WEEK 4 Flashcards
Automatic Thought
“Fast” thinking
System 1
Effortless, intuition, involuntary control
Ex. 2+2, gut feeling, driving home from work
Deliberate Thought
“Slow” thinking
System 2
Concentration, reasoning, effort, patience
Ex. 58x45, driving in a new city,
Schemas
Automatic Thinking
People use to organize their knowledge
Ex. Objects, stereotypes, events (scripts- restaurants)
Functions of Schemas (4 things)
Efficiency: Faster processing of info. The important info.
Predictability: situations, others behaviour.
Processing of ambiguous information
Attention: Filter new info, focus on schema consistent info
Memory: Fill in blanks with schema-consistent information
Where does schema have an effect on memory?
Schema –> Stimulus –> Memory (affecting encoding of info)
OR
Stimulus –> Schema –> Memory (the schema affects memory)
Ex. Read article, then given schema of ‘homebuyer/burglar’ then asked to recall aspects.
What are 3 aspects of the observer when looking at activating schemas
Chronic Accessibility/Past experience- how you grew up
Goal Related Accessibility: Goal related cognition is activated until the goal is fulfilled
Priming (recent experiences) See someone stumbling, you just read a book about mental impairment or saw a MADD campaign
Cognitive Confirmation Biases **
- Interpreting behaviours as consistent. Processing info about people in a way that supports the schema
Even if behaviours aren’t consistent with the schema
Ex. Shooting bias, black people, gender - Remembering behaviours as consistent: Couples report their behaviour consistent to newspaper report. “conflict is good- we fight” “conflict is bad-we don’t fight”
- Biased hypothesis testing. Ex. chosing a roommate, wanting to arrive at conclusion that you want. Ex. Asking extravert vs introvert questions.
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts
Helps us when we don’t have time or we’re overloaded with information
Advantage: Efficient
Disadvantage: Systematic errors in reasoning
Types of Heuristics
Availability Heuristic
Representative Heuristics
Anchor Heuristics
Availability Heuristics
How easily accessible memories are, bringing something to mind to form your judgment
* Not the content, the ease of which the content comes to mind
- How a question is phrased
- Difficult/Easy to think of examples
* These factor the availability of info not the frequency of which the event happens
Ex. See shooting in the media so you assume it happens more often than they actually do, think a popular TV show is one you watch, not buying a Honda because your friend got in an accident driving one
Doctors and Availability Heuristic
Doctor diagnosed patient with pneumonia because he just saw 20 other patients with that vs a doctor who just finished reading a book about a rare disease
Representative Heuristics
Classifying based on how similar it is to a typical case
Problems: Ignore Base Rates, vague statements represent a lot of things (horoscope)
Base Rate Fallacy: Think someone looks like student- likelihood is only 20% but if they’re on their way to Carleton on OTrain- base rate is a lot higher now
Gamblers Fallacy- think the next time is going to be the same even though the odds never changed
Anchor Heuristic
Uses a comparison standard which biases the estimate
Ex. List a number higher/lower than 10,000 vs list a number higher/lower than 10.
Ex. Proscuters/Judges/Car dealerships
How to increase conscious thought (shooting bias, diagnoses)
Resources for controlled thought (energy, not fatigued)
Reduce distractions (noise, hunger)
Consider base rates
Consider opposite view of given opinion * *
Scripts
How a series of events are likely to occur in a well known situation
Ex. Dinner party vs restaurant
