of mayo and the husband looks at the receipt and says “ok fair enough. That’s a great price for mayonnaise.”

it is one less argument that he has to deal with

Question 16

Memory Bias Study (Karney & Frye, 2002)

Answer 16

study in which newlywed spouses were asked how happy they were every six months

Looked at marital satisfaction for wives and husbands with prospective and retrospective reports

prospective: as time passes they lose a lot of satisfaction with our relationship
retrospective: at time 8 he asked them to draw a graph that depicts how their relationship has gone

they show their relationship satisfaction as getting better - enhancement bias: they want to believe that their relationship is better than it actually is (“I’m still here…there has to be a reason”)

if they face it they have to make a decision about it (to leave or do something to make yourself/your relationship better - this is one of the ways we use to protect ourselves)

Question 17

Second Line of Defense

Answer 17

Minimize the impact of negative info
-when you can no longer ignore the negative info, manage it well

we try to keep negative events from being registered as negative even in good relationships, people argue” etc.
How? we hold flexible standard; we modify what is acceptable to us

we restructure our cognitions, by integrating negative and positive features - that’s true….but this is also true (we’re just going through a rough patch)

we derogate our alternatives - (I could see being with another person but look at all the bad things THAT person does - if you get a new partner it’s just a whole new set of issues)

we make adaptive ‘attributions’ (we have the ability cognitively to neutralize partner actions - making negative events positive or neutral)

Question 18

Hillary Clinton Explains why she stayed

Answer 18

“everyone has dysfunction in their families. you don’t walk away if you love someone. you help the person.”
he is a “very, very good man”
“we did have a very good stretch, years and years of [no affairs]”
“there are sins of weakness and sins of malice, and this was a sin of weakness”

-she is basically saying, why would I create more problems for someone I love who didn’t do this to be malicious to me

she wouldn’t say that this is a choice that she has made, she would say “this is what I believe”
-it doesn’t feel like a conscious choice

Question 19

Can these defenses fail?

Answer 19

yes, sometimes the partner’s negative actions cannot be ignored AND they cannot be ‘explained away’
-i tried all of these things and still things are terribly wrong in this relationship

Question 20

Can the biases become hinderances?

Answer 20

relationships change as the biases that once helped now become a hindrance
-there comes a point when the cognitions and behavioral emotions (listen to recording)
Negative perceptions flood in…
-we attend more to the partner’s negative actions (we confirm the opposite of what we used to )
-we recall more negative experiences
…and we process them in less adaptive ways:
-our perceptions become rigid
-other relationships look better than ours
-our alternatives look better
-our attributions flip now

Question 21

bias hinderances: our perceptions become rigid

Answer 21

our perceptions are more stable
“this is the reality”
“you are a selfish person”

Question 22

bias hinderances: other relationships look better than ours

Answer 22

we compare our relationship and its state to happier couples (listen to recording)

Question 23

bias hinderances: our alternatives look better

Answer 23

Where we once said others would not be better we now say “there must be something better for me out there”

Question 24

bias hinderances: our attributions flip now

Answer 24

where we used to neutralize negative we now neutralize the positive
“oh you bought me flowers…were they on sale?”

Question 25

Motivated reasoning

Answer 25

refers to all the ways our motives, desires, and preferences bias the way information is selected, interpreted, and organized, for the purpose of satisfying specific needs and achieving specifc goals

Question 26

Selective attention

Answer 26

of the total field of available information, we pay attention to only some of it
-do we focus on their tone of voice, the words they are saying, etc? focus on the good stuff instead of on the bad stuff
-our desires and goals affect what information we notice in
the first place, how long we pay attention, and what we overlook, and much of this happens without our conscious awareness

Question 27

memory bias

Answer 27

people’s memories of their past feelings tended to be distorted by their current feelings about their relationships
-our current feelings often change the way we recall past events in a relationship, especially because we prefer to maintain consistency between past events and current feelings
-The partners whose satisfaction with the relationship had improved tended to remember that they had been more positive about the relationship in the past than they
actually had been
-Partners whose satisfaction had declined remembered being more negative about the relationship than they had been

when a relationship goes from being great to being ok you start to see the negative things that you may have seen in a more positive light when things we great
-we prefer to maintain some consistency in our relationship (our current affective state and our memory of our relationship)

Question 28

Prospective

Answer 28

Looking at a relationship from a certain point and following them over time

Question 29

Retrospective

Answer 29

looking at a relationship from a certain point and looking backward (at their past)

Question 30

Accommodation

Answer 30

occurs when existing beliefs change to integrate new information
-lies at the heart of learning from experience: The new information is processed to create a new understanding

Question 31

Assimilation

Answer 31

occurs when new information is integrated with existing knowledge without changing the original beliefs
-what goes on most of the time in our interactions with people we know well: New experiences usually ft right into what we already know and are assimilated without any effect on our belies and judgments

Question 32

Confirmation Bias

Answer 32

a preference for information that supports what is

already known about a partner or a relationship.

Question 33

Empathy Accuracy Model

Answer 33

developed the to account for situations in which partners should be more or less motivated to attend to and understand what the other is thinking and feeling
-our level of attention to, and understanding of, our partner varies according to how threatening our partner’s thoughts and feelings are likely to be
-an accurate understanding of our partner’s thoughts and feelings might reveal information we would rather not know
-We might learn that we are misunderstood, or that we are not as loved as we wish to be
-faced with the possibility o threatening information about
our partner’s feelings, we should be less motivated to try to understand those feelings accurately

Question 34

sentiment override

Answer 34

Just as partners who are committed to the relationship process information in ways that support their commitment, partners who are upset with each other, or who are contemplating leaving, process information in ways that support and justify these feelings

Question 35

self-serving bias

Answer 35

the tendency to take credit for our successes and to blame

others for our failures