Chapter 4 Info Flashcards
Snap judgement
Briefly forming impressions of complete strangers based on the briefest glances
Janine, Willis and Todorov study: faces
Showed participants a large number of faces and they had them rate how trustworthy, competent, likeable, aggressive, or attractive each person seemed - some participants given as much time as needed to make ratings, others asked to rate photos after viewing for a second, half a second, or a tenth of a second
Results - hurried trait judgements corresponded remarkably well with the more reflective assessments
-correlation between judgements made at leisure and those made in a tenth of a second was almost as high as the correlation between judgements made at leisure and those made in a full second
Snap judgements conclusion
Some validity even to impressions based on brief exposure to others behaviour but shouldn’t put too much confidence in snap judgements as in general they contain only a kernel of truth
Pluralistic ignorance
Occurs whenever people act in ways that conflict with their private beliefs because of concern for the social consequences eg. saying you understood a lecture when you didn’t due to embarrassment - if everyone follows this logic, they all mislead one another about the true group norm
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Our expectations lead us to behave in ways that elicit the very behaviour we expect from others
Eg. If we think someone is unfriendly we’re likely to offer something of a cold shoulder ourselves - likely to elicit the very coldness we expected
Kassin, Goldstein, and Savitsky: crime investigation study
Had students commit a mock crime and other students visit the scene of the crime
-students then visited by interrogators
-interrogators who thought their suspects were likely to be guilty asked more incriminating questions and did more vigorous and aggressive interrogations - led suspects to act more defensively which made them appear guilty ti a group of observers who listened to the tapes
Bad news bias
People can be lead to believe they are more at risk of victimization than they really are
Primacy effect
Disproportionate influence on judgement by info presented first in body of evidence
Recency effect
Info presented last has most impact
Asch study: hypothetical individual
Asked people to evaluate a hypothetical individual described by the following terms: intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious
-individual was rated favourably no doubt due to influence of beginning two terms (primacy)
-a second group read same traits in opposite order - rated less favourably due to starting words being stubborn and envious
Framing effects
The frame of reference is changed by reordering the information even though the content of the info remains the same (eg. Order effects)
Spin framing
Less straightforward form of framing that varies the content, not just order of what is presented
Construal level theory
Temporal perspective from which people view events has important and predictable implications for how they construe them
Overconfidence bias
Tendency for individuals to have greater confidence in their judgements and decisions than their actual accuracy merits
Illusory support study: introvert/extravert
Researchers asked one group of participants to interview someone and determine whether target person was an extrovert, another group asked to determine whether target person was an introvert - those determining whether target was extravert tended to ask questions that focused on sociability
-those determining introversion asked questions about social withdrawal
Motivated confirmation bias study
Proponents and opponents of capital punishment read about studies of death penalty’s effectiveness as a deterrent to committing a crime
-those who favoured death penalty interpreted evidence they were exposed to as strongly supporting their position and those who apposed death penalty thought evidence warranted that the evidence supported their position
-both sides jumped on problems associated with the studies that contradicted their positions but readily embraced studies that supported them
Bottom-Up processing
Take in relevant stimuli from outside world - data driven mental processing - in which an individual forms conclusions based on stimuli encountered in the environment
Top-down processing
Filters and interprets bottom-up stimuli in light of pre-existing knowledge and expectations - theory driven mental processing - filter and interpret information in light of pre-existing knowledge and expectations
Donald study
Participants shown set of words in part 1 of study - either positive or negative - then read a blurb about Donald and rated him on a number of trait scales
-participants exposed to positive words had favourable impression and those who saw negative words did not - schemas about particular words influenced kind of inferences made about Donald
-info most accessible in memory can influence how we construe new info - is most likely to occur when stimulus is ambiguous
Recent activation - schemas
If schema is brought to mind recently, it tends to be more accessible and is hence ready for use
Availability Heuristic
Process whereby judgements of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind
Representative heuristic
Rely on it when we try to categorize something by judging how similar it is to our conception of the typical member of the category
Availability heuristic example: tornadoes
Where gets more tornadoes: Nebraska or Kansas - people choose Kansas due to availability of knowledge of the movie the wizard of oz
Kaneman and Tversky study: words
Asked people if there are more words that start with r or that have r as the third letter - large majority said more words started with r - words are stored in memory in alphabetical order-ish so words that begin with r are more accessible
