Chapter 4 Flashcards
Social cognition: thinking about people and situations
define the field of social cognition
The study of how people think about the social world and arrive judgements that help them interpret the past understand the president and predict the future
Are the judgments that people make in a split-second different then the judgments they would make if they had A few seconds
The judgments are essentially the same
are snap judgments accurate
not necessarily, a person may look more competent but in reality is not
However sometimes it is accurate but it is still unwise to make commitments or hire someone based off of that kernel of truth
Why is some of the first-hand information we acquired people inaccurate
Because it is intended to be. Peoples behavior sometimes springs from my desire to create the impression that is not a true reflection of their beliefs or traits. The gap between inner reality and outer behavior can lead to predictable errors in judgment
What is pluralistic ignorance
Misperceptions of the group norms that results from observing people who are acting out variations with their private police code of a concern for the social consequences; it was actions reinforce the erroneous Group Norm
Basically it is particularly common in situations where toughness is valued and people are afraid to show their kinder and gentler impulses
Define the term self-fulfilling prophecy
The tendency for people to act in ways that bring about very thing they expected to happen
What is the problem with secondhand information
Because so many of our judgments are based on secondhand information these people who transmit information often have an ideological agenda which means I desire to foster certain beliefs or behaviors leaves them to accentuate some elements of the story and suppress others
What is the distortions in the service of entertainment: overemphasis on bad news (in relation to misleading second hand info)
People tend to tell stories with The desire to entertaining meaning that the story will be altered
What is the effects of the bad news bias
The bad news by asking people to believe them more at risk of victimization than they really are
This is because the most bad for violence news is the one that is shown more commonly than actually happens in real life
Is how information is presented important
Absolutely
What is order affects [ how information is presented]
How information is ordered Will determine how someone feels about it
What is the primacy effect
A type of order affect; the disproportionate influence on judgments by information presented first in the body of evidence
What is recency effect
A type of order effect: the disproportionate influence on judgment for information presented last in the body of evidence
What is the framing effect
The influence on judgment resulting from the way information is presented, such as the order of presentation or the wording
What is the general rule about the primacy effect
Promising effects most often occur when the information is ambiguous so that what comes first influences how the leader information is interpreted
What is spin framing
The type of framing effect that especially politicians use it is basically the perspective of a topic that changes people’s opinions; for example freedom fighter versus terrorist
What is positive and negative and framing
Only the focus is different it is every bit as valid to say that a piece of meat is 75% lean as it is to say to that it is 25% fat
What is Temporel framing
Think about actions and events within a particular time perspective AKA a Temporal frame
What is the construal level theory
A the relationship between psychological distance and abstract for concrete thinking Colin psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand or thought about in concrete terms
For example when an event is far away we think of it in and broad and abstract terms like exploring foreign lands however when the event is close at hand you think about it in near over and more concrete terms like packing
What is the confirmation bias
The tendency to test a propositioned by searching for evidence that would support it
what is the problem with the conformational Bias
This tendency to see confirming information can lead to all sorts of false evidence because a person can find evidence for almost anything
What is bottom up processing
Data driven mental processing in which an individual form conclusions based on the stimuli encountered in the environment
Define the term top-down processes
Fury driven mental processing in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of pre-existing knowledge and expectations
Do we perceive and understand the world in bottom-up processes or top-down processes
Both simultaneously
What the 4 subparts of the influence of schemas
Attention, memory, construal, behavior
What is attention in terms of the influence of schemas
attention is selective in a study some people did not even notice certain parts of a video where gorilla was because they didnt expect it
What is memory in terms of the influence of schemas
Because scheme is influence attention he also influenced memory. We are most likely to member stimuli that captured our attention. The influence of schemas are memory is also important for our judgment and had subsequent action.
Schemas can influence memory by affecting the encoding of information and the retrieval of information
What is encoding
Filing information away in memory based on what information is intended to the initial interpretation of the information
When watching a video of a waitress talking to someone and then asked what the waitress was holding the person will respond based on the schemas[stereotypes] because they did not actually
What is retrieval
The extraction of information from memory
Do schemas affect encoding or retrieval more
encoding– longer lasting impacts
how do schemas impact construal
They influence not only what information we focus on and remember but the way we interpret or construe that information
e.g. reading a story about donald after being shown words like ‘necklace’ and ‘irresponsible’ will make you think his actions are such even though they are ambiguous
can schemas impact behavior
yes, People who were primed with old age words actually walk slower
Define the word priming
The presentation of information designed to activate concept and hence make it accessible. A prime is a stimulus presented to activate the concept question
What determines which schemas are activated and applied
Recent activation, frequent activation and chronic accessibility, consciousness of activation: necessary or not, and expectations
Do people have to be conscious of activation of schemas
No schemas can be primed even when the presentation of activating stimuli is subliminal or below the threshold of conscious awareness
What is subliminal stimulus
Stimulus below the threshold of conscious awareness
We are often thought to be of two minds about certain problems meaning that our responses to stimuli are guided by two systems of thought, what are these 2 systems
analogous to intuition and reason
What is the intuitive system
Operate automatically and quickly and is based on Association and performs many of the operations simultaneously AKA in Parallel
What is the rational system
Is slower and more controlled it is based on rules and deductions and performs its operations one at a time aka serially
what Are the three things that can happen with the output of the rational and the intuitive systems
They cann agree
They can disagree
The intuitive system can produce response that seems right and can do so with such speed that the rational system never engage
What is heuristics
Intuitive mental operations performed quickly and automatically that provides affective answers to common problems of judgment
aka mental short cuts that allow for quick judgements
What is availability heuristic
The process whereby judgment of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind
used the we judge the frequency or probability of some event by how readily pertinent instances come to mind
e.g. which has more tornados, kansas or Nebraska? We think kansas but it is actually equal
things that easily come to mind but not necessarily the most (do more words have r as the third letter or the first? we say first because we can think of that fastest but it is actually the r as the third letter)
this can be bad because we see all the negative stuff in media and think it is really common when it isnt
What is representativeness heuristic
The process whereby judgment of likelihood are be some assessments of similarity between individuals and prototypes, or between cause and effect
used when categorizing something by judging how similar it is to our concept of the typical member
how idea that like goes with like and we are thrown off if something that doesn’t typically go in that ‘group’ is there… like a black republican
By be seeing responses exclusively on representativeness, participant failed to consider other useful information
what is frequency
The feeling of ease or difficulty associated with processing information
Especially in availability heuristic
what is base rate information
Information about the relative frequency of events or members of different categories in the population
Especially in representativeness heuristic
Define the term regression effect
The statistical tenancy, when two variables are in perfectly correlated, for extreme values on one of them to be associated with less extreme values on the other
Define the term regression fallacy
The failure to recognize the influence of their aggression affect and to offer a causal theory for what it’s really simple statistical regularity
People often fail to see the regression effects for what it is and instead conclude that they have discovered some important phenomena\on,
The sports illustrated jinx is the idea that appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated is bad luck because it typically follows where the person ends a winning streak wars injured but of course this happens because people are on the cover when they’re at their peak and according to statistics it has to go back down
What is the planning fallacy
The tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a particular project even when fully aware that they have failed to complete similar projects on time in the past
The inside perspective [ what steps are required to complete this project] crowds out the potentially informative outside perspective[How often do I get such things done on time]
What is the resemblance between cause and effect
Sometimes we take the belief that you are what you need to magical extremes; indicated that they assumed the characteristics of the food a tribe eats would rub off on the members– members of the turtle eating try were considered better swimmers and more generous where as members of the tribe that ate wild boar were thought to be more aggressive and probably happier
Define the term illusory correlation
The belief that two variables are correlated when they are not
