Chapter 3 - Social Cognition

Question 1

A person suffering from visual agnosia is able to _____ but _________ .

Answer 1

see objects; doesn’t know what they are

Question 2

What are the two main types of social cognition?

Answer 2

Automatic thinking and controlled thinking

Question 3

Define: automatic thinking

Answer 3

Thinking that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

Question 4

What are schemas?

Answer 4

Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

Question 5

Gardner, MacIntyre, and Lalonde (1995) asked English-speaking students living in Quebec to rate the characteristics of various groups. What was their main finding?

Answer 5

Participants were faster when rating the stereotypical characteristics of each group than when rating its non-stereotypical characteristics

Question 6

When applied to members of a social group such as of one gender or race, schemas are commonly referred to as _______ .

Answer 6

Stereotypes

Question 7

Kunda, Sinclair, and Griffin (1997) told uWaterloo students that “Michael” was either a salesperson or an actor, and his friends described him as very extroverted. Then they asked, “What kinds of behaviours do you suppose they have in mind when they describe him this way?” What were the student responses (generally)?

Answer 7

When Michael was a salesperson, participants generated pushy descriptions (e.g. “speaks loudly”) whereas when Michael was an actor, they generated more positive descriptions such as “life of the party.”

Question 8

In a study by Kunda, Sinclair, and Griffin (1997) regarding “John” the construction worker/lawyer, participants were asked to generate examples of aggressive behaviour that “John” may exhibit. How did these examples given by the participants differ from each other?

Answer 8

When John was a lawyer, he was seen as more likely to argue, whereas when John was a construction worker, he was seen as more likely to punch/fight.

Question 9

What did the results of the study done by Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink (2002) show?

Answer 9

In a simulation of unarmed/armed black and white males, people’s “shots” were influenced by the race of the men in the pictures. People were prone to make mistakes by “shooting” black men who were unarmed. When the men pictured were white, participants made about the same number of errors whether the men were armed or unarmed.

Question 10

Although everyone uses schemas to understand the world, the content of our schemas is influenced by our culture. (T/F)

Answer 10

True

Question 11

People who suffer from Korsakov’s syndrome have difficulty _______ ______.

Answer 11

Forming schemas

Question 12

What was the design of the study conducted by Harold Kelley (1950)? What did the results show?

Answer 12

Kelley told economics students they would be taught by a guest lecturer and gave them a brief note about the instructor beforehand. Some versions of the note said the instructor was considered cold, while some said he was considered warm. Students who were told he was warm inevitably gave him better ratings and were more likely to participate in class than the other students. – people use schemas to “fill in the blanks”

Question 13

Define: accessibility

Answer 13

The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world

Question 14

Schemas can be accessible for what 3 reasons?

Answer 14

• chronically accessible due to past experiences
• they are related to a current goal
• temporarily accessible because of recent experiences

Question 15

Define: priming

Answer 15

The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept

Question 16

In a study by Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977) on the role of accessibility and priming, people were made to memorize positive or negative terms that may be applicable to a character’s behaviour. Later on, they had the participants read a paragraph about “Donald” and form an impression of him. What did their results show?

Answer 16

Participants who had memorized words that could be used to interpret Donald in a positive way formed a much more favourable impression of Donald than those who had memorized negative words in the first study.

Question 17

“Thoughts, then, have to be both accessible and applicable before they will act as primes, exerting an influence on our impressions of the social world.” (T/F)

Answer 17

True

Question 18

U of T researchers showed that if you have a meal schema primed, you will eat less when you are offered more food. (T/F)

Answer 18

True

Question 19

Can priming effects operate outside of social awareness (y/n)? (Hint: recall Callan et al. (2010) and their priming of legal concepts)

Answer 19

Yes

Question 20

Define: self-fulfilling prophecy

Hint: Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) - teachers

Answer 20

The case whereby people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which, in turn, causes that person to behave consistently with their original expectations

Question 21

Define: judgmental heuristics

Answer 21

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

Question 22

Define: availability heuristic

Answer 22

A mental shortcut whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind

Question 23

Tversky and Kahneman (1973) presented participants with the names of famous and non-famous people, and when asked to recall the names, the participants were _____________. When other participants were asked to estimate the number of male and female names, they gave _______ estimates for the gender that was famous.

Answer 23

more likely to remember the famous names, even though more non-famous names were on the list; higher

Question 24

Dr. Marion diagnosed a girl named Nicole with AIP because he was a brilliant diagnostician. (T/F)

Answer 24

False; he had just finished writing a book on genetic disorders of historical figures, and George III of England suffered from AIP as well – he used the availability heuristic!

Question 25

Dr. Alter’s misdiagnosis of a patient who was suffering aspirin toxicity proves that the availability heuristic is not 100% accurate. (T/F)

Answer 25

True

Question 26

** Schwarz et al. (1991) asked people to think of six or twelve examples that they had acted either assertively or unassertively. What did their results show?

Answer 26

People who were asked to think of only six examples where they were assertive or unassertive felt that they identified with that characteristic, while people who were asked to think of twelve examples felt that they did not identify with the characteristic.

Question 27

Define: representativeness heuristic

Answer 27

A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

Question 28

Define: Base Rate Information

Answer 28

Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

Question 29

What is the cocktail party phenomenon?

Answer 29

An individual is engaged in conversation but unconsciously monitors surrounding conversations in case something important were to come up (such as their name)

Question 30

Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, and Trötschel (2001) asked students to play a game where they had to choose to be cooperative or competitive, after completing a task in which they had to make sentences out of words that had to do with cooperation or out of words that were unrelated. What did the results show?

Answer 30

Students who made sentences out of words having to do with cooperation were significantly more likely to cooperate in the game with the other student than were students in the control condition.

Question 31

** Dijksterhuis (2004) gave people a great deal of information about four apartments and then asked them to choose what they believed to be the best one. In the immediate choice condition, participants were asked immediately which apartment was best. In the conscious thought condition, they were given 3 minutes to decide before making a decision, and in the unconscious thought condition, he gave participants a distracting task for 3 minutes and then asked them to decide. Which condition chose the apartment with the most positive qualities relative to the fewest negative qualities?

Answer 31

The participants from the unconscious condition were most likely to pick the “best” apartment.

Question 32

Murray et al. (2010) showed that the dynamics in a romantic relationship were better reflected in people’s conscious reports of what their relationship was like compared to their automatic attitudes. (T/F)

Answer 32

False; people’s automatic attitudes had more to do with their perception of their relationship

eg. people who felt rejected by their partner on a given day and responded by becoming cold and distant later showed less positive automatic attitudes toward their partner, which was not detected in their conscious evaluations

Question 33

What is the technical definition of racial profiling?

Answer 33

Official action toward people based on their race, ethnicity, or national origin instead of their behaviour

Question 34

Define: controlled thinking

Answer 34

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Question 35

Define: counterfactual thinking

Answer 35

Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

Question 36

What is rumination?

Answer 36

The process whereby people repetitively focus on the negative things in their lives; it may be a result of counterfactual thinking

Question 37

Roese (1994) asked UWO students to think of an exam in the past year that they had performed very poorly on, and then list some specific actions they could have taken that would have made their score better or worse. What did the results ultimately show?

Answer 37

The results showed that students asked to focus on ways they could improves expressed greater intentions to perform success-enhancing behaviours in the future and actually worked harder compared with students who were asked to focus on actions that could have made the outcome even worse.

Question 38

What is thought suppression and what two processes operate to help suppress thoughts?

Answer 38

Thought suppression: the attempt to avoid thinking about something a person would prefer to forget;
Monitoring process (automatic) and Operating process (controlled)

Question 39

Corcoran & Woody (2009) showed that participants who were told to suppress thoughts about a religious story they had read ended up thinking about the story more, and also experienced more anxiety if they were themselves religious, compared to individuals in the “do not suppress” condition. (T/F)

Answer 39

True

Question 40

What is the overconfidence barrier?

Answer 40

The barrier that results when people have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments

Question 41

What is the analytic thinking style?

Answer 41

A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of the objects without considering their surrounding context (Westerners)

Question 42

What is the holistic thinking style?

Answer 42

A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to one another (East Asians)

Question 43

Hedden, Katay, Aron, Markus & Gabrielli (2008) used fMRI analysis to show that when asked to judge the length of lines inside boxes, European Americans had to work harder cognitively when told to pay attention to the context of a photo and East Asians had to work harder cognitively when told to ignore the context of a photo. (T/F)

Answer 43

True

Question 44

Why might individuals from East Asian cultures use the holistic thinking style as opposed to an analytic thinking style? think Miyamoto, Nisbett, and Masuda (2006)

Answer 44

East Asian landscapes are “busier” and contain more objects that would compete for an individual’s attention, so perhaps to minimize cognitive load, East Asian individuals evolved to make use of the holistic thinking style, and focus on context rather than focusing on minor details