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social cognition Flashcards

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1
Q

what is social cognition?

A

processes by which information about people / social events is processed and stored

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2
Q

“mental structures that organize knowledge about the social world (people, social roles, events)”
eg professor → assume they are liberal, absent-minded, knowledgeable, poorly dressed, wears glasse

A

schemas

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3
Q

what are the 2 ways that schemas help us in?

A
  1. categorization of objects
  2. predictability of objects and events

eg. poodles → friendly, okay to pet vs. bears → unfriendly, stay away, especially if cubs around
eg. schema for going to sit-down restaurant → how to behave

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4
Q

how is accessibility related to our schemas?

A

ease with which a schema becomes activated

  • Priming produces greater accessibility - increases likelihood that schema will be activated again in the future
    (think of the candy and red bench)
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5
Q

what happened in Risen & Critcher (2011)?

A
  • asked to answer questionnaire outdoors and report global warming is a proven fact in higher temp.
  • did study indoors
  • group 1 in 81F room
  • group 2 in 73F room
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6
Q

what were the results?

A
  • Ps in warmer room expressed greater belief in in reality of global warming
  • Conservatives in warm room expressed same concern as liberals in cold room
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7
Q

how does schemas affect our memory?

A
  • can bias the way we remember things in moment
  • Recollections often influenced / biased by our prior knowledge (schemas)
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8
Q

what happened in the example of schemas and memory of Brewer & Treyens (1981)?

A
  • Ps waited in the experimenter’s office for 35 sec.
  • Taken out, told study was about memory of office
  • 9 in 30 falsely remembered a shelf full of books
    memory became consistent with schema for prof’s offices)
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9
Q

how are schemas linked to confirmation bias?

A

Noticing and interpreting information consistent with a schema

We do not notice evidence that would contradict the schema (we see what we want to see)
- can lead to false and inaccurate beliefs distorting our schemas which are hard to change

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10
Q

what is a prime example of confirmation bias and what can it lead to>

A

Belief: When the moon is full, crimes and admissions to psychiatric institutions increase

Evidence: no such effect exists

leads to illusory correlation

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11
Q

what is illusory correlation and the study of Rotten and Kelly?

A

Believing that two variables are related to one another when in fact they are not

  • confirmation bias when full moon and crimes happen
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12
Q

what is the study of Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) in relation to confirmation bias resulting in self fulfilling prophecy?

A
  • ps given IQ test and some teachers told that some students were intellectual bloomers (above avg)
  • end of year students given another IQ test

results
- teachers expectations can influence student acheivement
- teacher could have made more time and took more initiative to help the student reach this title

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13
Q

what is the self fulfilling prophecy?

A

tendency for people to act in ways that bring about the very thing they expect to happen

“Whether you think you can or cannot, you are right either way”
eg. if think someone is unfriendly - offer cold shoulder to them first meeting and which then most likely elicits the coldness

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14
Q

what are the 2 modes of information processing and basic ideas?

A

automatic system (system 1)
- unintentional, unaware, efficient,

controlled processing (system 2)
- intentional, aware, elaborate

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15
Q

what is sometimes the issue with our system 1 processing?

A
  • produces response that “seems right”… which you accept, without engaging System 2
  • System 2 overrides system 1 if system 1 provides faulty, first impression
  • we can fail to engage in system 2 after system 1 has given initial judgement
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16
Q

what is an example of this?

A

David’s father has three sons: Snap, Crackle and ? answer:

David → first thought produced by system 1 tends to be ‘Pop’

17
Q

which system has activities related to….

making a disgusted face when seeing something gross
2. Answer to 2 + 2
3. Detect hostility in a voice

A

automatic processing

18
Q

which system has activities related to…

  1. calculate 14x21 (in head!) = 294
  2. Park in a narrow space
  3. Compare three smartphones for overall value
  4. Monitor appropriateness of behavior in new social situation
  5. Engage in “counterfactual thinking”
A

controlled processing or effortful

19
Q

what is counterfactual thinking?

A

tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred, but did not

eg. “If only I had… asked that person out when they were single”

20
Q

what are the 2 types of counterfactual thinking?

A
  1. upward counterfactuals
  2. downward counterfactuals
21
Q

what are upward counterfactuals?

A

Reflecting on how things could have turned out better like when one falls short of a desired goal
- eg.If only I had studied harder, I would have passed the test

not helpful if improvement are not possible and person dwells on how outcome could have been different
- E.g., thinking about how friend’s death could have been avoided

22
Q

what are downward counterfactuals?

A

Reflecting on how things could have turned out worse
- E.g., Flight got canceled, but at least I was able to catch a bus home

  • elicit positive emotions
23
Q

what was the main point of (Medvec, Madey, & Gilovich, 1995) and Roese & Summerville (2005)?

A
  • Judges viewed Olympic medalists as they finished their events and while on medal podium
  • Rated each athlete’s facial expression, ranging from agony to ecstasy
24
Q

what were the results of both?

A

silver medalist - more likely to experience upward UCF thoughts and less happy (“second is the first to lose”)

bronze medalist - more likely to think DCF thoughts and be more happy

25
Q

what are the top 3 regrets that trigger counter fact thinking?

A
  1. education
  2. career
  3. romance
26
Q

“mental shortcuts that speed up information processing”

  • ppl conserving mental resources by following simple yet not without error judgements
A

heuristics

27
Q

what are the two types of heuristics in terms of how biases can arise?

A

availability heuristic and representativeness heuristic

28
Q

what is the availability heuristic?

A

tendency to base a judgment on how quickly or easily examples come to mind

  • Events that are more available in memory (like words that start with K and fatal bear attacks) are judge as being more likely to occur
  • if more memorable and retreivable - availability poor indicator of true prob

E.g., plane crashes, homicides

29
Q

what is fluency?

A

the feeling of ease or diff associated with processing info

-

30
Q

what is the representativeness heuristic?

A

tendency to assume that someone/something belongs to a certain group if s/he resembles a prototypical member

E.g., Believing Luisa more likely than Janelle to be a college student (example from lecture)

31
Q

what is the gamblers fallacy?

A

mistaken belief that a random event will occur simply because a series of the opposite of that event has taken place

  • fail to take into account rule of prob and just go with answer that seems more rep of what we assume - what our schemas tell us
32
Q

what is affect heuristic?

A

Tendency for our moods, emotional states, and desires to bias perceptions and judgments

eg. potential consumers form a subconscious bond with person going through same thing as they are

33
Q

what happened in forgal et al?

A
  • Asked people leaving movie either happy or sad movie to evaluate current romantic relationship

Sad movie: less favorable explanations → primed or activated more negative thoughts about the relationship

34
Q

what happens when we rely on rep heuristic only?

A

strong sense of validity of person matches prototype - blind us to other useful sources of info (base rate info)

35
Q

what is the base rate info?

A

knowledge of relative freq of members in given category?

how many members of category are there relative to member of other categories
- eg. more likely yo be republic if pop includes lots of republicans

36
Q

“tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs”

Eg. missing plane because you thought you had enough time, credit card rejected because you thought you had enough money

A

overconfidence bias

37
Q

what happened in Vallone et al. (1990)?

A
  • ps asked to make predictions of future responses (confidence estimates)
  • Univ. students felt 84% sure of self-related predictions
  • estimates evaluated later on

results
- made errors nearly 2x as often as expected
- Even when they felt 100% sure of predictions, they erred 15% of the time

38
Q

what is the planning fallacy?

A

tendency for people to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task

39
Q

what are the 2 ways to overcome overconfidence in terms of planning fallacy?

A
  1. break task into subcomponents
  2. think of one good reason why judgment might be might be wrong

social psychology (6 decks)

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