Social Beliefs and Judgements

Question 1

What is subliminal messaging?

Answer 1

sensory stimuli below threshold for conscious perception- in subliminal perception the line inbetween is subjective threshold and below is objective threshold

Question 2

What are the processes of organising information we perceive?

Answer 2

Priming -> categorical thinking-> perceiving and interpreting events

Question 3

What is priming?

Answer 3

activating learned o experienced associations in memory

Question 4

What is categorical thinking?

Answer 4

using social cues to categorise

Question 5

What is belief perseverance?

Answer 5

the idea that when we make meanings and stimuli of the world they are strong and can outlast other info we receive even if we accept it, strong evidence is needed to correct our own beliefs

Question 6

What did Anderson (1980) study about belief perseverance?

Answer 6

gave people false evidence that bottle feeding babies made them fussier and then asked ppts to give reasoning on why this would be the case; even when told this wasn’t true, ppts did not give up on their own theories- when asked to make an alternate theory on why this WOULDN’T be true, and this was less effective

Question 7

How do constructing memories and reconstructing memories differ?

Answer 7

constructing memories- highly susceptible to influence, increases as we get older as these memories take place of reality
reconstructing- using our current feelings to combine memory fragments e.g. if we are sad, more likely to think about sad memories

Question 8

What are the differences between automatic and controlled memory processing?

Answer 8

Automatic- can be rooted in subconscious bias, controls majority of bhvr and is impulsive

Controlled- can become automatic, may not feel as natural as takes time to process/develop

Question 9

Describe the four main types of schemas

Answer 9

Self: beliefs about self that organise processing of relevant info

Person: beliefs about others based mainly on personality traits, works in 2 ways as we group people based on traits

Role: beliefs we have around a certain role e.g. gender, race

Event: bhvr around events, beliefs we associate with a certain place

Question 10

What are heuristics? Give examples

Answer 10

Mental shortcuts used to make quick decisions compared to schemas that are cog frameworks helping to organise info
include representativeness, availability and recognition

Question 11

What is the representativeness heuristic?

Answer 11

tendency to presume that someone/something belongs to a specific group if they resemble a typical member
can lead to potentially discounting other important info

Question 12

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 12

assuming the likelihood of something happening based on historical evidence e.g. estimating violence after an attack
can lead to over weighting vivid examples or fearing the wrong things

Question 13

What is the recognition heuristic?

Answer 13

To assume that what is easily recognised is important

Question 14

What are the six main bias strategies? (BOCPM)

Answer 14

Belief perseverance
Priming
Misinformation effect
Intuition
Overconfidence
Confirmation bias

Question 15

What is the misinformation effect?

Answer 15

Incorporation of false info into memory guided by assumed relevance and appropriateness

Question 16

What is intuition?

Answer 16

When past learning and repeated experience cause us to process info automatically

Question 17

What is attribution theory?

Answer 17

trying to understand the reason behind something happening and explaining behaviour by attributing it to internal dispositions/external situations e.g. misattribution

Question 18

What is Heider’s (1958) theory of naive psychology?

Answer 18

assumes people’s behaviour is motivated and intentional rather than random (whether hostile or benign) leading to more internal attributions

Question 19

What is Jones and Davis’ (1965) theory of correspondent inference?

Answer 19

leads to more internal attributions as we assume people’s actions are the result of their intentions and dispositions

Question 20

What is Kelly’s (1973) co variation model?

Answer 20

states that we assume internal or external causes based on 3 factors: consistency (does a person usually behave in this way?), distinctiveness (does the person behave differently to others in this situ?) and consensus (do others behave similarly?) see diagram

Question 21

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 21

tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behaviour.

Question 22

What four main reasons explain why we make the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 22

Actor-observer difference- much more likely to be seen in Western individualistic cultures

False consensus effect-assuming people should behave like we do

Self serving bias- idea that we will take the explanation that suits us best

Just world hypothesis- that the world is just and everything happens for a reason so if bad things happen to you then it is because you made bad choices e.g. seeing a homeless person
people with more empathy are less likely to buy into this, links to locus of control

Question 23

What can attributional complexity be affected by?

Answer 23

• Level of interest or motivation
• Preference for complex explanations
• Presence of metacognition concerning explanations
• Awareness of the extent to which people’s behaviour is a function of interaction with others- more aware of the power of a social situation, and how this has an impact on others behaviours. Less complexity will have a simpler view.
• Tendency to infer abstract or casually complex internal attributions
• Tendency to infer external causes operating at a spatial distance- more physically removed someone is from a cause
• Tendency to infer external causes operating at a temporal distance- someone with more complexity will know that even though more time has passed, effect can still be as dramatic as it was at the time it happened