Chapter 4: Social Cognition Flashcards
Anchoring and adjustment
a mental shortcut in which people rely on an initial starting point in making an estimate but then fail to adequately adjust from this anchor
Automatic thinking
a type of decision-making process that occurs at an unconscious or automatic level and is entirely effortless and unintentional
Availability heuristic
a mental shortcut in which people make a judgment based on how easily they can bring something to mind
Base-rate fallacy
an error in which people ignore the numerical frequency, or base rate, of an event in estimating how likely it is to occur
Behavioural confirmation/self-fulfilling prophecy
the process by which people’s expectations about a person lead them to elicit behaviour that confirms those expectations
Belief perseverance
the tendency to maintain, and even strengthen, beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence
Content-free schemas
rules about processing information
Contrast effect
the relative difference in intensity between two stimuli and their effects on each other
Controlled or effortful thinking
thinking that is effortful, conscious, and intentional
Counterfactual thinking
the tendency to imagine alternative outcomes to various events
Event schemas
scripts that people have for well-known situations that help them prepare for the expected sequence of events
Field dependent
having more difficulty in identifying an embedded figure in a larger background but greater ability to perceive an image as one holistic figure
Field independent
having the ability to identify an embedded figure and separate it from a larger background
Framing
the tendency to be influenced by the way an issue is presented
Heuristics
mental shortcuts that are often used to form judgments and make decisions
Hindsight bias
the tendency of people to see a given outcome as having been inevitable once they know the actual outcome
Illusory correlation
the tendency to see a correlation between two events when in reality there is no association between them
Illusory superiority
an unrealistic positive view of the self
Implicit personality theory
the theory that certain traits and behaviours go together
Intuition
a decision-making shortcut in which we rely on our instinct instead of relying on more objective information
Perceptual confirmation
the tendency for people to see things in line with their own beliefs and preconceptions
Person schemas
beliefs about other people, their traits, and goals
Primacy
the tendency for information that is presented early to have a greater impact on judgements than information that is presented later
Priming
increase accessibility to a given concept or schema due to a prior experience
Reconstructive memory
the process by which memories of a given event are altered after the event occurred
Representativeness
the tendency to perceive someone or something based on its similarity to a typical case
Role schemas
behaviours that are expected of people in particular occupations or social positions
Schemas
mental structures that organize our knowledge about the world and influence how we interpret people and events
Self-schemas
our memory, inferences, and information about ourselves
Social cognition
how people think about the social world, and in particular how people select, interpret, and use information to make judgments about the world
Trait negativity bias
the tendency for people to be more influenced by negative traits than by positive ones
Unrealistic optimism
the tendency for people to see themselves as less likely than others to suffer bad events in the future
