Lecture 4- Social Cognition Flashcards
Explain the overconfidence bias.
We tend to have greater confidence in our judgments and decisions than our actual accuracy warrants. Experts also experience this.
Name the effect :
People unskilled in a domain lack the meta cognitive ability to realize they are incompetent. They overestimate their abilities.
Dunning-Kruger effect: aka the double curse of incompetence
How accurate is our attention and awareness?
Our attention and awareness is very limited, guided and directed through the environment
What does selective attention do?
It is the act of focusing one’s awareness onto a particular aspect of one’s experience, to the exclusion of everything else. It can makes us not notice things that are right in front of us.
Describe snap judgments and their accuracy.
Willis and Todorov study;
- people asked to rate faces on certain traits very quickly. Judgments made with longer time tended to correlate with the judgments done very quickly, which means our snap judgments can be very accurate.
Along what dimensions do we evaluate faces?
Trustworthiness and dominance
- Baby faced adults are assumed to be warmer, more honest, more naive and weaker. They will be ore believed as witnesses on the stand but people with more dominant and trustworthy faces will be more believed to be competent for a job such as a lawyer.
How do self-fulfilling prophecies mislead firsthand information?
Our expectation and beliefs about what we think people may think of us may cause us to act in a way that will make people actually think what we thought they thought.
What were the findings of the Snyder study where men talked on the phone with a woman they believed to be attractive or ugly?
The men rated the women they found attractive as warmer and more sociable, but in reality, the men acted in a way with the women that was maybe more charming and caused the women to be more comfortable and warmer.
How can people mislead us with first hand information?
People often mislead us by acting in ways that don’t reflect their true attitudes to beliefs. They might do so to be accepted and liked.
What is pluralistic ignorance?
It occurs when people act in ways that conflict with their private beliefs because they erroneously believe that these beliefs conflict with those of the group.
Ex: teacher asks if anyone has a question. No one raises their hand and people believe the others all understand and do not want to appear stupid by raising their hands, but everyone is thinking this therefore no one raises their hand.
How can secondhand information be misleading?
People may transmit information in a way that furthers their personal or ideological agenda.
Ex: news coverage —> emphasis on the negative and the sensational, selective reporting and leading questions
What are framing effects?
The way information is presented. It can strongly influence judgments.
Explain the primacy effect.
-A type of order effect
- In a body of evidence, the initial info presented will influence the perception of the subsequent info, this exerting a disproportionate influence on judgment.
Explain the regency effect.
- A type of order effect
- In a body of evidence, the last info presented tends to be better remembered, thus exerting a disproportionate influence on judgment.
- More likely to be observed when there is a large gap between two pieces of info.
What is spin framing?
Putting emphasis on the negative or positive aspects to make people think of it better or worse.
Negative framing tends to elicit a stronger response.
Ex: 34/100 patients are still alive after 5 years vs 66/100 patients had died by the end of 5 years. People will think the first one is more favourable.
