Lecture 5: Social Cognition Flashcards
When are we motivated to give our impressions elaborate thought?
- When we want to be accurate.
- When we have to work with the person.
- outcome dependence: When our own success or failure is linked to the success or failure of another.
- When we’re suspicious of someone’s motives (i.e. if we think there’s a reason that we should pause and think about why a person is acting in a certain way).
What is Fiske & Neuberg’s (1990) continuum model and how can it be demonstrated with the schizophrenic patient Frank?
- In this study, subjects volunteered to participate in “patient-reintegration program.” They’re expected to interact with former schizophrenic patient, Frank, which is a negative label.
- The independent variables were outcome dependency (i.e. winning $20, either depended on partner’s contribution or not) and a personal profile which contained either neutral information (irrelevant to schizophrenic category) or positive information that was inconsistent with the schizophrenic category.
- Researchers hypothesized that when given inconsistent personal information, all subjects (regardless of outcome dependence) would form attribute-based impressions of Frank. If personal attributes don’t fit nicely under the label “schizophrenic”, then a category-based impression will seem inappropriate, and subjects will use the personal information to form their impressions.
- When given neutral information (info that could be interpreted as “schizophrenic”), those who were not dependent on Frank would use categorical information to form their impression. However, subjects who are dependent on Frank for their reward would form attribute-based impressions.
What did Marchand (2006) demonstrate in regards to the motivation of suspicion with a character named John?
Participants are asked to read some statements about John and make an impression of him: “John asks Henrietta to marry him. John takes a colleague with car trouble to the garage. John responds enthusiastically to another person’s idea during the meeting.” But then participants learn more about him” “Henrietta is not very interesting. John likes luxurious products. Henrietta is a widow. The colleague is a woman. John is single.” The more participants learn about John, the less they like him.
What type of thought do suspicious people engage in?
Motivation: Suspicion
Perceivers who are suspicious of the motives underlying a target’s behaviour engage in more active and thoughtful attributional analyses than non-suspicious perceivers. Suspicious perceivers resist drawing inferences from a target’s behaviour that reflect the correspondence bias (or fundamental attribution error) and they consider other plausible causes of the behaviour.
Why are our impressions not always accurate?
Impressions can be biased by our hopes and desires. For example, seeing weakness in a competitor and skill in a teammate, or seeing the positive qualities in a potential love interest and discounting the negative. We may seek out information that confirms our impression, and ignore other information (confirmation bias). We’re bad at looking for alternatives and information that falsifies our hypotheses.
What did Clever Hans demonstrate in regard to self-fulfilling prophecies?
Self-fulfilling prophecy and behavioural confirmation refer to the same phenomenon, which is when your expectations about someone elicits behaviour from them that confirms your expectations. We often fail to realize how our own behaviour feeds into the other person and gets spit out back to us; we elicit information from others. One example is Clever Hans. Clever Hans was a horse who could perform simple math problems, and his owner genuinely believed that Hans could. People would ask Hans questions and he would tap his hoof the correct amount of time. What was actually happening was that Hans was picking up on subtle cues from his owner, who would have some small reaction when Hans got to the right answer, so Hans would stop tapping.
What did Robert Rosenthal demonstrate in regards to self-fulfilling prophecies with middle school teachers?
In this study, he went to middle school classrooms and gave teachers a random list of students who he said that these students were expected to show great intellectual growth throughout the year. At the end of the year, Rosenthal found that these randomly selected students did in fact have higher grades than their peers. Because the teachers believed these students were special, they behaved in a way that was more nurturing to those specific students.
- In another experiment, mice were running through mazes. Researchers were told that certain mice, who were randomly selected, had been injected with a special performance-enhancing drug that would make them run the maze faster. Of course, the researchers found that these randomly selected mice (who were actually normal) did run the maze faster.
What did Snyder & Swann (1978) demonstrate in regards to behavioural confirmation with leading questions?
In this study, subjects were told they would interact with someone who was either introverted or extraverted, and that this was a study on how people get to know each other. The independent variables were that introverted or extraverted personality descriptions were given to each subject, and they were given list of 26 questions and asked to pick 12 questions they would like the person to answer. For the first experiment, this is where they ended. In a second study, subjects actually conducted the interview. Researchers purposely gave subjects leading questions to choose from. The idea was that if the person believes someone is an introvert and asks them leading questions, it will confirm their impression that a person is introverted.
What did Gilbert & Jones (1986) demonstrate in regards to the perceiver-induced constraint paradigm with forced liberal or conservative answers?
Do people recognize the influence they have on the behaviour of others? Yes—but it’s definitely not as easy as one might assume! In this experiment, subjects came into the lab and act as either a perceiver who is going to be asking some questions or someone who is answering questions. After each question, the inducer was told to hit a button, either liberal or conservative, that told the other person how to answer. Those who were pressing the liberal button still perceived the person answering as being liberal, even though they know that they’re the one inducing the answer from that person.
One potential explanation for this is that these answers are all the information we have about these people, so even if we’re telling them to do it it’s hard to see why it wouldn’t be the case. During the experiment, one may even start to think things like, “They just seemed more comfortable answering the liberal questions,” in order to rationalize our bias. This fundamental attribution error is less likely to happen in more collectivist societies.
How did Swann & Ely (1984) demonstrate how we can override our expectations and correct our impressions?
In this study, they had people who were identified strongly as either an introvert or an extrovert, and people who weren’t sure whether they were an introvert or extrovert but said they thought they were a certain kind. They also had perceivers who were looking at these people. The only place when they found behavioural confirmation was when the perceiver was very strong in their views but the person themselves wasn’t as sure. In this case, when the perceiver knew the person was an introvert, and the person only thought they were an extrovert (instead of knowing). In other words, if someone identifies strongly as an extrovert, then it won’t matter whether the perceiver thinks or knows that they’re the opposite.
What is the:
false uniqueness effect
Heuristics & Biases
The tendency to think that we’re uniquely skilled at things that have to do with our identity, i.e. things regarding talents, abilities, or other desirable characteristics (“People will do what I do, but I will do it better”).
What is the:
conjunction fallacy
Heuristics & Biases
According to probability, it’s impossible for there to be more feminist bank tellers than just bank tellers, so it doesn’t make sense for people to pick the second option. But people get so caught up with the information that they really want Linda to be a feminist as well.
What did Schwarz et al. (1991) demonstrate in regards to the availability heuristic with assertiveness ratings?
They argued that it’s not the content of what is recalled, but the subjective ease or difficulty. In this study, participants were asked to give either six or twelve examples of times they had been assertive. In the category with six examples, people who come up with more assertive examples tend to rate themselves as being more assertive. This makes sense. In the category with twelve examples, people actually ended up rating themselves as less assertive. This task is much harder. People might come up with nine or ten and then blank. So because people realize that they can’t do this task, then they will start to think that perhaps they really aren’t that assertive.
What is the:
simulation heuristic
Heuristics & Biases
Counterfactual thinking occurs when we come up with “what ifs” in imagined outcomes, things that did not happen but could have. We are more likely to believe counterfactuals that are easier to imagine (to mentally simulate). Upward counterfactuals involve more positive outcomes, and downward counterfactuals involve worse outcomes. For example, if you got a D on a test, an upward counterfactual would be thinking about how you could’ve studied more and how you could’ve done better. A downward counterfactual would be thinking, “at least I didn’t fail!” The simulation heuristic can also be used to assess causality, and assign blame to people (e.g. the car crash could’ve been avoided if Person A was going the speed limit).
