Lesson 4: Automaticity Flashcards
What is the humonculus?
People believed there was a little person in the head that governed our decisions
What is automaticity?
Control of one’s internal psychological processes by external stimuli and events in one’s immediate environment, often without knownledge or awareness of control
What are two features of automatic processes?
- Skill acquisition
- intentional but without effort. Requires an act of will
- practice over time (ex: driving a car) - Preconscious or low conscious processing
- without effort but also without intention or awareness
What is ideomotor action?
Merely thinking about an action increases its likelihood of occurring
What are dual process models?
Automatic and controlled processes
- even when we know prime is irrelevant we can still have an effect biasing our judgment
What is the covariation principle?
We try to determine what causes - internal or external - “covary” with what we’re trying to explain
What is the discounting principle?
Our confidence that a particular cause is responsible for a given outcome will be rediced if there are other plausible causes that might have produced the same outcome
What is emotional amplification?
When an emotion reaction tends to be more intense if the event almost didn’t happen
What is the self-serving attributional bias?
People are inclined to attribute their fialures and other bad events to external circumstances, but to attribute their successes and other good events to themselves
What is the fundamental attribution error?
The tendency to attribute people’s behavior to their character or personality even when powerful situational forces are acting to produce that behavior
What is the primacy effect?
When the information presented first exerts the most influence
- occurs most when the information is ambiguous
What is the recency effect?
When the information presented last has the most impact
What are the types of framing?
- Spin framing: using particular vocabulary to influence people
- Positive and negative framing: 25% fat vs 75% meat
- Temporal framing: abstract ideas seem more attainable than concrete ideas
What is the confirmation bias?
When people seek confirming information rather than information that would contradict the proposition
What is the overconfidence bias?
The tendency for individuals to have greater confidence in their judgments ad decisions than their actual accuracy merits
What is motivated confirmation bias?
Information that supports what a person wants to be true is readily accepted, whereas information that contradicts what the person would like to believe is subjected to critical scrutiny and often discounted
What is top-down processing? Down-up processing?
Top-down: filters and interprets bottom-up stimuli in light of preexisting knowledge and expectation
Bottom-up: takes in relevant stimuli from the outside world
What are heuristics?
Mental shortcuts that provide serviceable, if usually rather inexact, answers to common problem of judgment
What are explanations for habits?
- Direct context cueing (repeated coactivation)
- Motivated contexts
- Implicit goals
How do we lessen habits?
Effortful inhibition to change patterns & alter or avoid exposure to cues
What is mimicry?
Involuntarily mimicking someone else
- perceptions of the behavior of one’s interaction partner leads directly to tendencies to behave that way oneself
Why do we nonconsciously mimic?
Creating affiliation and rapport
- being mimicked has similar effects: promoting closeness, rapport, liking, helping
What is the auto-motive model?
Goals can be activated or triggered by environmental stimuli
- without consciously intending, choosing, or being aware of the operation of the goal within the situation
- because the individual has frequently and consistently chosen that goal within that situation
- the more often the situation/environment triggers the goal, the more automatic it will become
How does a relationship influence goal commitment?
By thinking of the person (priming), you will continue goal
- stronger effect if few goals are associated with that person
What is a private audience?
Different people in our lives that we think about from time to time during our every day lives that can influence our train of thought and behavior
Does subliminal persuasion operate in the context of having a goal to be satisfied?
Yes, if you are in a state that you are receptive to subliminal persuasion
- things in the environment matter, but it helps if they are in accord with our current goals
Why is automaticity important in our every day lives?
Lightens the load: saves mental energy
- but it can be applied inappropriately (not thinking about things = bias)
