Test #2 textbook notes not finished

Question 1

Theory of lay epistemology:

Answer 1

we could always gather more information before making a conclusion, but eventually we need to move on. Here are the three factors at play

The need to be accurate
Heightened when negative consequences are large
The need to reach closure quickly
Increased when thinking is effortful or unpleasant
The need to confirm what one already believes
When prior values or beliefs are brought to mind, when those beliefs and values are central to to their sense of meaning in life or personal worth, and perhaps especially when they feel that their beliefs are being challenged by contradictory information

Question 2

We have a hybrid brain, so our social cognition is governed by two ways of thinking

Answer 2

the cognitive - a conscious and rational and controlled system of thinking; and experiential system - an unconscious, intuitive, and automatic system of thinking.

Question 3

Implicit attitudes

Answer 3

based on automatic associations that make up the experiential system. Most are learned by culture

Question 4

Explicit attitude

Answer 4

are evaluations that we consciously make using the cognitive system

Question 5

Implicit association test:

Answer 5

because we don’t have access to our implicit attitudes we need to get creative when measuring their influence. Measures how quickly people associate subjects in two different categories.

Question 6

Three conditions must be met for your cognitive system to override your experiential system -

Answer 6

aware, motivate, capacity

We are aware that out controlled processes are necessary to counteract automatic processes
We are motivated to exert control over our thoughts and behaviors
We have the ability to consider our thoughts and actions at a more conscious level, because controlled processes require more mental effort. Sometimes we do not have enough cognitive resources to engage controlled ways of thinking. In those cases the need for closure kicks in, usually leading us to think and act in ways that are familiar and automatic

Question 7

Five ways the unconscious is smart:

Answer 7

The motives that guide thinking often operate unconsciously
Memory consolidation occurs during sleep
Unconscious mind wandering can help generate creative ideas
Intuition can facilitate sound decisions
Unconscious emotional associations can promote beneficial decisions. Somatic marker hypothesis: there are certain bodily changes that people experience as emotion, these somatic changes become automatically associated with positive or negative contexts for that emotion. When people encounter those contexts again, the somatic changes become a marker or a cue for what will happen next, helping to shape their decisions even without any conscious understanding of what they are doing. Essentially the way our unconscious implicit attitudes are able to communicate with our cognitive explicit attitudes. Think poker desks and skin study
Oftentimes we fail on working the unconscious into decision making and attitudes because they are hard to verbalize. We often times try to unpack the unconscious and make a story that sounds reasonable, but we usually fail because we make simple stories and in reality the situations are very complex

Question 8

Chronically accessible schemas:

Answer 8

Schemas that are easily brought to mind because they are personally important and used frequently
This can change entirely how two different people interpret a situation or person or event, and can lead to very different outcome ones, if for me I have honesty as chronically accessible, and someone else has power, we may see trump as very different even though we receive the same information about him
A certain situation or stimulus may prime particular schemas for one person but not for another depending on which ideas are chronically accessible to each

Question 9

Can priming change our impressions of others?

Answer 9

Our impressions of others can be shaped by salient schemas
Think of reshit netiv kids and who has broken and made me reassess that bias
Primes can be assimilated - I am primed for adventurous and then see something adventurous and think of it as adventurous, or contrasted - I am primed for adventurous, see something adventurous, but it is not as adventurous as the schema the prime has brought up so I contrast than to my schema and don’t see the event as so adventurous
Think of how a person from a small town would think of parties and then someone as a large town, now what if they walk into the same party, the one who is from a small town with little partying would think in comparison to his schema of parties that this party is huge, while the person from the big town would have a massive schema for parties and contrast it and be unimpressed

Question 10

Can priming change our behavior

Answer 10

There has been much debate
People seem to be especially suggestable to primed information when the right action is ambiguous and they have to act quickly.
When one has to act fast on ambiguous information, priming might be more likely to affect behavior simply because the more rational system is forced to take a backseat in experiential processing
Primes are more effective when people are already somewhat motivated to enact that behavior
Think of covid and hand sanitizer icu example

Question 11

Conceptual metaphor:

Answer 11

a cognitive tool that allows people to understand an abstract concept in terms of a dissimilar concrete concept like time in objects
Our minds borrow a familiar concrete schema like lightbulb to give shape to an abstract schema like good idea to inform how we think about them, even though these concepts are unrelated at the surface
In studies to judge people’s assessment of somethings importance, people judged heavier objects as more important, ie heavier clipboard vs lighter clipboard
People may use their bodies to think about abstract ideas, but not if something in the context makes them aware theta re doing so - if someone points out that the people have regarded this clipboard as particularly heavy people won’t rate it more important than the lighter clipboard

Question 12

The need for accuracy

Answer 12

The motive for accuracy can lead people to set aside their schemas and focus on objective facts
For example when a person is motivated to understand who another person really is, perhaps because he is going to work with her on a task, he may be motivated to look past the convenient stereotypes he has for her group and put more thought into her individual personality

Question 13

The need to reach closure quickly

Answer 13

When people are motivated to gain a clear, simple understanding of their surroundings, they tend to see events in a way that wraps up the world in a neat little package
For example if they are under time pressure - the primacy effect - if one knows they must form an impression of someone quickly, they are more likely to seize on the first bit of information they receive and fail to take into account relevant information they encounter later

Meaning maintenance model: even brief exposure to stimuli that seem out of place or inconsistent with expectations can put people on alert to make sense of their environment or to affirm other moral convictions
From the existential perspective: maintaining a clear simple interpretation of reality provides people with a psychological buffer against the threatening awareness of their mortality

Question 14

The need to validate what we already believe

Answer 14

Think watching sports teams and refs

Question 15

Mood and social judgment

Answer 15

In addition to psychological notices, moods can play an important role in shaping judgment about a given event or person
Evolutionary: positive mood no threats, considering this people may be oriented to use their mood as information in their judgements
Also the more thought people put into such judgements, the more their moods color those judgements; the more thinking people do, the more their moods infuse their evaluations of the various aspects of the person or the the event they are evaluating
Because positive moods signal that things are okay, individuals who feel good rely on more heuristic or automatic forms of processing when making judgements about people, events, and issues - the experiential system. On the other hand negative moods tell people something is wrong and that leads a person to think more carefully to figure out what is problematic

Question 16

How are memories formed

Answer 16

Short term memory: information and input that is currently activated
Long term memory: information from past experience that mat or may not be currently activated
Encoding information that is first represented in your short term memory
If that information is actively rehearsed, is distinctive, goal relevant, or emotionally salient, it gets consolidated in long term memory for retrieval
Those who use social media during an event are shown to have weaker memories of it as well as taking photos

Question 17

How do we remember?

Answer 17

Retrieval is colored by many factors like biases schemas motives goals and emotions

Question 18

Memory for schema-consistent and schema inconsistent information

Answer 18

It is easier to remember information that is consistent with our schema or super inconsistent with our schema
When we are busy or unmotivated we tend to encode information that fits our currently activated schemas
Our present perceptions can create a schema that biases how we recall or actually reconstruct events from the past
People have the general tendency to remember events more positively than they actually were
Mood congruent memory
Collectivist cultures think of people as varying more over time and their tolerance for inconsistency is greater
dialecticism: a way of thinking that acknowledges and accepts inconsistency

Question 19

The misinformation effect

Answer 19

Biases can lead us to remember things that never happened
Misinformation effect: the process by which cues that are given after an event can plant false information into memory.
Car hit vs smash

Question 20

The availability heuristic and ease of retrieval

Answer 20

People’s judgements can also be affected by how readily memories can be brought into consciousness
Availability heuristic: the tendency to assume that information that comes easily to mind or is readily available is more frequent or common
Ease of retrieval effect: the process whereby people judge how frequently an event occurs on the basis of how easily they can retrieve examples of that event
With greater personal relevance, people can be more discriminating in how they evaluate information, and judgements are less subject to ease or retrieval effect

Question 21

Inferring cause and effect in the social world

Answer 21

Heider - to understand why people behave the way they do, we must examine how they come to comprehend the people around them. Common sense psychology; a

Question 22

Common sense psychology

Answer 22

People organize their perceptions of action in the social world in terms of cause and effects. Specifically particular causes which are referred to causal attributions: explanations of a person’s behavior

Question 23

Basic dimensions of causal attributions

Answer 23

Locus of causality
Attribution of behavior can either be attributed to an aspect of the actor which is an internal attribution or an aspect of the situation which is an external attribution
Stability
Attributing the behavior to either stable or unstable factors, something that can change or something that won’t change
Stable attributions suggest that future outcomes in similar situations are likely to be similar.
I can’t dunk because I am 5 foot 7 - stable, I am not growing anytime soon
I can’t dunk because I stubbed my toe today unstable I will be good for tomorrow

1. An internal attribution for a poor performance or a negative action reflects poorly o the actor, whereas an external attribution tends to let the actor off the hook
2. On the other hand, an internal attribution for a positive behavior generally leads to a positive impression of the actor, whereas an external attribution for a positive action undermines the benefit to the actors image
3. Attributions to stable factors lead to strong expectations of similar behavior in similar situations, whereas attributions to unstable factors do not

Question 24

Fixed and Incremental Mindset

Answer 24

Our mindset affects not just what we do for ourselves but also how we treat others.
Comes from parents
Can I get better at this or is this something I cannot change?

Question 25

Automatic processes in causal attribution

Answer 25

Sometimes they arise from quick processes and sometimes rational
People often don’t put much effort into thinking about causal attributions. People make a more concentrated effort when it applies to situations that are unusual or particularly important to them. When an event aligns with acasual schema which we get frio our own personal experience or culture, then we london’t think much about it. If there is an outlier we either change the schema or leave it is an exception
When an event we observe is not particularly unexpected or important to us but does not readily fit an obvious causal schema, we are likely to base our causal attribution on whatever plausible factor is either highly visually salient or highly accessible from memory - top of the head phenomena

Question 26

The fundamental attribution error

Answer 26

When people observe an action, they have a strong tendency to make a correspondent inference
Correspondent inference: the tendency to attribute to a person an attitude, a desire, or a trait that corresponds to the action.
If you see someone pick up books dropped by someone else you will automatically think of them as helpful
They are useful because they give us quick information about the person we are observing in terms of either their dispositions or intentions
They are more likely under these three conditions
The individual seems to have a choice in taking an action
A person has a choice between two courses of action, and there is only one difference between one choice and the other
Someone acts inconsistently with a particular social role
Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to attribute behavior to internal or dispositional qualities of the actor and consequently underestimate the causal role of situational factors
Participants inferred that the author’s true attitude matched the position advocated in the essay even when told the author had no choice in what position he took for the essay

Question 27

How fundamental is the FAE

Answer 27

Actor observer bias: as observers we are likely to make internal attributions for the behavior of others and external attributions for ourselves
Can be reversed by shifting the visual perspective
We are more likely to make internal attributions for our successes and external attributions for our failures
Because of this the actor observer bias is stronger for negative behaviors
The classic actor observer asymmetries are largest when actors are not focused on a strong motive or intention for their behavior; if actors have a salient intention in mind, they tend to attribute their behavior internally to that intention

Question 28

Does the FAE occur across cultures?

Answer 28

In more collectivist cultures people are more attentive to the situation in which the behavior occurs and to view the actors as part of the larger groups
Around the globe when the goal is to judge a person we judge their behavior, but when the goal is to judge the cause of a behavior, there is cultural variation in how much the behavior is attributed to the person or the situation

Question 29

Dispositional attribution: A three stage model
When might people consider these situational factors before jumping to an internal attribution. Dan gilbert…

Answer 29

Behavior is labeled
Observers automatically make a correspondent dispositional inference
If observers have sufficient accuracy motivation and cognitive resources available, they modify their attributions to take into account salient situational factors
This model products that people will be especially likely to ignore situational factors and to make the FAE when they have limited attention and energy to devote to attributional processing
When people have the motivation and resources, they often correct their initial leap to internal dispositional attributions, but when cognitively busy, they are less able to make this correction
Think anxiety vs sex mute study

Question 30

Causal hypothesis testing

Answer 30

Putting conscious effort into making an attribution is like testing a hypothesis
The possible explanation of an event can come from what we prefer it to be, what we fear most, or a casual schema, could be based on a salient factor, or something easily referenceable from memory
We take this hypothesis and also account for the covariation principle: the tendency to see a casual relationship between an event and an outcome when they happen at the same time. We take all these factors and develop an hypothesis as to why something happened
Then we gather information to test its plausibility
How much effort we give to assessing the validity of that information depends on our need for closure versus our need for accuracy

Question 31

What kinds of information would we be most likely to use to inform our causal attributions

Answer 31

Three kinds of information: Consistency (Across time), Distinctiveness (across situations), and Consensus (across people)

Question 32

Discounting principle

Answer 32

the tendency to reduce the importance of any potential cause of another’s behavior to the extent that other potential causes exist

Question 33

Motivational Bias in Attribution

Answer 33

Important and ambiguous
We typically either jump on the most salient attribution or do a little thinking and information gathering and then pick a single attribution or at most contributing factors and discount other possibilities
Because attributions are often derived from complex and ambiguous circumstances there is plenty of leeway for them to be influenced by motivations other than a desire for an accurate depiction of causality
Our attributions are also biased by our preferred views of the way the world worldworks
Understanding attributions enables uts to appreciate their powerful role in how we interact with the world
Magical thinking: believing that simply having thoughts about an event before it occurs can influence that event. Specifically goes beyond our modern scientific understanding of causation

Question 34

Counterfactual thinking

Answer 34

The process of imaging how some event could have turned out differently

Question 35

The more easily we can mentally undo an event, the stronger our reaction to it

Answer 35

Think of close games vs blowouts and how agonizing a buzzer beater is

Question 36

Upward Counterfactuals

Answer 36

An imagined alternative in which the outcome is better than what actually happened
Generally make us feel worse about what actually happened - regret and guilt
If only…
Regrets of inaction - most commonly about love life, we don’t realize that in the moment there are factors that make it difficult
Upward counterfactuals can be contrasted with things we did or things we didn’t do
We engage in them because they can provide insight into how to avoid a similar bad situation in the future

Question 37

Downward counterfactuals

Answer 37

An imagined alternative in which the outcome is worse than what actually happened
Don’t help us prepare better for the future but help us feel better about the past
At least…

Question 38

Is it better to generate upward or downward counterfactuals

Answer 38

If you are down in the dumps downward
If you need to be productive upward
In your control up
Out of control down

Question 39

Building an impression from the bottom up: decoding the behaviors and minds of others

Answer 39

We build an impression from the bottom up by gathering individual observations of a person to form an overall impression
As we do so we encounter a negativity bias: the tendency to give negative qualities more weight when building an impression of someone
We expect people to follow norms so not doing so stands out
As a consequence we particularly remember it when someone we thought was good does a bad thing, but not as much when someone bad does a good thing

Question 40

Theory of mind

Answer 40

a set of ideas about other peoples’ thoughts, desires, feelings, and intentions based on what we know about them and the situation they are in

Question 41

Mirror neurons

Answer 41

certain neurons that are activated both when one performs an action oneself and when one observe another person perform that action (go over 150)

Question 42

Building an impression from the top down: perceiving others through schemas

Answer 42

In contrast people also often build an impression from the top down, based on their own preconceived ideas
Transference: a process whereby we activate schemas of a person we know and use the schemas to form an impression of someone new (think reshit ppl)
False consensus: a general tendency to assume that other people share our own attitudes, belief,s and preferences
You would think that we would easier be able to recognize how different our friends are because we know them well, but actually we see them as very similar because of this
False consensus stems from
Our own opinions and behaviors are most salient to us and, therefore, most cognitively accessible. So, they are most likely to come to mind when we consider what other people think or do
It is validating for our worldview to believe that others think and act the same way we do
Think smoker - but everybody does it
We tend to like people who are similar to us
We forget that the people we hang out with don’t represent population at large
Implicit personality theories: which traits go together and why think asch warm vs cold
We tend to assume people are more consistent in how they behave across situations than they actually are
Halo effect: the tendency of our assessment of an individual on a given trait to be biased by our more general impression of the individual

Question 43

Changing first impressions

Answer 43

Primacy effect: the idea that what we learn early colors how we judge subsequent information
If disconfirmation is strong enough our initial evaluation can be changed (think netiv ppl), in fact our in fact our initial evaluations of someone abn even change quite rapidly

Question 44

Persuasion

Answer 44

Intentional effort to change other people’s attitudes in order to change their behaviors

Question 45

Attitude

Answer 45

evaluation of a stimulus; can range from positive to negative

Question 46

Elaboration likelihood model

Answer 46

a theory of persuasion that builds on this diction, persuasive messages can influence attitudes in two ways or routes. Which route a person takes depends on his or her motivation and ability to elaborate on the information which he is exposed

Question 47

Central route to persuasion

Answer 47

a style of processing a persuasive message by a person who has both the ability and the motivation to think carefully about the message’s argument. Attitude change depends on the strength of the argument - the true merits of the person, object, or position being advocated in a message.

Question 48

Peripheral route to persuasion:

Answer 48

when they are not willing or able to put effort into thinking carefully about the messages argument. Attitude change depends on the presence of peripheral cues.

Question 49

Peripheral cues:

Answer 49

aspects of communication that are irrelevant (that is peripheral) to the true merits of the person, object, or position advocated in a message
Physical attractiveness
Length of message
Similarity