Chapter 3 - Social Cognition

Question 1

Priming

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Holistic thinking style

Answer 2

A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to one another; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures (e.g., China, Japan, Korea)

Question 3

Counterfactual thinking

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Embodied cognition

Answer 4

The process by which bodily sensations activate mental structures such as schemas

Question 5

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 5

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 6

Controlled thinking

Answer 6

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Question 7

Base rate information

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Schemas

Answer 8

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 9

Overconfidence barrier

Answer 9

The barrier that results when people have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments; people’s judgments are usually not as correct as they think they are

Question 10

Judgemental heuristics

Answer 10

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

Question 11

Analytic thinking style

Answer 11

A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

Question 12

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 12

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

Question 13

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

Automatic thinking

Answer 14

Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

Question 15

Availability heuristic

Answer 15

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