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
