Social Cognition Flashcards
Schemas
Automatically created cognitive frameworks that guide our understanding of the world
What 3 basic cognitive processes do Schemas affect?
Attention, Encoding, Retrieval
How are Schemas developed?
Through verification and experience
Priming
To activate a schema through a stimulus
Confirmation Bias
Activated schemas affect how we process incoming information. Information that supports a schema is attended to and information that contradicts a schema may be filtered out
Perseverance Effect
The tendency for a schema to remain intact even when it comes up against discrediting information
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Predictions that cause themselves to come true
Selective Filtering
Paying attention to sensory informations that affirms a stereotype and filtering out sensory information that negates a stereotype. Can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies
Stereotyping
Assumes that all members of a group share some common feature
Automatic processing
Unconscious and effortless
Controlled processing
involved in higher-order thinking and evaluation, takes careful thought and effort
What parts of the brain are involved in automatic processing?
Limbic system for emotional processing and the amygdala for emotional learning and fear conditioning
What parts of the brain are involved in automatic processing?
Prefrontal Cortex
System 1 thinking
Automatic
System 2 thinking
Controlled
Why is Automatic processing important?
Helps us deal with the enormous amount of information in our world
Heuristics
Simple rules or mental shortcuts that reduce mental effort and allow us to make decision or judgments quickly
Availability Heuristic
our assessment of how likely an occurrence is based on how easily an example of that event can be recalled. ex people are more likely to die of cancer than homicide but have a greater fear of homicide
How do we confuse “often” and “memorable”?
People tend to judge how often something happens by how memorable it is
Representativeness Heuristic
Our assessment of how likely an occurrence is based on how much it resembles our expectation for a model of that event. ex. Photo of the librarian
Base Rate Fallacy
If presented with related base rate information (i.e. generic, general information) and specific information (information only pertaining to a certain case), the mind tends to ignore the former and focus on the latter
Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
We use a number as a starting point on which to anchor our judgement then make revisions until we reach an answer
Framing Heuristic
cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain. People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented
What are is a source of Bias in social Cognition?
Magical Thinking
Magical Thinking
The perception that uncontrollable events are somehow controllable
Negativity Bias
Attending to and remembering only negative information, thus impacting future evaluations
What is the evolutionary reasoning behind a negativity bias?
We are wired to protect ourselves from danger
Optimistic Bias
Believing that bad things happen to other people and that you are more likely to experience positive events in life
Overconfidence Barrier
The belief that our own judgment or control is better or greater than it truly is
Counterfactual Thinking
Imagining different outcomes for an event that has already occurred. Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda
Upward Counterfactuals
Circumstances to which you imagine better outcome than you achieved
Downward Counterfactuals
Circumstances to which you imagine worse outcomes than you achieved
Marketing and Counterfactual Thinking
Advertising seems to have been built on how easy it is for us to picture alternative outcomes
Mood-congruence effects
We are more likely to remember positive information when in a positive mood, and more likely to remember negative information when in a negative mood
Mood dependent memory
Our mood at the time of learning is a retrieval cue form remembering that information
Emotion
physiological arousal plus cognition
Cognition
knowledge and surrounding circumstance
