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.
What is the relationship between affect and cognition?
Affect Influences Cognition: Our current mood impacts what we notice (mood- congruence) and recall ( mood-dependent memory)
Cognition influences affect: Our thoughts and predictions about future emotional states (affective forecasting) can influence our current feelings, even if those predictions are often inaccurate.
How can counterfactual thinking be both helpful and unhelpful?
Helpful:
●Upward counterfactual thinking (imagining better outcomes) can motivate us to improve
●Analyzing past mistakes with “if only” thoughts can aid learning and better future planning
Unhelpful:
●Dwelling on upward counterfactuals can lead to regret, envy and dissatisfaction
● Focusing on downward counterfactuals (imagining worse outcomes) might make us complacent
How does the “optimistics bias” affect our judgments and decisions?
●This bias leads us to believe that we are less likely to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive events than others
●It can result in taking unnecessary risks, neglecting preventative measures, and having unrealistic expectations about the future
What are some consequences of the overconfidence bias?
●Individuals might overestimate their abilities, knowledge, or changes of sucess, leading to poor planning and decision-making.
●This bias can hinder learning from mistakes, as individuals might not recognize the need for improvement or attribute failures to external factors
