Unit 1 Flashcards
Social Cognition
What is social cognition?
●How we think about the social world.
●The process we use to make sense out of social events.
●Our attempts to understand complex issues and why we sometimes make irrational decisions.
What are heuristics?
● Simple rules for making complex decisions or inferences quickly and efficiently.
●Mental shortcuts that save time and energy.
●Help us cope with large amounts of information.
●Can lead to biases and errors.
What are the four types of heuristics?
●Representativeness: Judging the likelihood of something belonging to a category based on how well it resembles a prototype.
●Availability: Estimating the frequency of an event based on how easily we can recall examples.
●Anchoring and adjustment: Making judgments by starting with an initial value (anchor) and adjusting from there.
●Status Quo: Believing that the way things are is better than alternatives, even without evidence.
What are schemas?
●Mental frameworks built on past experiences that guide our interpretations of the world.
●Help us organize social information, guide our actions, and process information in specific contexts.
●Often shared within the same culture
●Can lead to rigidity and resistance to change.
What is priming?
●A temporary increase in the accessibility of a specific schema.
●Occurs when recent experiences or exposure to certain stimuli make a schema more readily available in our minds.
●Can influence our thoughts, feelings, and behavior
What are the two types of social processing?
1.Controlled processing: Systematic, logical, effortful, and requires conscious thought.
2.Automatic processing: Fast, effortless, intuitive, and often happens unconsciously.
What is counterfactual thinking?
●Imagining alternative outcomes to past events, often involving “what if” or “if only” thoughts.
●Occurs automatically, especially in response to negative or unexpected events.
●Can influence our emotions, judgments, and future behavior.
What is the optimistic bias?
●The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive events happening to us and underestimate the likelihood of negative events.
●Can lead to unrealistic expectations and poor decision-making.
What is the overconfidence bias?
●Having greater confidence in our beliefs or judgments than is justified.
●Often associated with a lack of essential information or awareness of our limitations.
●Can lead to poor planning, unrealistic expectations, and an inability to learn from mistakes
What is the hindsight bias?
●The tendency to exaggerate our ability to have foreseen an outcome after it has already happened
●Also known as the “I knew it all along” phenomenon
●Can lead to overstimating our intellectual abilities and blaming others or ourselves
How do schemas impact social cognition?
●Attention: Schemas direct our attention to information consistent with our existing knowledge, reducing cognitive load.
●Enconding: Information aligning with our schemas is stored “normally”, while inconsistencies might be stored separetaly.
●Retrival: We tend to recall information consistent with our schemas more easily, though conflicting information might stand out.
What factors influence which schemas are activated?
●Schema strenght: Stronger, well-developed schemas are more likely to be activated and influence our thinking. Frequently used schemas become stronger and quicker to activate.
●Priming : Recent experiences or exposure to certain stimuli can temporarily increase a schema’s accessibility, making it more likely to be activated
How can schemas be unprimed?
●Fulfilling the Schema: Engaging in behavior related to primed schema can satisfy and deactivate it
●Letting it Dissipate: If the primed schema is not reinforced, it is accessibilty will naturally decrease over time
What are the advantages and disadvantages of schemas?
Advantages:
●Efficiently handle large amounts of information
●Prevent cognitive overload
●Speed up decision-making
Disadvantages:
●Can bias what we notice (attencion)
●Can distort memories and understanding the world
●Resistant to change even with contradictory information (perseverance effect)
Provide examples of how heuristics can lead to biases
Representativeness: Assuming someone is a doctor because they wear a white coat, neglecting other possibilities
Availability: Overestimating the danger of flying because plane crashes are vividly reported in the media.
Anchoring and Adjustment: Agreeing to a higher price for a used car because the initial asking price was inflated.
Status Quo: Sticking with a familiar brand of laundry detergent even though there might be better alternatives.
