Chapter 4 Flashcards
What is overconfidence bias?
We tend to have greater confidence in our judgments & decisions than our actual accuracy warrants (ex: I could totally spot a serial killer). When we think about why an idea might be true, it begins to seem true. Experts aren’t immune to overconfidence bias.
What is the Dunning-Kruger effect or the double-curse of incompetence?
People unskilled in a domain lack the metacognitive ability to realize they are incompetent (ex: Students who score the lowest on tests of grammar, humor, and logic are most likely to overestimate their abilities)
What are some challenges that we face when making social judgements?
- Limited, incomplete, and/or misleading information
- Overwhelming amounts of information
- Need a way to process it efficiently
What is selective attention?
The act of focusing one’s awareness onto a particular aspect of one’s experience, to the exclusion of everything else.
What is selective attention?
The act of focusing one’s awareness onto a particular aspect of one’s experience, to the exclusion of everything else.
How is our attention and awareness when making judgments?
Very limited, guided and directed through the environment, like a flashlight.
Are snap judgments accurate?
Participants were asked to rate faces on trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, likability and attractiveness. The time given ranged from 100 to 1000ms, compared with ratings by people given unlimited time. Judgments made after 100 ms exposure correlated highly with judgments made in the absence of time constraints. Judgments don’t differ much after giving more time, just the confidence.
Thin slices of behavior (video clips of unfamiliar professor 2s-10s long) closely corresponded to ratings of same professors by students at the end of the semester. Later research showed that thin slices can also predict student performance.
Some personality traits can be perceived merely by seeing people’s bedrooms.
Along what 2 dimensions do we evaluate faces?
- Trustworthiness (approach or avoid?)
- Dominance (physical strength)
What do baby faces evoke?
Infantile features (large eyes, large head, small jaw) automatically evoke nurturing response in adults perceivers.
How are baby-faced adults assumed to be?
Warmer, more honest, more naïve, and weaker.
Personality is like an “_____”.
onion. Some traits (ex: extraversion) are more accessible than others.
First impression studies deal with _____, rather than individuals
aggregates
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Expectations and beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment. We create the social reality that we expect (ex: Students identified as ”late bloomers” on fake diagnostic test performed better two years later. Teacher expectations led them to behave in ways that fulfilled their expectations).
What is pluralistic ignorance?
Something that occurs when people act in ways that conflict with their private beliefs because they erroneously believe that these beliefs conflict with those of the group.
What is misleading firsthand information?
People often mislead us by acting in ways that don’t reflect their true attitudes or beliefs.
-Impression management
-Attempts to build rapport
-› Pluralistic ignorance
What is misleading secondhand information?
People may transmit information in a way that furthers their personal or ideological agenda.
Biases in news coverage
-Emphasis on the negative and the sensational, “if it bleeds, it leads”
-Selective reporting
-Leading questions
What was in the Snyder 1984 study about behavioral confirmation?
Participants spoke on the phone with a woman they believed to be attractive or unattractive.
Third-party raters rated the “attractive” woman as warmer and more sociable (after they talked to the participants)
What are framing effects?
The way information is presented. It can strongly influence judgments.
What is the primacy effect?
A type of order effect. In a body of evidence, the initial information presented colors interpretation of subsequent information, thus exerting a disproportionate influence on judgment.
What is recency effect?
A type of order effect. In a body of evidence, the last information presented
tends to be better remembered, thus exerting a disproportionate influence on judgment. We are more likely to observe recency effect when there is a large gap between the two pieces of information.
What are positive and negative framing based on?
Information framed in negative terms tends to elicit a stronger response.
-Medical treatment appears more attractive if it is framed in terms probability of living vs. probability of dying (ex: 34/100 patients still alive after 5 years vs. 66/100 patients had died by the end of 5 years).
What is temporal framing associated with?
Construal level-theory
What is construal level-theory?
Psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms (higher-level construal), and actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms (lower-level construal).
What is spin framing?
Framing effects that involve varying the content of what is presented.
