Lecture 1 ; Construal

Question 1

what is new look and the example of the study presented in class to describe this

Answer 1

“new look” shows that motivation can alter what/how we see things. Study ex; : kids wither had coins or discs (same size as coins)
What they found :
Bigger monetary value = bigger in “size” as perceived
○ Low income kids saw the coins bigger (than high income kids)

Question 2

Construal def in book

Answer 2

Refers to how we interpret situations and behaviour and how we make inferences, whether we regard ppl as free agents or victims will affect our perception of our actions.

Question 3

Princeton vs Dartmouth game

Answer 3

• Brought Princeton and Dartmouth students (played the game footage for both
  and were asked to accurately identify the penalties committed)
  ○ Students were biased to see the opposing team committing more penalties (while
  seeing their own team as “LESS” bad)
  ○ One student even thought the film was edited cos he couldn’t “find any penalties”
  from his own team (“tried so hard to be accurate” but the whole time he was just
  biased)

Question 4

pleasant vs horrible drink

Answer 4

WISHFUL SEEING in effect
The students will say they got the letter or number that represents a pleasant looking drink… When letter b was the good drink = 72% reported seeing the letter, when the number 13 is good= 60% choose number.

Question 5

Perception is an _______ constructive process

Answer 5

Active

Question 6

Barack obama example

Answer 6

Liberals vs conservatives saw Obama photos differently according to skin colour+ eye colour, ppl choose according to voting preference.
== Motivation and ideology altered their perception
That sometimes we are tempted to think that we are not biased.

Question 7

True or false: reality is not a snapshot

Answer 7

true

Question 8

Cognitive association def and example

Answer 8

A black face was flashed before the tool or weapon, people likely to say
that a weapon was shown on the screen, rather than a tool (it was in fact a TOOL that was shown after the black face)
== We form associations based on race, gender, and other categorizations, we store those in memory and lead us to make errors

Question 9

So I if control things based on my needs/goals and you construct things on your own need/goals how do we both do the same thing at a bus stop for example? Why do we all line up?

Answer 9

Its because we are socially attuned to develop and others provide cues that help us behave in certain situation.

Question 10

How do we explain people seeing the ”facts” differently than we see them?

Answer 10

naive realism = Thinking that because you know of the construal process for example your immune to it and because you’re aware of it you don’t apply to construal.

Question 11

Nature vs. Nurture

Answer 11

It’s both! Nature happens through nurture!

Question 12

Wishful seeing

Answer 12

more desired objects are closer

Question 13

“What loss of liberty would I accept to achieve an increment in public safety?” (Tetlock, 2000)
Tetlock, why was tetlock controversial?

Answer 13

Controversial for always challenging some theories in psychology

Question 14

If you wanna bring on something that you think would be of benefit, there’s inevitable side-effects that come along with it, when do we excuse these side effects?

Answer 14

● When the ideology fits your goals
● When it’s our side that’s doing something that may cause harm, we are ready to excuse
that (“oh it’s unintended, it’s unavoidable”)

Question 15

Naive realism

Answer 15

The idea that we know there’s bias
● I see the world as it is
● Objective in what we see and what we think
Otherwise, these people may be… (non-objective people)
● uninformed /ignorant
● Biased in what they read or what they hear
● They have an ideology and values that biases them

Question 16

Naive realism Israeli palestinian conflict example

Answer 16

● Ross collected proposals generated by Israelis and proposals generated by Palestinians
● He presented Israeli proposals to the Israelis, BUT told them it came from the Palestinians, so they actually rejected their OWN proposals just off the basis it came
from the other group
● Similar process took place with the Palestinian group
= once its from the other side it must be bad.

Question 17

What happens when someones opinion is the same/different as yours? What is the takeaway from this?

Answer 17

If your opinion is the same as mine, I have as much confidence in your opinion as I do in
mine
● If their opinion is different, you would think their opinion is NOT valid (you actually
become more confident than before about your own opinion!) = increases your
confidence, but does not reduce your bias, convinced you have the right opinion and
right attitude (more rooted in our own opinion, but doesn’t make us more open to other
opinions)
Take away; Easy for us to criticize others but not acknowledge our own bias and values

Question 18

What was the first social psychology study?

Answer 18

Conducted by Triplett and Ringlemann as they noticed the effect of other people’s presence on their performance.

Question 19

What two motivations can affect cognitive processes?

Answer 19

Sometimes individuals face the conflict of wanting to be right (correct) and wanting to feel good about oneself

Question 20

Define social psychology

Answer 20

the scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context

Question 21

When did social psychology flourish and become more studied?

Answer 21

After WWII, people were desperate to understand how the tragedies of WWII were possible

Question 22

What was Stanley Milgram’s experiment and what did it prove/educate us about?

Answer 22

After WWII, social psychologists wanted to study the willingness of participants to listen to an authority figure. Participants were told by an authority figure that they were to continue to administer painful shocks to the person on the other side of the wall. This experiment demonstrated participants’ vulnerability to destructive commands of authority.

Question 23

Hindsight bias

Answer 23

Butterfly ballot
- There’s an error in assessment

Question 24

Situational factors vs internal factors

Answer 24

Situational factors have more influence on a person’s actions and behavior than internal factors (what kind of person someone is)
○ Dispositions = internal factors; beliefs, values, personality traits, and abilities
guiding behavior
○ Situational factors = i.e. social norms, presence of other people, etc

Question 25

Fundamental attribution error
+ give examples

Answer 25

○ Neglecting the influence of situational factors on behavior while
overemphasizing dispositions
○ Behavior is not always a result of one’s dispositions
○ i.e. Milgram’s obedience study, Good Samaritan ( in a rush or not in a rush)

Question 26

A colleague is late at work and instead of taking into consideration the heavy traffic you decide that this person is late because she is not reliable. This is an example of what?

Answer 26

Fundamental attribution error =

Question 27

True or false; construal + naive realism and go hand in hand

Answer 27

True

Question 28

“Nudge don’t push”def plus give the example

Answer 28

○ Small, unimportant circumstances can greatly influence a behavior (either by
inhibiting or facilitating it)
Example:
Example: 99% of Austrians are organ donors while only 12% of Germans are
donors
■ This is because Germans have to check a box to register as organ
donors
■ Austrians are asked to check the box if they DON’T want to be donors

Question 29

Gestalt psychology

Answer 29

○ How people view the world and objects is based on some active, nonconscious interpretation, which also applies to our judgements about the social world
○ We don’t simply perceive things just as what they are, there’s always an
underlying and inherent thought process (we see things based on what we’re already inherently thinking)
○ What we see is based on what is in our heads!

Question 30

Gestalt psychology stands for what in german?

Answer 30

(German word gestalt = “form” “figure”)

Question 31

True or false; Naive realism and gestalt psychology are kind of opposites

Answer 31

True

Question 32

Naive realism

Answer 32

The belief that we see the world directly without any complicated perceptual or
cognitive machinery “doctoring” the data

Question 33

Schemas

Answer 33

○ A knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information that is used to help in understanding events
○ Generalized knowledge based on what you have usually experienced in the past so you expected the same thing to happen when you reencounter a situation
- Built from past experiences

Question 34

Self-schemata theory and definition

Answer 34

Markus
Cognitive generalizations about the self, some things maybe being more your core then others….
if self- schemes exist, then a person who has a self-schema in a particular domain should process information in that domain more quickly and readily reject information that contradicts the schema

Question 35

William James : The principles of psychology (1890)

Answer 35

Introduced many concepts about self that continues to inspire research to this day.

Question 36

Mcguire

Answer 36

spontaneous self-concept

Question 37

Distinctiveness theory

Answer 37

• More likely to identify with traits that make you distinct/stand out
  
  • Example less relevant to mention you are a psych major in a class full of psych majors vs if you were in law…