Social Cognition Flashcards
Controlled/conscious/explicit
- controlled
- slow
- effortful
- voluntary
- flexible
- ex: studying
Automatic/unconscious/implicit
- automatic & doesn’t want to work
- quick
- effortless
- governed by habit
- difficult to control or change
- involuntary
- ppl. rely on automatic cognition
- ex: reading a sign on the street
Division of mind
- conscious vs. automatic
* ex: when told to name the color of the word and the color of the word is contradicting the word
Heuristic
- Rule of thumb
- mental shortcut to make a judgement
- ex: when somebody tells you to buy them something and you go with what is most expensive
Availability heuristic
- tendency to judge the likely hood of an event by availability in memory
- media creates this
- ex: thinking the homicide rate is higher when in reality the suicide rate is, but we believe the homicide rate is higher bc that is what we constantly see presented in the media
Survivorship Bias
- tendency to disproportionately concentrate on the ppl. or things that survived some process & ignoring those that didn’t
- ex: happens in business (start-ups)
Sunkcost fallacy
- tendency to continue endeavor once an investment in $ , time or effort has been made – particularly when costs can’t be recovered
- often can be irrational
- ex: not wanting to break up because the 2 have been in a relationship for a long time
Moral Reasoning
- Moral judgments are often the product of quick/automatic judgments, which then give rise to slow conscious moral reasoning
- ex: the brother & the sis deciding to have sex = automatically think it is wrong, but there isn’t any consequence so is what they did really wrong?
Motivated cognition
- ppl. motivated to arrive to a particular conclusion
- often seek out info that supports their desired beliefs
- often able to provide reasonable justification
- ex: A guy tells girlfriend he is going to call on sunday but ends up calling on tuesday and the girl says, “at least he called”
Inattention blindness
- Failure to notice fully visible, but unexpected objects bc attention is engaged on another tast
- Ex: the “tourists” asking for directions and while the person they asked is giving them directions the couple steals the phone, wallet and tablet. Many viewers including the guy who was saying the directions did not notice because they were focused on the directions.
Automaticity
- influence that the environment has on your decision, automatic cognition, often w/o one’s knowledge or awareness
- Having a default choice
Unconscious behavior guidance systems
- Environmental/contextual features
a. Evaluations of others & objects
b. motivational states
c. perceptual system - Behavioral Responses
Priming
- The activation of concepts of mental representations in our mind via ex: the internet
- can be hidden in written/paper tasks
Embodiment
- cognition & feelings can be influenced by your sensory experiences & bodily states
- Results in a study: People in vertical nodding condition were more persuaded by message, compared to those in horizontal shaking condition
Enclothed cognition
- Systematic influence that clothes have on the wearers psychological processes.
- ex: dressing well for an interview can cause the interviewee to do better on the interview
When does reason trump automatic cognition?
- Time
- high motivation to attend to situation
- under self-reflection
- motivation for accuracy
Attribution
• explanation for the cause of an event/behavior
Dispositional attribution
- personal attribution
- Attributing behavior to a persons disposition or traits
- George Zimmerman perceived to be a racist.
Situational attribution
• attributing behavior to enviornment
Fundamental attribution error
• tendency to overestimate dispositional influences & underestimates situational influences for others behaviors.
Actor observer bias
- for negative events, we make dispositional attributions for others but situational attributions for our own behavior.
- if you failed your drivers test & you say it was bc you were having a bad day vs. if your friend fails & you say he is a crazy driver.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
- an originally false social belief of another person that lead the other person to fulfill the originally false belief with their behavior.
- ex: waitress not treating teenage guests 100% bc they are perceived to be bad tippers.
Self-fulfilling prophecy 3 steps
- Perceiver has expectation
- Perceiver behaves towards target in a way that is consistent with expectation
- Target behaves towards perceiver in a way that is consistent w/ perceivers behavior & the expectation is confirmed.
False consensus effect
• tendency for ppl to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes & behaviors.
Base-rate fallacy
- finding that ppl are insenstive to statistics
* “a single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic”
Counterfactual thinking
• tendency to imagine a possible outcome that could have occurred, but did not occur.
Impression formation
• integrating info about a person to come up with a impression about them
Information integration theory
(1) current state of the perceiver (2) weighted average of the target persons characteristics
Belief perseverance
Tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.
