Ch 2

Question 1

social cognition

Answer 1

the study of how people think about the social world and make decisions about socially relevant events

Question 2

cognitive misers:

Answer 2

the idea that people look for ways to conserve cognitive energy; they do that by attempting to adopt strategies that simplify complex problems

Question 3

evolutionary psychology

Answer 3

the brain is an organ that has been shaped and
programmed by evolution, adapted to challenges that faced our biological hunter-gatherer ancestors in their foraging way of life for hundreds of thousands of years

Question 4

bias blind spot

Answer 4

the belief that we are more objective and less biased than most other people

Question 5

confirmation bias

Answer 5

a tendency to seek confirmation of initial impressions or beliefs

Question 6

Egocentric Bias

Answer 6

We tend to place ourselves in the center of our own universes. The egocentric bias can lead us to uncritically accept flattery and falsehoods.

Question 7

spotlight effect

Answer 7

People feel as though the social spotlight shines

more brightly on them than it actually does

Question 8

the cloak of invisibility illusion

Answer 8

we also feel that we notice and observe others more than they notice and observe us

Question 9

Barnum Effect

Answer 9

P.T. Barnum is credited with saying, “There’s
a sucker born every minute,” and his name now applies to a common psychological phenomenon. The Barnum Effect refers to the fact that when people are given vague, all-purpose descriptions of themselves that could
apply to almost anyone, they usually say “Incredible! That’s me exactly!” This effect helps explain why so many people mistakenly believe in the accuracy of astrology, fortune telling, and even some pop-psych personality
tests.

Question 10

negativity bias

Answer 10

A curious feature of the evolved
human mind is that it is oriented toward negativity: We tend to focus more on potential threats than blessings, a tendency often called the negativity bias.

Question 11

loss aversion

Answer 11

a phenomenon where, when given a choice, people are more likely to try to avoid loss than to try to achieve gains

Question 12

The Mind’s Two Thinking Systems

Answer 12

Automatic processing and controlled processing.

Question 13

Automatic processing

Answer 13

the unconscious (implicit) and involuntary operations
that guide most of our behavior: well-learned associations or routines that our mental systems perform effortlessly, without awareness.

Question 14

Controlled processing

Answer 14

the conscious (explicit) effort we
make in dealing with novel problems, such as learning to drive, solving complex math problems, trying to remember the name of a movie, or answering a question like “Why do you love your boyfriend?  Because controlled processing demands more time, focus, effort, and energy than automatic thinking, it is prone to fatigue and distraction, and therefore we are attracted to shortcuts.

Question 15

default mode network

Answer 15

a set of interacting brain regions that are active when not directed to a task or focused on the outside world. This network is also active when we’re explicitly thinking about people. That is why, when our minds wander, they typically wander to social matters: plans we’re making with friends, memories of loved ones, conflicts with a partner, sexual fantasies about all kinds of people, or problems caused by other people.

Question 16

ingroup

Answer 16

our group, the one with which we identify and feel we belong

Question 17

outgroup

Answer 17

a group with which we do not identify; the members of which we tend to see as being all the same

Question 18

The Central Social Motives

Answer 18

belonging
Understanding Others and Predicting Accurately
Control
A Need to Matter
Trust

Question 19

attribution theory

Answer 19

a theory that describes the way in which people explain the causes of their own and other people’s behavior

Question 20

fundamental attribution error

Answer 20

the tendency to overestimate the general importance of personality or dispositional factors relative to situational or environmental influences when describing or explaining the cause of social behavior

Question 21

explanatory style

Answer 21

Over time, people develop a habitual pattern of explaining their successes and failures, and this pattern — called their explanatory style — affects their sense of control and emotional well-being.

Question 22

self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 22

the process that occurs when people (1) have an expectation about what another person is like, which then (2) influences how they act toward that person, and (3) causes that person to behave in a way that confirms those people’s original expectations

Question 23

contrast effect

Answer 23

an object appears to be better or worse than it is, depending on the quality of the objects with which it is compared

Question 24

social comparison

Answer 24

the process by which we evaluate our abilities, achievements, attitudes, and other attributes by comparing ourselves to others

Question 25

growth mindset

Answer 25

the belief in the human ability to grow and the commitment to self-improvement.

Question 26

schemas

Answer 26

As cognitive misers, we are prone to organize and retrieve information by way of schemas, mental models of the world. Schemas can be stereotypes, categories, expectations, attitudes, and mindsets.

Question 27

priming

Answer 27

a procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been recently encountered or frequently activated are more likely to come to mind and thus will be used in interpreting social events

Question 28

primacy effect

Answer 28

the effect that occurs when information encountered first has more impact on our impressions or beliefs than subsequent information

Question 29

heuristics

Answer 29

mental shortcuts that provide general rules of thumb to guide problem solving and decision-making

Question 30

availability heuristic

Answer 30

a mental rule of thumb that refers to judgments that are based on how easy it is for us to bring specific examples to mind

Question 31

affect heuristic

Answer 31

Our feelings are valuable sources of information so when we tap into our feelings to shape our evaluations of people or ideas, we are using an affect heuristic. If you’re in a bad mood, you are likely to evaluate a job candidate more negatively than if you’re in a happy mood.

Question 32

representativeness heuristic

Answer 32

When we focus on surface similarities to make inferences, we are using the representativeness heuristic. We know that high-quality products are often costly; therefore, if something is expensive, we infer that it’s better than something cheaper.

Question 33

Constructive Prediction

Answer 33

Predicting how certain outcomes will make us feel determines the goals we set and the risks we are willing to take. Indeed, whenever we seek to get something (whether it is a sandwich, a job, or a divorce), we are essentially making a bet that getting it will make us happy, or at least happier. Yet we often make predictions about ourselves that are dead wrong.91 We overestimate the emotional impact of future events and how long our reactions will last, whether the events are positive or negative.

Question 34

Perceptual salience

Answer 34

The importance of information that is the focus of people’s attention. We focus our attention more on people (rather than the situation) because they’re more perceptually salient.