Exam 1 Flashcards
Cognition
This is all the mental activities associated with thinking,
knowing, remembering, and communicating
Conceptual Knowledge
knowledge that enables us to recognize
objects and events and to make inferences about their properties
Concept
a mental grouping of
similar objects, events, ideas, and
people that is used for a variety of
cognitive functions (e.g., memory,
reasoning etc.)
Categorization
is the process by which things are placed into groups
called categories (etc. when you see cars and you group them into Ford, Honda, Toyota)
Why are categories useful?
Categories help us understand individual
cases not previously encountered
What is prototype theory??
Membership of a category is
determined by comparing the
object to a prototype that
represents a category. (i.e every person has a prototype idea of what a bird looks like)
Prototype
“typical” An abstract representation of the “typical” member of a category.
Usually the most typical features (beak, wings, feathers)
Typicality Ratings
Category members rated as most typical are also
those that share features with many other members of the category
i.e high typicality for “bird” is a robin because it has many common features of a typical bird. a penguin would be low typicality
Normative Accounts of Judgement
certain rules must be followed for drawing conclusions based on known facts.
i.e rules based on logic, mathematics, statistics and scientific method
Descriptive Accounts of Judgement
the way that people
actually draw conclusions based on
what they know.
(if humans were rational, both of these accounts of judgement would be the same)
Critcher and Gilovich (2007) study about mentioning a larger number affects peoples perception. What did they find?
found that people are willing to
pay more at a restaurant named
“Studio 97” than “Studio 17”. Meaning this idea is true.
What’s anchoring?
When provided
with a potential answer to a
question, people use that
answer as a reference point in
selecting their answer. (This happens even when potential answer has nothing to do with the question)
In the study where people were asked “what is the percentage of African Nations in the US?” and then a wheel was spun (and rigged to either land on 10 or 65). What were the results?
When the wheel stopped at “10”,
people estimated 25% on average.
When the wheel stopped at “65”,
people estimated 45% on average
Meaning, whatever number was spun effected peoples answers even though the wheel had nothing to do with the number of African Nations.
The study about playing dice with criminal sentences. What happened? and what were the results?
German judges with 15 or more years of experience were given a description of a woman who had been caught shoplifting. Then they rolled a loaded dice (every roll got a 3 or a 9).
When the judges rolled a 9 they averaged 8 months of prison, when they rolled a 3 they were more likely to give roughly 4 months.
The study about music as persuasion. What happened? and what were the results?
In a wine shop they played either French or German music. Whatever music was playing when people entered the store were more likely to buy that kind of wine (French music=bought French wine).
Heuristics
are fast, simple rules
people use that often lead to
accurate conclusions
Availability Heuristic
Tendency to make judgments about
the frequency or likelihood of an
event based on the ease with which
evidence or examples come to mind
When do we commonly use availability heuristic?
When judging how likely an event is to happen.
when judging how frequent an event occurs.
What are the pitfalls of relying on availability heuristic?
People often overestimate the frequency of a case of…
* A salient event
* A case that is easily brought to mind
*something that captures attention will be more easily retrieved
How does the availability heuristic affect our thoughts on death?
-people overestimate the probability of dying from causes that are prevalent in the media (i.e. homicides, flood, tornados, fire, lung cancer)
-People underestimate the probability of dying from causes that are less prevalent in the media (i.e. diabetes, asthma, stomach cancer)
How do we see the availability heuristic play in with Covid 19?
Asked how many people died from Covid 19
-on average american people thought that 9% of the population had died from the virus
-that means 29, 800, 000 people would have died when only 155,000 died actually
-This is because covid deaths were expressed so highly during the pandemic
What is salience when it comes to the availability heuristic?
Salience is when something is more prominent. So in the availability heuristic, it is when media is more noticeable we tend to remember it better, describing why we sometimes think situations are more common then they are. I.e why we are afraid of plane crashes
Availability Cascade
A self-perpetuating process where News coverage of a danger creates public fear, inspiring further coverage and more fear
What’s the Crisis Crisis?
The never-ending series of hyped threats leading to actions that leave everyone worse off
Representativeness Heuristic
related to the idea that people often
make judgments based on how
much one event resembles another
event
Consequences of the
Representativeness Heuristic
People often rely on the
assumption that members of a
category share attributes in
common at the expense of other
valuable forms of information
Diagnostic Information
Attributes
that often distinguish members of
a category from members of
another category (Sally is quiet, loves math and hates talking in front of people–is sally an engineer or a lawyer?)
Base Rates
Actually frequency of category member (lawyers outnumber engineers by a rate of 3:1)
What is the issue with diagnostic information and base rates?
When diagnostic information is available, people often completely ignore base rates
Kahneman and Tversky (1973) experiment 1
*People asked, “if someone is chosen,
at random, from a group of 75
lawyers and 25 engineers, what is
their profession likely to be?”
*All people say “lawyer” because of
the base rate provided
Kahneman and Tversky (1973) experiment 2
*People told, “Sarah was chosen, at random,
from a group of 75 lawyers and 25 engineers”
*AND
*Sarah is excellent at math, but is
uncomfortable speaking in front of a crowd
*OR
*Sarah is outgoing socially and loves to argue
*(What is Sarah’s profession likely to be?)
People were likely to completely ignore the base rate and listen only to the diagnostic information.
Cognitive Illusions
even when
people know the correct answer,
they may be drawn to an incorrect
conclusion based on the structure of
the problem
Dilution Effects
Including Non-Diagnostic
Information along with Diagnostic
Information, leads people to rely
less on diagnostic information in
making judgements
How do you explain the dilution effect? think of the study with Frank and the movies..
*With only diagnostic information
people treat Frank in a stereotypical
way, leading to more extreme
estimates
*Adding irrelevant details makes people
treat Frank like an individual, leading to
more conservative estimates
Conjunction rule
probability of two events cannot be higher than the
probability of the single constituents (i.e it is more common that someone is a bank teller, than a feminist bank teller)
Conjunction Fallacy
The probability of a co-occurrence of two outcomes
cannot be greater than the probability of each outcome alone (there must be fewer feminist bank tellers than just regular bank tellers)
Conjunction Fallacy
The probability of a co-occurrence of two outcomes
cannot be greater than the probability of each outcome alone (there must be fewer feminist bank tellers than just regular bank tellers)
Consequences of the representativeness heuristic?
people are more likely to stereotype based on one member of a category/group.
Covariation detection
Perceiving relations between variables (If two variables “covary” that means they rise and fall together)
What is the problem with Covariation Detection?
Covariation Detection can lead you to falsely conclude: In this example, the same amount of celebrities had problems, regardless if they were childhood stars or not.
Positive Test Strategy (Confirmation Bias)
Testing a hypothesis by seeking cases that
match it (the tendency to only look at things that confirm your hypothesis)
What is the problem with confirmation bias?
If only look for things that confirm hypothesis, there will be an overrepresentation of confirmations
Positive Test Strategy—Biased memory search
more likely to recall facts from memory that confirm your hypothesis (i.e. more likely to think of child celebrities that have problems when asked if being a child star creates life problems)
Positive Test Strategy—Biased Evidence Seeking
We observe the world looking for information that confirms our hypotheses OR, we only pay attention to
information that confirms our hypotheses
Are you happy with your social life study
People who were asked “are you happy with your social life?” were more likely to think of situations where they were happy meaning they reported being happier.
The people that were asked “Are you unhappy with your social life?” were more likely to think of times that they were unhappy.
Implications of Positive Test Strategy
The positive test strategy tends to lead to biased conclusions when stimuli are complex such that cases exist that fit the hypothesis, regardless of whether the hypothesis is actually true (one sided questions can bias our perceptions and perspectives)
Implications definition
Single-chute survey questions can produce misleading
results (leading you to misstate and mistake your position)
Bolken and Anderson (2009) Positive Test Strategy Study
approached people and asked them to complete a survey (29% volunteered)
approached people and asked “do you consider yourself a helpful person?” people mostly said yes and 77.3% volunteered
Implications for Persuasion (in relation to positive test strategy)
asking questions in a certain way renders
people vulnerable to aligned requests
One tenant
Losses loom larger than equivalent gains (e.g., it hurts more to lose $100 than it feels good to win $100)
Loss aversion
Not willing to take small risk to gain an extra $100,
but are willing to take large risk of losing $100 for small chance of avoiding a loss
Why is prospect theory important for psychology?
The specific wording can affect what features we focus our attention on when making decisions
rational perspective
expected costs should be treated as equal to expected benefits.
Thaler (1980) Loss aversion study
people were given two options:
-$1.25/gallon of gas with an extra $0.05/gallon for using credit card
-$1.30/gallon of gas with a $0.05/gallon less if you paid with cash
Even though they are the exact same people chose the second option because they don’t want to “lose money”
prospect theory
risk differs
when we face gains versus
losses
Intuition
An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling
or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning
Conscious thought in decision making
most people think that it’s better to sit and think hard about tough decisions (i.e. pro and cons chart). But our conscious thinking has a low processing capacity, meaning that it is limited when making complex decisions because it can’t take all the relevant info into account simultaneously
Unconscious thought in decision making
Unconscious thought has a very large processing capacity. This makes it more effective when making decisions because it can process all the relevant information into account simultaneously
Dijksterhuis (2004) study on unconscious vs conscious decision making
Dependent Variable: “If you had to
choose one of the apartments, which
one would you choose?”
*Conscious thought condition: could think about the decision for 3 minutes
*Unconscious thought condition:
participants were distracted for a few
minutes and then indicated their decision
*Control condition: make a decision
immediately after being presented with
the options
Unconscious thinkers choose the best apartment compared to the other 2
Language
involves our spoken,
written, or signed words and the
ways we combine them to
communicate meaning
Symbolic in language
people use spoken sounds and written words to
represent objects, actions, events, and ideas
Semantic in language
The meaning of words and word combinations
Generative in language
a limited number of symbols can be combined
in an infinite number of ways to generate novel messages
structured in language
there are rules that govern arrangement of
words into phrases and sentences
The basic structure of language
Basic sounds are combined into units with meaning, which are combined into words, which are combined into phrases, which are combined into sentences
Phonemes
The smallest units of speech that can be distinguished perceptually.
(Most languages use between 20-80, English uses about 40)
