Weeks 10/11: Social cogntition

Question 1

What is meant by cognitive miser? How does it involve heuristics?

Answer 1

The human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser because people prefer to solve problems in the most simple cognitively available way, using heuristics to figure things out (teach yourself as you go along)

Question 2

Bargh (1994) outlined 4 automatic vs controlled processes. Define each one.

Intentionality

Awareness

Controlability

Efficiency

Answer 2

Intentionality: Is an act of will necessary to set the process in motion?

Awareness: Is one consciously aware of the proces?

Controllability: Is one able to stop the process once it’s operating?

Efficiency: How much attentional resources does the process take?

Question 3

The stroop affect is an example of which of the 4 automatic/ controlled processes?

Answer 3

The stroop effect is an example of controllability. It’s very hard to control reading out the correct work

Question 4

The unintended influence of prior experience on judgement, thought or behaviour describes which type of effect?

Answer 4

The unintended influence of prior experience on judgement, thought or behaviour describes the priming effect

Question 5

What’s the difference between a subliminal and supraliminal prime, and what do they both have in common?

Answer 5

Subliminal primes are not consciously perceived, whereas supraliminal primes are. However, they both affect behaviour unconsciously

Question 6

How would an experimenter probe to find out if a participant was aware of a supraliminal prime compared to a subliminal prime?

Answer 6

For a supraliminal prime, the researcher could ask questions such as

“What do you think the purpose of this study was”?
“Did anything you did on the task affect what you did on the other task”?

For a subliminal prime, the researcher could ask “Did you see anything between the 2 X’s? If so, what did you see?”

Question 7

Give an example of a common QRP: Questionable research practise

Answer 7

Very established and leading scientists are not taking family-wise error rate into account, therefore they’re producing false positives (Type 1 error)!

Question 8

What did Weingarten et al. (2016) find when they conducted a meta-analysis on supraliminal and subliminal priming effects?

Answer 8

They found that both prime types still had significant effects, but much smaller than Bargh suggested

Question 9

What is the hyper-accessibility, or the rebound effect?

Answer 9

eg when you’ve just broken up with someone, you’re trying not to think about them, but this makes you think about them more

Question 10

Wegner’s ironic process theory (1992,94) has 2 mental control processes; the intentional an the ironic monitoring process. Define these.

Answer 10

The intentional monitoring process is a conscious effort to suppress the unwanted thoughts, by searching for distractors. It takes effort, and can be interrupted.

The ironic monitoring process is an unconscious process which is used to check whether the thought to be suppressed is surfacing. Since it is unconscious it is also less effortful, and uninterruptable

Question 11

Why is the monitoring process ‘ironic’?

Answer 11

Because it leads us to focus more attention on the thought we’re trying to suppress

Question 12

How does the ironic process theory stipulate that we end up thinking about the thought to be suppressed even more?

Answer 12

Since the intentional monitoring process takes effort, it subsides under cognitive load, whilst the ironic monitoring process continues. Thus, the ironic monitoring process becomes more dominant and we’re having recurring thoughts about the ‘to-be-suppressed’.

Question 13

What is meant by ego depletion in Baumeister, Muraven and Tice’s 2000 strength model of self-regulation?

Answer 13

Self-regulation relies on a limited energy source, and once that source is consumed, a state of ego depletion occurs, meaning self regulation can’t be applied even in for a different purpose.

Question 14

Baumeister et al. (1998) conducted a study using cookies and radishes. What were the 2 conditions, and how did the results support the ego depletion theory?

Answer 14

The conditions were

1. Please refrain from eating freshly baked cookies (you can only eat radishes)
2. Eat cookies or radishes.

The results were that those participants who were allowed to eat cookies persisted for more than twice as long at an unsolvable anagram. This was taken as evidence that those in the first condition, who had refrained from eating cookies, had already exhausted their self-control and were in a state of ego depletion.

Question 15

What did Vohs et al (2008) find was the effect of participants’ being overwhelmed with choice, on how much of a healthy drink they consumed?

Answer 15

People who were overwhelmed with choice consumed less of the healthy drink, they were exhausted (in a state of ego depletion), they had less self-control to allot

Question 16

In Schmeichel et al.’s 2008 experiement, people were tested to see if they had more or less working memory. They were then shown either funny or disgusting films and asked to suppress their facial expressions.

What was found, and what does this suggest?

Answer 16

Those with more working memory were better able to control the expressions on their face while watching disgusting / funny films.

This evidence suggests that there is a cognitive structure related to ego depletion

Question 17

How is self-regulation likened to a muscle?

Answer 17

A muscle can be strengthened additively, but it can also be fatigued if it works too hard all at once (ego depletion).

Question 18

How did Oaten and Cheng (2006) back up the self-report data showing that participants reported higher self-control across several different domains, as a result of increasing their exercise?

Answer 18

Oaten and Cheng used a visual tracking task where participants were asked to keep their attention on a particular dot. Participants in the experimental condition were better at this visual tracking task

Question 19

Was evidence for ego depletion found in meta-analyses by Hagger et al (2010) and Carter et al. (2015)?

Answer 19

In the initial meta-analysis by Hagger et al. ego depletion was supported, however in 2015 Carter et al. didn’t find support

Question 20

What is the difference between mood concurrent and mood dependent memory?

Answer 20

Mood dependent memory depends on the mood I was in when the memory was encoded; if I was in a happy mood when I met Sarah, I might remember her when I’m in a happy mood again.

For Mood concurrent memory, it is irrelevant what mood I was in when I met Susie.

Question 21

What is hot/ cold cognition, and what debate existed around it in the late 70s and early 80s?

Answer 21

Hot cognition = processes driven by goals and feelings

Cold cognition = information driven processes, reason about social and retrieve social knowledge, understanding the environment

Debate: Whether hot cognition really exists

Question 22

Directional, accuracy and closure are all types of goals. Define each one.

Answer 22

Directional goal= the desire to reach a particular outcome or form a particular judgement

Accuracy goal= the desire to form an accurate judgement

Closure goal= the desire to arrive/ not arrive at a clear conclusion quickly

Question 23

In 1992, Ditto and Lopez tested self-serving biases and information processing by claiming they were testing a new method for detecting an enzyme deficiency (an undesirable outcome).

What were the 2 conditions for the colour reaction?

What did they find?

Answer 23

A: Colour reaction indicates presence of the enzyme means colour is good!

B: Colour reaction indicates absence of the enzyme means colour is bad.

Participants in the condition A- colour change indicates presence of enzyme took 30s less to arrive at their judgement, and were less critical of the experiment.

Question 24

According to Tetlock & Kim (1987), what are the effects of accuracy goals on cognition effort?

How do accuracy goals affect judgement?

Answer 24

Accuracy goals increase the amount of effort and elaborative processing.

Accuracy goals do not guarantee better judgment

Question 25

In Pendry and Macrae’s 1994 effects of accuracy goals experiment, students were asked to work with a 65 y/old, ‘Hilda’, to solve a problem.

There were 2 conditions:
Participants were told they would either be rewarded for their independent performance, or for their interdependent performance w Hilda. The interdependence condition implies accuracy goals; they want to get to know Hilda so they can work together better.

What were the results of putting half of each condition (accuracy or non-accuracy motivated) under cognitive load?

What was the overall effect on stereotypicality?

Answer 25

Participants in the accuracy condition (working interdependently w Hilda) applied more elderly stereotypes when under cognitive load, and less when not under cognitive load.

In the non accuracy condition (working independently), there was little difference between the stereotyping of Hilda when under cognitive load or not.

Stereotypicality was highest for the interdependent (accuracy motivated) condition under cognitive load, and the lowest for the accuracy condition when not under cognitive load.

Question 26

In the mechanisms for motivated reasoning, what is the positive test strategy? Think confirmation bias.

There are 2 points.

Answer 26

1. Positive test strategy causes us to seek out evidence to support our hypothesis
2. Positive test strategy leads to biases in memory (biased recall)

Question 27

To test positive test strategy, Santioso et al. (1990) told participants that either extroversion or introversion lead to success.

How did this affect participants’ recall of their own extroverted or introverted behaviours?

Answer 27

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