Chapter 04 - Social Cognition: Thinking about People and Situations Flashcards
availability heuristic
The process whereby judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.
representativeness heuristic
The process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect.
base-rate information
Information about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population.
bottom-up processing
“Data-driven” mental processing, in which an individual forms conclusions based on the stimuli encountered in the environment.
confirmation bias
The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it.
construal level theory
A theory about the relationship between temporal distance (and other kinds of distance) and abstract or concrete thinking: psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms.
fluency
The feeling of ease (or difficulty) associated with processing information.
framing effect
The influence on judgment resulting from the way information is presented, such as the order of presentation or the wording.
heuristics
Intuitive mental operations, performed quickly and automatically, that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgment.
How does the desire to entertain tend to bias the kinds of stories that are reported most frequently in the media? What effects might this bias have on people’s beliefs about the world?
The media tend to overreport negative, violent, and sensational events because these types of stories attract viewers’ attention more than positive, altruistic, and everyday events. Research shows that 80 percent of the crime reported in the media is violent, whereas in reality only 20 percent of crime is violent. Unfortunately, this bias can lead people to fear victimization and view the world as a terribly dangerous place, especially if they live in an area where crime is more prevalent. This bad news bias can also prevent people from learning about inspiring, altruistic acts, such as relief efforts to help victims of natural disasters and ordinary citizens helping their neighbors through hard times.
How valid are snap judgments? Do brief exposures to a person’s physical appearance or “thin slices” of the individual’s behavior provide meaningful information about what that person is really like?
Snap judgments often contain a kernel of truth about a person, but not the whole truth. Research described in this chapter showed that snap judgments of a political candidate’s competence, based on a brief look at the candidate’s photo, were predictive of electoral success, suggesting that these judgments corresponded with the general consensus about the candidate based on larger samples of his or her behavior over time. There is no clear evidence, however, that snap judgments of competence reliably predict actual competence, and the same is true for judgments of most other traits. Therefore, it is best to avoid making important decisions solely on the basis of snap judgments.
If you were developing an advertising campaign for a fitness class, what kinds of framing strategies might you use to increase the chances of people signing up for the class? In particular, consider spin framing, positive and negative framing, and temporal framing.
An example of spin framing could be to highlight the low cost of the class: “Sign up now and save $20.” An example of positive framing could be to describe the benefits of the class for physical appearance: “Get beach-ready!” An example of negative framing (which generally has greater impact) could be to describe the potential health risks of not exercising: “Inactive people are nearly twice as likely to develop heart disease.” An example of temporal framing could be to encourage people to sign up well in advance, before they have a chance to construe the class in potentially less pleasant, concrete terms (sweating, exhaustion, and so on).
illusory correlation
The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not.
Imagine you’re working on a group project with three other students and you are all asked to indicate your individual contribution to the project, relative to the other group members’ contributions, in the form of a percentage. If you were to sum the individual percentages reported by each group member, would you expect it to add up to roughly 100 percent? Why or why not?
The sum of estimates would likely be above 100 percent due to the availability heuristic, a mental shortcut that leads people to overestimate their own contributions to joint or group efforts and to underestimate others’ contributions. Examples of your own hard work are more available to you because you can experience them firsthand, whereas examples of others’ hard work may be harder to bring to mind, making them seem less frequent. As a result, all four group members may estimate their individual contributions as over 25 percent, leading to an impossible total. Research indicates that people tend to overestimate their own contributions even when these contributions are negative (like starting arguments), suggesting that this phenomenon is not explained simply by a motivational bias to present oneself in a favorable light.
pluralistic ignorance
Misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of a concern for the social consequences; those actions reinforce the erroneous group norm.
