Chapter 3: Social Cognition

Question 1

What two methods can social cognition take on? Like what two types of thinking?

Answer 1

-automatic and controlled

Question 2

What are Schemas? What is an example.

Answer 2

-mental structures that people use to organize they knowledge about the world
-knowing what a water bottle is because you have a pre-existing schema

Question 3

What are the different types of schemas? (5)

Answer 3

-objects (water bottles)
-ourselves (I am an extrovert)
-other people (Lucy is an extrovert)
-groups of people (engineers are analytical)
-events (going to a restaurant)

Question 4

What do schemas influence?

Answer 4

-they influence what we notice, think about and remember

Question 5

What do schemas act as?

Answer 5

-they act as filters, screening out often information that isn’t consistent with pre-existing schemas
(think about the story in class where one was home buying and the other was stealing)

Question 6

What are the two reasons we have schemas? (2)

Answer 6

-relate new experiences to past ones
-interpret ambiguous information

Question 7

What is the Guest Lecturer Experiment? What is the main point of this experiment? (3)

Answer 7

-given two notes saying what the lecturer was like, with one saying warm and the other cold
-asked to rate the lecturer on several traits and the people with the note that said he was warm rating them as nicer and better
-the students were filtering out certain information

Question 8

What is accessibility? If a schema is more accessible, what are we more likely to do? (2)

Answer 8

-the extent to which a schema are at the forefront of people’s mind
-the more accessible the schema is the more likely we will be to apply that schema when making judgements

Question 9

What is chronic accessibility due to?

Answer 9

-past experiences

Question 10

What is priming?

Answer 10

-bringing a schema of concept to the forefront of people’s minds, type of temporary accessibility

Question 11

What is the Donal experiment?

Answer 11

-had two parts, but people were told they were two completely different experiments
-one group read negative words and the other read positive words
-they then read a story about Donald and rated him very much based off of the priming words

Question 12

What is embodied cognition? Give an example.

Answer 12

-bodily sensations activate mental structures such as schemas
-a lemon scent can prime people to help others

Question 13

What is the main problem with Schemas?

Answer 13

-they are hard to change

Question 14

What is the suicide note experiment?

Answer 14

-had to guess which suicide notes were real and not and then were later told at random that they were better than average or worse than average
-they were told it was a lie, but the schema still remained

Question 15

What is the perseverance effect?

Answer 15

-beliefs persist even after disconfirming evidence

Question 16

What did the experiment on firefighters show? Like what was the most important point?

Answer 16

-participants held onto their new schemas even though those schemas were not about themselves, so had no reason to hold onto it, illustrate the perseverance effect

Question 17

Why are schemas so hard to change?

Answer 17

-because we only notice the things that reconfirm our current schemas

Question 18

What was the Jacobson experiment?

Answer 18

-administered IQ tests and told teachers at random who would be bloomers, the bloomers showed a lot more increase in IQ points

Question 19

Define judgemental heuristic

Answer 19

-mental shortcuts that we rely on to make judgements

Question 20

What is an availability heuristic? Example (2)

Answer 20

-where people make judgments about the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples come to mind.
Example: For instance, after seeing news reports about airplane crashes, people may overestimate the risk of flying, even though it’s statistically safer than driving.

Question 21

Contrast availability heuristic and accessibility. (2)

Answer 21

Availability: refers to whether or not information is present or can be brought to mind. It is about whether examples of something are readily available in your memory. For instance, when you think of car accidents, recent news reports or personal experiences might make the information available for you to recall.
Accessibility: refers to how easily and quickly information comes to mind when needed. Accessibility is influenced by how frequently or recently something has been thought about. For example, if you recently read a study on climate change, information related to it may be more accessible, meaning you can retrieve and use it quickly when thinking about environmental issues.

Question 22

Discuss the assertiveness experiment. What was the experiment and the results? What point did this elucidate? (3)

Answer 22

-two different groups had to come up with 6 and 12 examples respectively of times you acted assertively in the past
-the group that only thought of 6 examples rated themself as more assertive because it is easier to come up with 6 than 12
-showed that the availability heuristic is used to assess oneself

Question 23

What is the representativeness heuristic? What is an example? (2)

Answer 23

-classifying something according to how similar it is to a typical case
Example: Imagine you meet someone who is quiet, loves reading, and seems introspective. Based on this description, you might assume they are more likely to be a librarian than a salesperson. This judgment is based on the stereotype (or prototype) of what a librarian “typically” seems like, even though there are statistically far more salespeople than librarians.

Question 24

When can the representativeness heuristic lead to errors?

Answer 24

-if people over-rely on this heuristic while ignoring base-rate information

Question 25

What is base-rate information?

Answer 25

-if you know the percentage of something or how common it is

Question 26

What is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic? Example (2)

Answer 26

-tendency to use a number or value as a starting point and then adjust our answer away from the anchor
-Suppose you’re negotiating the price of a used car. The seller initially offers the car for $20,000. Even if you know the car is worth less, say $15,000, that first price of $20,000 acts as an “anchor,” and you might end up offering $18,000 after adjusting from it. The initial number influences your judgment, even though it’s higher than the car’s actual value.

Question 27

What is counterfactual thinking? Example. (2)

Answer 27

-mentally undoing an event or imagining an alternative outcome
Example: Imagine you missed your flight because you arrived at the airport 10 minutes late. You might think, “If only I had left the house earlier, I wouldn’t have missed the flight.” This is counterfactual thinking because you’re mentally simulating an alternative reality where you caught the flight by changing one aspect of the situation.

Question 28

What is the olympic medalists experiment? What did it show? (2)

Answer 28

-showed participants the bronze and silver medalists faces and asked them to rate who was happier
-the bronze medalists looked happier, showing the counterfactual thinking

Question 29

What is ironic processing? Example? (2)

Answer 29

-when you consciously try to avoid thinking about something, this can result in having more frequent thoughts
Example: trying to eat less sugar makes me want it so much more

Question 30

Discuss the sleep experiment by Ansfield and others. What does it show? (2)

Answer 30

-asked people to try or not try to fall asleep while listening to intense, preppy music or while listening to relaxing music
-those with the low load music fell asleep easier while trying and took longer to fall asleep when not trying and the people with the high load music were opposite showcasing both ironic monitoring and intentional operating

Question 31

What 2 processes does thought suppression involve? (2)

Answer 31

-ironic monitoring process
-intentional operating process

Question 32

What is the intentional operating process?

Answer 32

-This is the conscious process that tries to distract or redirect your thoughts away from the thing you’re trying to avoid.

Question 33

When we are tired or distracted which process stops and which continues? Operating or monitoring?

Answer 33

-operating stops but monitoring continues

Question 34

How do the 2 ironic processing methods work together?

Answer 34

-Intentional operating process is the effortful mechanism that tries to direct your mind away from the unwanted thought, while the ironic monitoring process is the subconscious mechanism that checks for the thought you’re trying to avoid.

Question 35

What relies on schemas to work?

Answer 35

-automatic thinking

Question 36

What can people do to inadvertently make their schemas come true?

Answer 36

-through self-fulfilling prophecies

Question 37

What did the experiment by Rosenthal and Jacobson look at?

Answer 37

-studied self-fulfilling prophecy, teachers expectations of their students potential influence the students performance

Question 38

People from Western cultures tend to have what kind of thinking style? Asian cultures? (2)

Answer 38

-analytic, don’t consider the surrounding context
-holistic thinking style, focus on whole picture

Question 39

What is an overconfidence barrier? Example? (2)

Answer 39

-barrier that results when people have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgements
Example: student who feels very confident about their knowledge for a test, but hasn’t actually done well on any practice exams