Social Cognition

Question 1

What is a Schema?

Answer 1

Mental structure that helps people organize knowledge about a stimulus

Makes the world more predictable

Question 2

4 Things Schemas Do

Answer 2

Guide our attention
Ex. Gorilla and basketball pass video

Influence our memory
Ex. Waitress/Librarian study

Provide us with ‘script’s so that we know what to expect
Ex. Frozen Grand Central Video

Profoundly influence our behaviour

Question 3

Scripts

Answer 3

A schema that describes the expected sequence of events in a well-known situation, such as restaurant

Question 4

What if we don’t have a script for something

Answer 4

Situation that we have never encountered before

What is found that people get very confused if don’t have schema or script

Question 5

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Answer 5

Something that happens when we:

Have an expectation about what another person is like

Influence have we act toward that person

Causes person to behave consistently with our original expectations

Question 6

Heuristics

Answer 6

Mental shortcuts that people use to make judgements quickly though sometimes inaccurately for decisions about uncertain events

Question 7

Representativeness Heuristic

Answer 7

Tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles the typical case

Question 8

Availability Heuristic

Answer 8

Tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind

Question 9

Planning Fallacy

Answer 9

Tendency for people to be unrealistic optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project

Ex. Students completing their honours thesis

Question 10

Social Priming

Answer 10

When unattended stimuli subtly influences how we interpret and recall events
When our thinking or acting is ‘primed’ by events we are not aware of