Chapter 3—Social Beliefs & Judgements Flashcards
How do we judge our social worlds consciously and unconsciously?
System 1 thinking: fast, unconscious and automatic snap judgements.
- Also known as automatic processing
System 2 thinking: slow, deliberate, conscious thinking
- Also known as controlled processing
How does priming guide our interpretations of information?
Priming happens when exposure to a stimulus activates mental representations associated with that stimulus.
These associations bias how we perceive and interpret new information by making certain interpretations more accessible.
What two concepts cause us to overestimate the accuracy of our judgements?
- The overconfidence phenomenon: the tendency to be more confident than we are correct; this happens because we can imagine more easily why we might be right than wrong.
- Confirmation Bias: People are more likely to search for information that confirms their beliefs; that confirmation causes them to be overconfident in their judgements’ accuracy.
What is a heuristic? Name 2 types of heuristics.
Heuristic: a cognitive shortcut or rule of thumb that helps us make quick decisions and judgments without extensive effort.
Availability heuristic: a mental shortcut that judges the likelihood of events based on their availability in our memory. The more available and vivid something is, the easier it is to recall.
- ex. Believing that planes are more dangerous than cars because the memory of plane crashes happening is more vivid and available
Representativeness heuristic: the tendency to assume someone/something who resembles a typical member of a group belongs to a that group.
- ex. Presuming an Arab dude is a terrorist
Define and describe illusory correlation and the illusion of control
Illusory correlation: searching for order causes us to perceive correlations where none exist (“it always rains after I wash my car”)
Illusion of control: believing we can predict or control events that occur by chance (manifesting an A+)
How do moods infuse judgements?
Trigger memories of experiences associated with the mood
Guide the interpretation of current experiences
Influence how deeply we think when making judgements (by distracting us)
How do our memories shift overtime through recall and misinformation?
After-the-fact-judgements: when people recall memories, their current emotional state and attitudes distort their understanding of past experiences.
Misinformation effect: memory of an event is altered by misleading information presented after the event
- ex. If a witness is shown misleading information (e.g., a false suspect in a lineup), they may later confidently “remember” that false information as true
What is belief perseverance?
The tendency to cling to one’s initial beliefs even when faced with contradictory evidence.
Instead of adjusting our views based on new information, we often find ways to rationalize, dismiss, or reinterpret the evidence to maintain our original belief.
What theory explains how we rationalize/explain other peoples’ behaviour in our social world? What are the 2 ways we explain someone’s behaviour?
Attribution theory: We explain the world through attributions we attribute other peoples’ behaviour either to someone’s disposition or external situations
- Dispositional attributions: attributing behaviour to someone’s traits, abilities or attitudes; an internal cause
- ex. “Suzy didn’t study cause she’s lazy”
- Situational attributions: attributing behaviour to someone’s external circumstances
- ex. “Suzy didn’t study cause her sister got shot by a yn”
What 3 concepts denote the attribution errors we make?
Misattribution: incorrectly attributing a behaviour to the wrong cause
- ex. “I thought Suzy didn’t study cause she was lazy, but she didn’t study cause her sister got shot by a yn”
Fundamental Attribution Error: Overestimating the role someone’s disposition plays in shaping their behaviour, and underestimating situational influences
Actor-Observer effect/bias: ppl to attribute their own bad behaviour to external (situational) causes but attribute others’ bad behaviour to internal (dispositional) causes; also one’s own good behaviour—>dispositional and others’ good behaviour—>situational
What is behavioural confirmation?
A type of self-fulfilling prophecy where people’s social expectations of someone lead them to act in ways that confirms those expectations.
- ex. Some ppl expect yn’s to be more violent and in gangs, so they act violent and join gangs
What is counterfactual thinking?
Imagining alternative outcomes to events that have already happened
What is embodied priming?
How bodily sensations influence emotions, judgements and preferences
Aka embodied cognition
What are self-fulfilling prophecies?
Occurs when a belief abt a person/situation leads to behaviours that cause the expectation to come true
- You believe something will happen
- You act in a way that subtly encourages the expected outcome
- The expected outcome occurs, reinforcing your belief
What is spontaneous trait inference
Upon observing someone’s behaviour, we automatically infer a trait that corresponds to that behaviour
- Ex. A dude punches a dude; we auto assume he’s a violent guy
What are schemas? What is their importance?
Schemas: mental structures people use to organize and interpret information based on past experiences and expectations.
- They shape how we see the word, make decisions, and remember events
Importance:
- reduce ambiguity
- reduce the amount of info we need to process
- makes recall of schema-related concepts easier
Describe Gilbert’s 2 stage model of attribution
Initially, we attribute someone’s behaviour to dispositional factors, but if we think harder, we consider situational factors. But step 2 takes effort so we don’t always do it.
Step 1—>System 1
Step 2—>System 2
What is victim-blaming?
When the victim of a crime is held partially or entirely at fault for the harm that befell them
- you blame something physical (left phone in car)
- or something like karma (he hit a bitch so his car got broken into)
Compare fixed and growth (incremental) mindsets
Fixed: intelligence/ability is innate and static
- avoid challenges
- give up on obstacles
- believe there’s no point in effort
- deflect criticism
- feel threatened by the intelligence of others
Growth: intelligence/ability is developed
- embrace challenges/work harder
- believe good things come from obstacles
- work hard
- learn from criticism
- celebrates the success of others
