Chapter 4: Social Cognition

Question 1

Define:

social cognition

Answer 1

The subfield of psychology that examines the underlying reasons why people of every generation think the way they do about the world, and why everyday thinking—explaining, predicting, and deciding—frequently is irrational.

Question 2

What is the:

attribution process

How Do We Make Sense of the World?

Answer 2

When a naive scientist attempts to explain someone else’s behaviour, they looks for three pieces of information: the consistency of the actor’s behavior (e.g. Does he or she always behave in this manner, in other situations, and at other times?), consensus (e.g. Do others behave in the same way in the same situation?), and/or the distinctiveness of the action (e.g. Is he or she the only one to behave in this manner?).

Question 3

What two conditions does rational thought require?

How Do We Make Sense of the World?

Answer 3

1. The thinker has access to accurate, useful information.
2. The thinker has the mental resources needed to process life’s data.

These conditions almost never hold in everyday life. It is impossible to think deeply about each and every piece of information that comes our way and about each and every decision that must be made.

Question 4

Define:

cognitive miser

How Do We Make Sense of the World?

Answer 4

The brain is programmed to use shortcuts in order to conserve cognitive energy, behaving like a cognitive miser.

• We accomplish this by ignoring some information to reduce our cognitive load; or we “overuse” other information to keep from having to search for more.
• The strategies of the cognitive miser may be efficient, but can also lead to serious errors and biases, especially when we select an inappropriate shortcut or we ignore a vital piece of information.

Question 5

Define:

bias blindspot

How Do We Make Sense of the World?

Answer 5

One of the most pervasive biases is that we think we are less biased than the average person. We have this bias because when we introspect about our motivations and thought processes to ask ourselves if we are misjudging, we are unable to detect biases at work because the nature of our cognitive biases is that they are unconscious and unintentional.

Question 6

What is the:

contrast effect

The Effects of Context on Social Judgment

Answer 6

When any object is contrasted with something similar but not as good (or pretty, or tall, or inexpensive, and so forth), that particular object is judged to be better, prettier, taller, or a better bargain than would normally be the case (e.g. in contrast to a $170 bottle of wine, the still over-priced $70 of wine seems just right).

Question 7

Define:

priming

The Effects of Context on Social Judgment

Answer 7

A procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been recently encountered or frequently activated are more likely to come to mind and thus will be used in interpreting social events.

• Priming can effect our perceptions of others (e.g. we’re more likely to think that a neutral behaviour is reckless if we’ve been primed with words like ‘conceited,’ ‘aloof,’ and ‘stubborn’);
• And ourselves for a short period of time (e.g. if we’ve been primed with words like ‘rude’ and ‘interrupt,’ we’re more likely to interrupt someone).
• “The mass media may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about…” i.e. People who have been primed with certain news topics will often think that those topics are more important.

Question 8

What is:

framing

The Effects of Context on Social Judgment

Answer 8

Whether a problem or decision is presented in such a way that it appears to represent the potential for a loss or for a gain.

• For most people, it is more painful to lose something than it is pleasurable to gain something. This leads to people being more likely to act when they are perceiving a reduction in loss.
• e.g. Women were more likely to do self-screening for breast cancer after reading a pamphlet that emphasized how women who don’t do self-screening have a decreased chance of finding a tumor early on.

Question 9

Why does the primacy effect in impression formation occur?

The Effects of Context on Social Judgment

Answer 9

• According to the attention decrement explanation, the later items in a list receive less attention as the observers tire and their minds start to wander; thus, these items have less impact on judgment.
• According to the interpretive set explanation, the first items serve to create an initial impression that then is used to interpret subsequent information, either through the discounting of incongruent facts (e.g. if Steve is intelligent, why should he be envious?) or by subtle changes in the meaning of the words further down the list (e.g. being critical is a positive attribute if Steve is intelligent but a negative one if he is stubborn).

Question 10

Define:

dilution effect

The Effects of Context on Social Judgment

Answer 10

The tendency for neutral and irrelevant information to weaken a judgment or impression.

• This occurs because irrelevant information about a person makes that person seem more similar to others, and thus more average and like everyone else. An average person is less likely to have an extremely high grade point average or to be terribly negative.

Question 11

Define:

judgmental heuristics

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 11

A mental shortcut; it is a simple, often only approximate, rule or strategy for solving a problem (e.g. “If a particular food item is found in a health food store, it must be good for you”).

Question 12

What is the:

representative heuristic

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 12

When we focus on the similarity of one object to another to infer that the first object acts like the second one.

• e.g. A box of Lucky Charms resembles a child’s toy—bright colors, cartoon character, glistening sugar. We infer that this cereal is “childish,” and since children eat junk food if not carefully supervised, this cereal must be junk. On the other hand, the 100 Percent Natural Granola box has earth tones and a picture of unprocessed grains; it resembles nature itself. And, of course, it is “natural” and, in our minds, the natural is equated with the good, the wholesome. The cereal must be nutritious. However, in a laboratory study, Lucky Charms were determined to be more nutritious than the Natural Granola.
• The first information we pick up about a person—information about gender, race, physical attractiveness, and social status—is usually associated with simple rules that guide thought and behavior. e.g. Gender and ethnic stereotypes tell us “just how men and women differ” and “what a particular member of an ethnic group is like.”

Question 13

Define:

availability heuristic

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 13

Judgments based on how easy it is for us to bring specific examples to mind.

• e.g. People are more likely to say that shark attacks cause more deaths than falling airplane parts and fires cause more deaths than drowning, even though both are false. This is because it is easier to bring to mind examples of deaths from sharks and fires, because these events are more likely to be covered in a vivid manner on the evening news and thus are more available in people’s memories.

Question 14

Define:

attitude

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 14

A special type of belief that includes emotional and evaluative components; in a sense, an attitude is a stored evaluation—good or bad—of an object.

Question 15

What is the:

attitude heuristic

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 15

When people use attitudes to assign objects to a favorable class (for which strategies of favoring, approaching, praising, cherishing, and protecting are appropriate) or to an unfavorable category (for which strategies of disfavoring, avoiding, blaming, neglecting, and harming are used).

• e.g. If John dislikes President Obama, he blames his policies for the recession, the high level of unemployment, and the huge deficit; if he likes Obama, he is apt to blame these problems on Obama’s predecessor.

Question 16

Define:

halo effect

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 16

As another dimension of the attitude heuristic, this effect is a general bias in which a favorable or unfavorable general impression of a person affects our inferences and future expectations about that person.

• e.g. If you really like President Obama, then you will be likely to discount or explain away any behavior on his part that might be considered negative, and exaggerate the goodness of his positive actions (as if he were wearing a halo in your mind).

Question 17

What is the:

false-consensus effect

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 17

The tendency to overestimate the percentage of people who agree with us on any issue.

Question 18

When do we use heuristics?

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 18

1. When we don’t have time to think carefully about an issue.
2. When we are so overloaded with information that it becomes impossible to process the information fully.
3. When the issues at stake are not very important, so that we do not care to think about it.
4. When we have little solid knowledge or information to use in making a decision.

Question 19

Define:

self-fulfilling prophecy

Categorization and Social Stereotypes

Answer 19

The process by which such expectations or stereotypes lead people to treat others in a way that makes them confirm their expectations. It occurs when we act on our initial impressions of others in a way that makes their behavior conform to those impressions.

Question 20

What is:

illusory correlation

Categorization and Social Stereotypes

Answer 20

When we frequently perceive a relationship between two entities that we think should be related—but, in fact, they are not. Our stereotypes lead us to see a relationship that then seems to provide evidence that the original stereotype is true.

• e.g. In informal surveys, people consistently overestimate the extent to which lesbians are likely to contract the AIDS virus. In fact, lesbians have a lower rate of HIV infection than male homosexuals and male and female heterosexuals. However, the knowledge that male homosexuals have high rates of HIV infection coupled with the categorization of a woman as homosexual leads to the mistaken judgment that lesbians are likely to have AIDS.

Question 21

What is the:

homogeneity effect

Categorization and Social Stereotypes

Answer 21

We tend to see members of outgroups as more similar to one another than to the members of our own group—the ingroup.

Question 22

What is:

ingroup favouritism

Categorization and Social Stereotypes

Answer 22

The tendency to see one’s own group as better on any number of dimensions and to allocate rewards to one’s own group.

Question 23

What is the:

minimal group paradigm

Categorization and Social Stereotypes

Answer 23

In this procedure complete strangers are divided into groups using the most trivial, inconsequential criteria imaginable (e.g. a coin flip that randomly assigns people to either “Group X” or “Group W”).

• Significant results are often obtained on the basis of group identification that means very little. That is, the subjects are total strangers prior to the study and never interact with one another, and their actions are completely anonymous. Yet they behave as if those who share their meaningless label (e.g. X or W) are their good friends or close kin.
• Subjects indicate that they like those who share their label. They rate them as more likely to have a more pleasant personality and to produce better work than the people who are assigned a different label. They also allocate more money and rewards to those who share their label.

Question 24

Why do we mispredict about our happiness the future?

Constructive Predictions and Reconstructive Memory

Answer 24

One reason is that we adjust to both happy and sad events in our lives, but frequently fail to recognize our powers of adjustment when we mentally construct what our futures will look and feel like. Another reason is that when we imagine the future, we tend to focus upon only the event in question (e.g. getting or not getting tenure) to the exclusion of all the other things that will undoubtedly occur at the same time to take the sting out of failure or to dilute our happiness.

Question 25

What is the:

reconstructive process

Constructive Predictions and Reconstructive Memory

Answer 25

We cannot tap into a literal translation of past events; instead, we re-create our memories from bits and pieces of actual events filtered through and modified by our notions of what might have been, what should have been, or the way we would like things to have been.

Question 26

Define:

reconstructive memory

Constructive Predictions and Reconstructive Memory

Answer 26

The degree to which “suggestive” questioning can influence memory and subsequent eyewitness testimony.

• e.g. In an experiment, subjects were shown a film depicting a multiple-car accident. After the film, some of the subjects were asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” Other subjects were asked the same question, but the word smashed was replaced by the word hit. Subjects who were asked about smashing cars, as opposed to hitting cars, estimated that the cars were going significantly faster; moreover, a week after seeing the film, they were more likely to state (erroneously) that there was broken glass at the accident scene.

Question 27

Define:

self-schemas

Autobiographical Memory

Answer 27

Coherent memories, feelings, and beliefs about ourselves that hang together and form an integrated whole. Thus, our memories get distorted in such a way that they fit the general picture we have of ourselves.

Question 28

What is:

false memory syndrome

Autobiographical Memory

Answer 28

When we report on memories that were planted as if they were actually a part of our history, and are certain that they happened (even if they really didn’t).

Question 29

What is:

recovered memeory phenomenon

Autobiographical Memory

Answer 29

When repressed “memories” of traumatic or horrific events surface during intensive psychotherapy—frequently under hypnosis—or after reading a vivid and highly suggestive self-help book.

• Here’s how this might come about: Suppose a therapist holds the theory that certain fears or personality characteristics (e.g. low self-esteem, fear of being alone in the dark, etc.) are symptomatic of having been sexually abused. Into their office comes a person with some of these characteristics. Over the course of the therapy, the therapist might subtly suggest that these events might have taken place, and then invite the client to try to remember such instances. They might unwittingly show increased interest when the client begins to explore these possibilities. Under these conditions, the client may begin to construct a coherent set of memories that may nonetheless be totally false.

Question 30

Define:

confirmation bias

How Conservative Is Human Cognition?

Answer 30

The tendency to seek confirmation of initial impressions or beliefs.

Question 31

Define:

hindsight bias

How Conservative Is Human Cognition?

Answer 31

The strong tendency to believe that we could have predicted an event in advance, after knowing the outcome.

Question 32

Does human cognition tend to be conservative?

How Conservative Is Human Cognition?

Answer 32

Yes; the confirmation and hindsight biases provide support for this proposition. There are also numerous other examples:

• The first information received is almost always the most influential;
• Easily accessible categories are overused in forming judgments;
• Representative, availability, and attitude heuristics are sometimes misused;
• Stereotypes distort information processing and confirm the apparent usefulness of the stereotype;
• And memory is reconstructed to fit with current perspectives.

Question 33

What are the benefits and drawbacks of cognitive conservatism?

How Conservative Is Human Cognition?

Answer 33

• Cognitive conservatism has at least one benefit: It allows us to perceive the social world as a coherent and stable place.
• However, it also has many drawbacks:
  
  • The misuse of inappropriate categories may cause a person to distort events or to miss important information.
  • The misapplication of a heuristic can lead to poor decision making.
  • The failure to update our conception of the world in the face of new and discrepant information can result in a mistaken picture of reality.
  • The consequences are not just mental but can show their face in social problems that we call racism, sexism, prejudice, and just plain stupid thinking.

Question 34

What can we do to avoid the negative consequences of cognitive conservatism?

How Conservative Is Human Cognition?

Answer 34

1. Be wary of those who attempt to create your categories and definitions of the situations. Ask yourself, “Why is this particular label being suggested?”
2. Try to use more than one way to categorize and describe a person or event.
3. Try to think of persons and important events as unique; although they are members of a particular salient category (e.g. a given race or gender), they are also members of many other categories and have their own unique attributes.
4. When forming an impression, consider the possibility that you might be mistaken

Question 35

What is:

correspondent inference

How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide Behavior?

Answer 35

In support of the hypothesis that the perception of attitude-behavior consistency is “all in our heads” is the common tendency to attribute the cause of an individual’s behavior to characteristics of the individual, such as personality traits and attitudes, rather than to the power of the situation itself.

• When we see something happen to a person, most of us assume that the event is consistent with the kind of person he or she is. We would like to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
• e.g. The inquiry “Why did little Johnny fail on his homework assignment?” is often answered with the statement “Because he is stupid or lazy”—ignoring such situational factors as overcrowded schools or a poor academic environment.

Question 36

Define:

attitude accessibility

How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide Behavior?

Answer 36

The strength of the association between an object and your evaluation of it.

• e.g. We all know people about whom we immediately think, “Oh, no, not that jerk again,” or con- versely, “Wow! What a wonderful person.” These are highly accessible attitudes.
• e.g. Survey researchers find that respondents are capable of giving their opinion about made-up issues, such as a phony piece of legislation. In this case, our less accessible attitudes and nonattitudes are not likely to guide behavior.

Question 37

How does attitude accessibility influence behaviour?

How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide Behavior?

Answer 37

When an attitude is highly accessible, it is more likely to be the major thing we use for defining a situation. In those situations, we will act on the basis of that attitude. In an experiment, researchers manipulated the accessibility of an attitude by having subjects repeatedly express their opinions or by giving subjects the opportunity to have direct experience with the attitude object. They consistently found that attitudes that are made accessible in this manner became predictive of subsequent behavior to a far greater extent than attitudes that are not made accessible.

Question 38

How do attitudes and beliefs influence our actions?

How Do Attitudes and Beliefs Guide Behavior?

Answer 38

Implicit beliefs often guide our actions in ways we don’t realize. For example, people who see intelligence as fixed are apprehensive about failure. Accordingly, they try to steer clear of real challenges that might reveal their limitations. In a way, this makes sense; if you can’t improve your intelligence, you want to play it safe and foster the image that you are smart. Thus, relative to people who are equally smart but who see intelligence as malleable, people with the fixed view are more likely to choose easier tasks and give up when a task becomes too challenging. They frequently choke on hard tests, and will even lie to a stranger about their performance, reporting a higher score than they got. People who think intelligence is malleable behave differently. They tend to seek challenges and try to improve their abilities. Instead of giving up when they fail, they try harder or try a different strategy—they are more resilient.

Question 39

Define:

fundamental attribution error

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 39

A general human tendency to overestimate the importance of personality or dispositional factors relative to situational or environmental influences when describing and explaining the causes of social behavior (e.g. correspondent inference).

• e.g. People will estimate that only 10-20% of participants in Milgram’s experiments would give the maximum shock, when in fact 65% of the participants did. They assumed that the subject who did was an aberration—that his behavior reflected distinguishing personal dispositions (i.e. that he was particularly aggressive or obedient). They failed to attribute his behavior to the power of the situation to produce this behavior in most people.

Question 40

What are:

social roles

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 40

As observers, we frequently lose sight of the fact that each individual plays many social roles and that we might be observing only one of them. Thus, the importance of social roles can be easily overlooked in explaining a person’s behavior.

• e.g. Students may rate a certain professor as friendly and caring, while his colleagues see him as intense and critical. Both groups are only seeing a side, a social role of the professor. Many social roles make up the professor, and he can be both tough and charismatic at the same time.
• e.g. In an experiment, observers were more likely to rate question-askers as more intelligent as question-answerers. The question-askers were supposed to come up with hard questions, that the answerers had difficulties with. Observers knew that these roles were randomly assigned, and yet still failed to consider the impact of these social roles.

Question 41

Define:

actor-observer bias

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 41

The tendency for actors to attribute their own actions to situational factors, whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to stable personality dispositions of the actors (e.g. “I didn’t help that old lady across the street because I was running late for class, but everyone else at the scene didn’t act because they’re not altruistic”).

Question 42

What causes actor-observer bias?

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 42

The cause for this bias is a function of where a person’s attention is focused. The actor’s attention is usually focused on the environment and on past history; he or she may have special knowledge about the factors that led up to the behavior and how they felt about the behavior. On the other hand, the observer’s attention is almost always focused on the actor; therefore, the observer may be unaware of historical or environmental reasons for why the actor did what they did.

Question 43

Define:

egocentric thought

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 43

The tendency to perceive themselves as more central to events than is actually the case.

• e.g. In a study, subjects bought lottery tickets. Half were allowed to choose their numbers, and half had their numbers randomly assigned. Later, the subjects were given the opportunity to sell the ticket back to the experimenter. Those who had chosen their own lottery numbers demanded up to four times as much money for it as those who were assigned numbers. The subjects in this experiment were under the illusion that choosing their own number increased their chances of winning.
• e.g. The Barnum effect or a Barnum statement describes a statement that is vague enough that it could apply to almost anyone. These statements are frequently used in astrology, and because people are self-centered in thought, they will almost always rate these statements as accurate.

Question 44

Define:

self-serving bias

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 44

The tendency for individuals to make dispositional attributions for their successes and situational attributions for their failures.

• e.g. Students who do well on an exam tend to attribute their performance to ability and effort, whereas those who do poorly attribute it to an unfair exam or bad luck.

Question 45

What is the role of self-concepts in the self-serving bias?

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 45

We are motivated to engage in self-serving biases to protect and maintain our self-concepts and self-esteem. That is, if I have a positive self-view, it is easy for me to see and accept myself as accomplishing positive things.

Question 46

What is:

ego-defensive behaviour

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 46

If our positive self-concepts are threatened, we will defend against it—perhaps through denial or a good excuse.

• The likelihood of giving a self-serving explanation increases when (1) the person is highly involved in the behavior; (2) the person feels responsible for the outcome of his or her action; and (3) the person’s behavior is publicly observed by others.
• Further, people are least likely to offer a self-serving attribution when they feel that they can’t get away with it.

Question 47

Of what value are self-biases?

Three Possible Biases in Social Explanation

Answer 47

• The individual who believes that he or she is the cause of good things will try harder and persist longer to achieve difficult goals. Such efforts can result in new scientific discoveries, great works of art, or political agreements that can be of great benefit to millions of people.
• These biases can also be beneficial (for a short while) because it allows people who fail to avoid being psychologically devastated by setbacks.
• The belief that we can do something, even if it is illusory, can lead us to overcome obstacles.
• Studies have also found that optimistic thinking—believing that a defeat is due to bad luck and can be overcome by effort and ability—leads to more achievement, better health, and an improved mental outlook.