Lecture 3- Heuristics and Biases in Attribution

Question 1

What are the three models of social cognition?

Answer 1

-The naïve psychologist (Heider): people take a semi-scientific approach to understanding the world, rational and thorough (computer metaphor)

-The “cognitive miser” (Fiske and Taylor): People have limited
cognitive capacity and try to minimize effort-shortcuts, ”heuristics”

-The “motivated tactician”: People strategically allocate resources,
depending on motivation and goals - dual process models (a combo of the above)

Question 2

What are heuristics/ what do they allow us to do?

Answer 2

• Cognitive shortcuts
• They allow fast decision making which are mostly accurate
• Because we are not going through full rational sometimes mistakes arise from using heuristics however most of the time its fine

Question 3

In terms of data what is a way of thinking about heuristics?

Answer 3

We don’t search for external data like we would in a more scientific/ computer approach instead we use internal data (already in the head) to make sense of the external world. In this way it can be said that the way we think about the world is actually more important than the reality of what’s going on in it.

Question 4

What are 3 ‘topics’ to think about when considering heuristics?

Answer 4

• Representativeness
• Availability
• Anchoring and adjustment

Question 5

What are 3 ‘topics’ to think about when considering heuristics?

Answer 5

• Representativeness
• Availability
• Anchoring and adjustment

Question 6

What is representativeness?

Answer 6

Using categories (schemas) based on similarity

This works because objects or events in the same category often resemble each other

Question 7

How does representativeness work in attribution? Where do we fall down?

Answer 7

• Casual schemas are based on similarity (apply what we already know from old situations into new ones)
• However because we are so good at doing this we often underweight randomness as a cause. We don’t have a good idea/ schema of what ‘randomness’ looks like cause it looks different in every situation. We therefore can’t use similarities between situations to apply a ‘randomness’ cause/ schema

Question 8

How does the hot hand in basketball relate to this idea of us not accepting randomness?

Answer 8

If you look at the phenomenon statistically its just chance that free throughs are thrown and go in consecutively however, because people are bad at accepting randomness as a cause they often attribute it to some greater external cause

Question 9

What is availability in terms of heuristics?

Answer 9

Frequency judgements are based on the ease at which information comes to mind. e.g. the stuff advertised on the news we judge to be more prevalent in the world than it actually is because it is easier to retrieve in our brain.
Or…We hear a noise outside the window and have just watched a horror movie will think it more likely that it is someone coming to hurt us than it actually is.

Question 10

Related to availability what else effects our frequency judgements?

Answer 10

• Salience (e.g. celebrities- Tom Hank gets covid, we think covid is more prevalent than it actually is)
• Priming
• Accessibility

Question 11

What did a study by Taylor and Fiske (1975) show and how did they carry out the study?

Answer 11

• Showed that salient, primed and accessible factors are more likely to be judged as casual.
• Did this by having two actors sit in the middle of a circle of participants. Depending on who the participant had more of a direct line of sight to that was how they judged to be more influential in the conversation

Question 12

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 12

The tendency to overattribute behaviour to internal factors

Question 13

What did the Jone’s and Harris (1976) study show in terms of fundamental attribution error?

Answer 13

Speakers gave either pro-Castro or anti- Castro speeches. When the perceived the actor had a choice in doing the speech they believed it aligned a lot more closely with their actual views (attribute internal- fundamental attribution error). However, when they didn’t think they had a choice it is a discounting situation (they attribute the behaviour i.e making the speech to be externally caused and thus don’t think the ideals of the speaker aligns with what they said).

Question 14

What is the actor observer effect in terms of the fundamental attribution effect?

Answer 14

We tend to make the fundamental attribution effect i.e attributing internally more when its for someone else as opposed to ourselves. This could potentially be because we don’t see ourselves performing actions just the situation around us.

Question 15

What is anchoring and adjustment in terms of heuristics?

Answer 15

Its where our judgements are tied to initial standards. This works because previous judgements are often good approximations.

Question 16

What is the two stage model of attribution?

Answer 16

Stage 1: automatic internal attribution serves as an anchor
Stage 2: effortful adjustment for situational factors, if time and
motivation permit
Similar to the motivated tactician approach

Question 17

What happens to the two stage attribution model if someone is under stress?

Answer 17

If a person is stressed (under “cognitive load”) he or she will be more likely to make an internal attribution i.e won’t do the second stage of adjusting to the situation.

Question 18

What study looks at the effect of stress on attribution?

Answer 18

Gilbert, Pelham, and Krull (1988)

• subjects listen to a person read a pro- or anti-abortion speech prepared by the experimenter
• 1/2 of the subjects just listen to the speech
• 1/2 of the subjects think they will have to give the next speech
• Dependent variable: how does the person reading the antiabortion speech feel about abortion?

Results:
Those who believed they were giving the next speech were under a lot more cognitive stress. They therefore did not pay as much attention to externally factors e.g. this is an experiment and so probably the experimenters views do not actually align. Therefore those under this condition predicted the speakers actual views aligned a lot more closely than those who weren’t (missing the second adjustment phase).

Therefore, people use heuristics and follow it with effort to make judgements about causality. The not only need motivation but also the cognitive resources to go that extra mile.

Question 19

Consider the question: are people irrational?

Answer 19

To a certain extent you could say yes if we are relying solely on quick measures (heuristics) to make judgements.

However, there are other things to consider. Errors most of the time are inconsequential (but not always), errors are self correcting (what we think has impact on the world so will come true), errors are simply made in artifial settings like experiments and wouldn’t happen in real life (I don’t think this is true).

Some of these are questionable arguments but one holds true what is more rational than saving time and cognitive resources. We may be irrational in a specific case/ moment but in a broader sense we aren’t and accepting any minor errors is part of that.