Social Cognition Flashcards
Define bottom-up processes
- using properties of stimuli (as data points) and building them up together
Define top-down processes
- filtering and interpreting info from existing ideas and knowledge/expectations (active construal)
Describe the idea of ‘Naive Scientists’
- contrasts top-down processing
- Fritz Heider = experiments, gathering data and then forming inferences/opinions
- consistency and rationality
What is a ‘cognitive miser’?
- Fiske and Taylor - umbrella theory
- suggests cognitive resources and time are limited so we must rely on mental shortcuts to conserve mental energy
- use of intuition versus reason (even if probabilities and logic dictate otherwise)
Describe the basis of Kahneman’s research into types of thinking
System 1 vs System 2
1) Fast
- unconscious, fast, automatic, usually for everyday decisions
- used most the time but error-prone
2) Slow
- deliberative, logic and reasoning
- effortful and used for complex thinking
- more reliable
What are ‘framing effects’? Give evidence
- how info is presented can affect judgement (e.g. political spins)
- positive or negative
Mcneil (1982)
- 400 doctors asked whether they would recommend surgeries
- surgeries described as survival or death rate
- 82% they recommend the one with survival
- 56% said they’d recommend the death rate
What is a schema? Describe the effects of prior knowledge
- knowledge structure, cog framework (stereotype) or event (scripts) and people
- scripts = different behaviours in different contexts (could be appropriate in many)
Effects of prior:
- professor vs soccer hooligan (professor likely to do better on test)
- schema affects behaviour and guides attention (automatic allocation of attention to high value)
- monkey business experiment
Describe the effect of schemas on memory
Cohen (1981)
- guiding memory
- watched couple eating (1/2 told woman was librarian and 1/2 told waitress)
- showed same behaviours
- recall was different depending on condition and consistent with the stereotypes of the job
Describe the effect of schemas on construal
Donald Study
- part 1: primed with one of two word sets (either adventurous or reckless)
- priming = easy access and activation of schema
- part 2: told story about Donald sailing and asked to evaluate
- Results: evaluation depended on the schema activated before
What is confirmation bias?
- distortion of judgement
- seeking out/believing info confirming schemas
- structure you try to support with the world (rather than refute)
Snyder and Swan (1978)
- ppts asked to determine whether someone was an extra/introvert
- they changed their questions depending on which they were determining
- even tho most of us are on the middle ground, the answers given were likely to support one side
- resulted in the self-fulfilling prophecy; interviewees rated themes more extraverted when they’d framed the qs that way
What is motivated confirmation bias?
- wanting to believe a certain thing, so seeking out info for it
Lord et al (1979):
- attitudes towards death penalty
- ppts were either anti or pro and read text
- those who were for the penalty thought the info favoured it
- tending to focus only on supportive beliefs (dismissing contradiction)
What are heuristics?
System 1 thinking
- quick judgement and decision making
- variety of accessible and mental operations
- used to make snap judgement
What is a representative heuristic?
- the likelihood of an event is evaluated by the degree to which it represents the major characteristics of the place of origin
- fitting of the schema for the prototypical event
(e. g. wearing glasses = intelligence)
Describe Gervais’ et al (2017) into representative heuristic
Consider Dave
- tortured animals, killed homeless and buried in the garden
- ppts assumed that he was more likely a teacher and atheist than just a teacher
- assumption that atheists are godless and thus murderous
Consider Linda
- 31, single, outspoken
- worked against discrimination etc
- ppts assumed she was more likely a bank teller and feminist activist than just a bank teller
Describe the errors of representative heuristics
Conjunction fallacy:
- the co-occurrence of two events cannot be more likely that the probability of one event alone
- the specific ones appear more likely than general as they are more representative of how we imagine them
- consistency with prototype, not logic
Gambling fallacy:
- mistaken belief that future tosses of a coin (or any random event) are influenced by the past events
- so we expect a losing streak at the end
- some situations represent randomness better than other
Why to representative heuristics work?
- works to extent that there is validity in the prototype
- e.g. members of the group cluster around it
- we use this as the first judgement and then build by observing individual behaviours
Give further examples of representative heuristics
- cause and effect situations (we believe only large things will have large causes, but viruses are microscopic)
- characteristics of the food we eat rubs off on us
- judgement of likelihood based on the prototype of schema
What are availability heuristics?
- making judgement based on the ease to which relevant info comes to mind
- more accessible info is deemed more right, more common and more probable
- dramatic and easy tor remember = more frequent
- happens because easy retrieval and evaluating the probability/frequency is based on this
Describe Schwartz’s (assertive/unassertive) evidence for availability heuristics
- 4 conditions (2x2)
- recalling 6 or 12 events fitting unassertive or assertive
- the content of recall influences the availability
- in 12 conditions, more difficult to come up with
- harder retrieval = them thinking they are less fitting of the trait
Describe Ross and Sicoly’s evidence (marriage and chores)
- couples asked to give % of chores they did
- invariable, always summed to over 100%
- both overestimated
- availability = remembering what you did is easily accessible due to experience
- overestimating contributions to group situations
How is fast thinking effective?
- adaptive
- ‘cocktail party effect’ - in the room and you direct attention to something else if you hear your name or relevant info about you
- unconscious monitoring around us and then direct attention
- stops unnecessary energy usage consciously monitoring everything
How do we infer people?
Todorov et al
- brief glances at faces
- accurate presentation of attractiveness and personality
- spontaneous descriptions of faces alluded to trust and dominance which were consistent with previous ratings of faces
How is fast thinking (system 1) functional?
’ thin slices ‘ approach
Ambady and Rosenthal
- non-verbal info = lot of judgement
- short clips of teachers with no audio but rich in NVC
- people were very accurate and made good social judgements
- consistent with the ratings given to students
- follow-ups (sexual orientation) also true
Detection of deceptions - Susa
- targets lying in clips
- thin slice vs thick slice conditions
- people were more accurate in thin than in rich interviews
- intuitive is more accurate (survival and evolutionary)
- second-guessing the info with more deliberative processing interferes ith accuracy
Sadness also decreases accuracy
Describe the negativity bias
- system 1 is a function
- adaptive and automatic attendance to negative info
- more important to attend for survival
- dwelling on negative
- usually adaptive
Why is system 2 thinking functional? What does it require?
- can correct system 1 errors
- requires motivation (e.g. marshmallow test and ability to suppress
- requires cognitive resources (time, ability to think deliberatively)
- high stakes of being wrong
How may fluency affect system 2 thinking?
Cognitive reflective task (Fredrick 2005)
- intuitive answers in gap-fill - need to suppress to logically think
- thinking more deliberately by processing fluency (e.g. font style)
- disfluency, difficult to read (different font style), difficult to process - metacognitive experience - activates deliberates
Less fluent = more likely to be scrutinised and analytics
Hernandez and Preston
- ppts given negative info then description of a crime
- did he do it
- used fluent or disfluent text for descriptions
- fluency - increased confirmation biases
- political considerations
