Lecture 5 - Perception and Social Biases

Question 1

define perception

Answer 1

the process by which people select, organise, interpret, retrieve and respond to information from the world around them

Question 2

what are the 5 steps to a behavioural response (Buchanan 2010)

Answer 2

1. Sensory Input
2. Selective Attention
3. Perceptual Organisation
4. Interpretation
5. Behavioural Response

Question 3

what is selective attention

Answer 3

Selective attention is focusing on one particular task or stimulus while ignoring others.

Question 4

what is habituation

Answer 4

• refers to the notion that once stimuli become familiar they stop being sensed
• the stimuli need to be more prominent for us to detect it

Question 5

what is the figure and ground principle

Answer 5

The figure and ground theory, proposed by Gestalt psychologists, describes how people visually perceive objects. The “figure” is the main object of focus, while the “ground” is the background or surrounding area.

Question 6

define bias

Answer 6

A tendency or inclination that results in judgment without question

Question 7

what is unconscious bias

Answer 7

this is what happens when background, environment, personal experience and family values come into play and affect our behaviours and decision making without us being aware

Question 8

what is availability bias

Answer 8

this is assessing the likely causes of an event according to which instances are available in memory at the current time

Question 9

what is confirmation bias

Answer 9

We look for evidence that confirms our intuitions rather than evidence that rejects it

Question 10

what is anchoring bias

Answer 10

Anchoring is a cognitive bias where an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (considered to be the “anchor”) when making decisions

Question 11

what is ‘similar to me bias’

Answer 11

attributing certain qualities (usually positive) because the person has similar traits/behaviours to you.

Question 12

what is the mother of all biases

Answer 12

• Overconfidence
• The overconfidence effect is a bias in which a person’s subjective confidence in his or her judgements is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgements.

Question 13

what are the 3 forms of overconfidence

Answer 13

• overprecision
• overestimation
• overplacement

Question 14

what is overprecision

Answer 14

being too certain that you know the truth

Question 15

what is overestimation

Answer 15

thinking you are better than you really are

Question 16

what is overplacement

Answer 16

falsely thinking you are better than others

Question 17

what is conformity bias

Answer 17

when your views are swayed too much by other peoples views