PSY285 Week 4

What is social cognition?

The study of how people think about themselves and others, including making judgments and decisions.

What influences social judgments?

The availability of information, past experiences, and context.

What are snap judgments?

Quick assessments made with little information, often based on physical appearance.

What is attribution in social psychology?

The process of explaining the causes of behavior, either situational or dispositional.

What is situational attribution?

Attributing a person's behavior to external factors or the context of the situation.

What is dispositional attribution?

Attributing a person's behavior to their internal traits or characteristics.

What is consensus in attribution?

The extent to which other people behave similarly in a given situation.

What is distinctiveness in attribution?

The extent to which an individual's behavior is unique to a specific situation.

What is the fundamental attribution error?

The tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics and underestimate situational factors when judging others' behavior.

What is self-serving attributional bias?

The tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external factors.

What is the actor-observer difference?

The difference in attribution based on whether one is the actor or the observer in a situation.

How do cultural differences affect attribution?

Westerners focus more on dispositional factors, while Asians are more inclined to consider situational factors.

What are framing effects?

Influences on judgment based on how information is presented, including order and wording.

What is the primacy effect?

The tendency for the first piece of information presented to have a greater influence on judgment.

What is the recency effect?

The tendency for the last piece of information presented to have a greater influence on judgment.

How does negative framing affect decision making?

Negative information tends to draw more attention and elicit stronger emotional responses than positive information.

What is an example of positive framing?

Describing a program that saves 200 lives as a success.

What is an example of negative framing?

Describing a program that results in 400 deaths as a failure.

What role does context play in social cognition?

Context influences how information is interpreted and the judgments made based on it.

What is the importance of feedback in social cognition?

Feedback can shape how individuals perceive their performance and influence future judgments.

What does the term 'framing' refer to in decision making?

The way in which information is presented, which can influence perceptions and choices.

What psychological principle explains shifts in preference based on problem framing?

The dependence of preferences on the formulation of decision problems.

What is confirmation bias?

The tendency to evaluate an idea by searching for evidence that supports it, potentially leading to false beliefs.

What is motivated confirmation bias?

The tendency to seek confirmatory information to maintain a certain belief.

What are the two main processes involved in memory?

Encoding (filing information away) and retrieval (extracting information from memory).

What distinguishes intuitive decision-making from rational decision-making?

Intuitive decision-making is automatic and based on associations, while rational decision-making is slower, controlled, and rule-based.

What is the availability heuristic?

A cognitive process where judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.

Provide an example of the availability heuristic.

People may think there are more words that begin with 'r' than words that have 'r' as a third letter, due to ease of recalling examples.

How can the availability heuristic lead to biased risk assessments?

Negative information may be overreported in the news, leading to skewed perceptions of risk.

What is the representativeness heuristic?

A cognitive process where judgments of likelihood are based on similarity assessments between individuals and group prototypes.

In the example with Chris, why might people choose option B over A?

Because option B seems more representative of Chris's interests, despite option A being statistically more likely.

What is the significance of the study by Tversky and Kahneman (1981)?

It highlights how framing effects can influence decision-making and the psychology behind choices.

What does risk aversion mean in the context of decision-making?

A preference for certain outcomes over uncertain ones, even if the uncertain outcome has a higher expected value.

What does risk-taking mean in decision-making?

A willingness to accept uncertain outcomes that may lead to worse consequences in favor of potentially better outcomes.