PSYC 309: Midterm 2

were there cultural differences with the marshmallow study? (Yanaoka, 2022)

were there cultural differences with the marshmallow study? (Yanaoka, 2022)

• Japanese and American kids, could either a marshmallow and a gift

• Japanese: wait 15 min for marshmallow, 4.6 min for gift

• American: wait 3.7 min for marshmallow, 14.5 min for gift

• cultural differences in what is more important to wait for

what is priming?

when exposure to a stimulus unconsciously or implicitly influences one’s thoughts, decisions, and behaviours

does priming through reading affect behaviour? (Bargh, 1996)

participants did a scrambled sentence task where sentences were related to old people → after unscrambling them, they walked down the hall to another testing room

• walked down the hall slower than people in a neutral condition, replicated

does food packaging affect people’s serving sizes? (Tal, Niemann, Wansink, 2017)

• study 1: compared serving sizes and box pictures of 158 US cereal boxes - pictures were 64.7% larger than recommended portions

• study 2: measured amount of cereal people poured from accurate or exaggerated box pictures - people poured 17.8% more cereal in exaggerated condition (42% over serving size)

• we are biased towards accessible marketing, easily swayed

do anti-smoking campaigns prime a desire to smoke? (Harris, 2013)

• smokers watched either an anti-smoking video made by a tobacco company, an anti-smoking video made by US government, or a video about dolphins → took a break before answering questions about it

• tobacco company: 42% more likely to smoke during break

• control: 11% more likely to smoke during break

• government: 33% more likely

  exposure to smoking advertising primes people towards smoking, more thinking about smoking

does wording of food product names affect their consumption? (Koenigstorfer, 2013)

• given either a “trail mix” or a “fitness trail mix” to eat

• participants more likely to eat the fitness trail mix because it was associated more with being healthy and with less feelings of guilt

• packaging priming influences behaviour even though the wording of packaging isn’t related to what they are actually doing

attendance slides

• in-N-out burger

• tacocat

• top left and top right circles and bottom circle moved to flip triangle around

• canned salmon

what are fluently processed stimuli?

stimuli that are easy to comprehend/familiar - perceived as more likeable, more valuable, more true

what are disfluently processed stimuli?

stimuli that is difficult to comprehend/unfamiliar

what is the value of disfluent information? (Alter, 2007)

experiment 1

• participants asked to answer questions about a problem that was written in fluent or disfluent font

• participants got 1.90/3 questions right with the fluent font

• participants got 2.40/3 questions right with the disfluent font

experiment 2

• participants more likely to trust an mp3 player description that uses technical/disfluent info

experiment 3

• participants asked to choose a competent-looking tech with an unpersuasive argument or an incompetent-looking tech guy with persuasive argument

• more likely to choose unpersuasive guy when easily understandable font is used

• more likely to choose persuasive guy when not easily understandable font is used

more likely to choose info that is presented/more accessible to us even if it is not as helpful or what would be better to know (Shrek scene)

what are some limits to our thinking and reasoning?

• time

• information

• processing capacity

given our limitations to thinking/reasoning, what do we do?

use heuristics - simple shortcuts that speed our decisions

how do heuristics appear in our decisions? (Schooler, 2009

• participants asked to name which city has a larger population

• faster to decide which city when we only recognize one city

how does disfluent information help us? (system 2 thinking)

shifts us away from quicker, heuristic-based thinking to slower, more deliberate or reasoned thinking

• enhanced learning

• reduced propensities to stereotypes

system 1 vs. system 2 thinking

system 1: fast, unconscious, automatic, everyday decisions, error prone

system 2: slow, conscious, effortful, complex decisions, reliable

How would furrowing your brow affect your propensity to use the “representative” heuristic, and why? (Alter, 2013)

it is a facial feedback manipulation that stimulates mental difficulty/disfluency - caused participants to be more likely to abandon heuristics and think more carefully about the task

What does it mean that we’re “cognitive misers”? (Ackerman, 2017)

our tendency to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways - don’t want to use our full brain all the time

is it beneficial to always consciously deliberate before choosing something? (Dijksterhuis, 2006)

• participants asked: a recent item you’ve purchased, how much they thought about it before buying it, how satisfied they are with the item

• divided into conscious thinker group (reported more conscious thinking) and unconscious thinker group (reported less conscious thinking)

• purchases items rated for complexity (toothpaste = 1, apartment = 5)

• found that purchases of complex products were viewed more favourably when decisions were made unconsciously

do we unconsciously think all of the time? (Bos, 2008)

• participants given info about 4 different cars where one is clearly highest in quality and the other lowest - asked to rate how positive they felt about each car

• conditions: think about cars before rating (conscious thought), do a puzzle before rating (unconscious thought), no thinking

• conscious thought difference between best and worst car: 1.26

• unconscious thought difference between best and worst car: 7.00

• no thinking difference between best and worst car: 0.54 (showed that there was a difference between unconscious - unconscious thought is goal-directed)

we only engage in unconscious thinking if we have a specific goal in mind

how conscious or unconsciously satisfied are we when we buy items varying in complexity? (Dijksterhuis, 2006)

• participants approached outside Ikea (more complex) and de Bijenkorf (less complex)

• asked: what they purchased, how consciously they thought about making the purchase, how they felt about the purchase 2 weeks later

• found more likely to be unconsciously satisfied with complex items and consciously satisfied for non-complex items

does unconscious thinking adapt or shift in response to changing goals? (Li, 2022)

• participants given info about features of four different phones where one phone is better for older adults and one is better for younger adults - rated which phone is better for both groups after a delay

• conditions: either thought carefully for two minutes or did a cognitive task for two minutes

• half the participants asked to rate suitability of each phone for use by older adult

• other half told they now had to rate for use by younger adult (change of goal)

• found unconscious thought resulted in more confident responses no change and change of goal

why might unconscious thinking often lead to better or more satisfying decisions? (Bos, 2011)

participants given info about 4 cars - immediate rating of each car condition or rating each car after 5 minute break condition

• cars had some positive (important and unimportant) and some negative attributes - 2 had 4 important positive and 8 negative, other 2 had 8 unimportant positive and 4 negative

• difference between 4 and 8 positive attributes: immediate = 5.5, unconscious = 14.2

  unconscious thinking helps us zero-in on what is important info for us to consider

can we manipulate our self-perception by changing our thoughts? (Schwarz, 1991)

• participants thought about when they have assertive OR when they were unassertive → generated 6 OR 12 specific examples

• asked how assertive they thought they were on 1-10 scale

• assertiveness condition: rated assertiveness higher with 6 examples

• unassertiveness condition: rated unassertiveness higher with 12 examples

Why does your self-rated assertiveness change with the number of examples you’re asked to recall? (Schwarz, 2004)

metacognitive experience - accompanies human reasoning and fluency with which new info can be processed, ease vs. difficulty of recalling info and generating thoughts

• bias our thinking and conclusions

can Schwartz (1991) be replicated? (Requero, 2015)

generate 6 positive OR 6 negative thoughts about Mediterranean diet and then rate whether is felt easy or hard

• rated as more positive when positive thoughts were easier to generate or negative thoughts were harder to generate

• rated as more negative when positive thoughts were harder to generate or when negative thoughts were easier to generate

How do we really know it’s peoples’ thoughts about their feelings during thinking that are driving biased results? (Aarts, 1999)

generate 3 examples of recent bike riding, OR generate 8 examples, then rate your frequency of bike riding

• half the participants told to be very accurate when generating examples

• when told to be accurate, rated frequency higher for 8 examples but lower for 3 examples

meta-reasoning (Ackerman, 2017)

processes that monitor the progress of our reasoning and problem-solving activities, regulate time and effort devoted to them - memorization and knowledge retrieval

• monitoring and control aspects

what is our initial judgement of solvability? (Topolinski, 2016)

participants asked to solve some anagrams that were hard or easy to pronounce and short or long

• ease of pronouncing was important - estimated to require less effort and time to be solved, proxy for actually solvability/superficial cue signalling ease despite not be related to solvability at all

does the ease of a question affect feeling of error after answering? (Gangemi, 2015)

participants answered a hard question or a easy question - feelings of error regarding their response were higher when their response was incorrect or correct

loss aversion

pain from a loss is taken more seriously/more significant than pleasure from a gain

• used to explain endowment effect

prospect theory

individuals assess their loss and gain perspectives asymmetrically

• getting $25 dollars = smaller gain in happiness

• losing $25 dollars = steeper drop in happiness

does loss-framing increase dishonest behaviour? (Schindler, 2017)

study 1

• participants rolled 3 dice 25 times → either given a gain-frame (get 10 cents for each 4) or a loss-frame (get 7.50 to start but lose 10 cents for every rolled number except 4)

• gain frame: mean # of rolled 4s = 11.89

• loss frame: mean # of rolled 4s = 13.67

study 2

• participants flipped a coin → gain-frame (get 50 cents when get specified side) or loss-frame (get 50 cents to start, but lose it if specified side comes up)

• gain frame: % reporting payout flip = 70.8%

• loss frame: % reporting payout flip = 82.9%

a loss is seen as much worse - loss aversio

endowment effect

people are more likely to retain an object they own than acquire same object when they do not own it

• How much does a person need to give up an item?

Does loss aversion only arise for things that have material value, like money and things?

• endowment effect

• free trials for things

• we hate losing things, so we would be more inclined to pay to avoid losing something

Does loss aversion extend to information and knowledge? (Litovsky, 2022)

• gave participants opportunities to learn “unrevealed” facts - ex “this country’s national animal is a unicorn”

experiment 1

• gain-frame: learn 3 facts or take a 50/50 gamble of learning all 6 facts vs. learning no facts

• loss-frame: learn 3 facts, but you can choose to take a 50/50 gamble of learning 3 more facts vs. losing your 3 facts

• more likely to choose gamble in gain frame

experiment 2

• gain-frame: learn a bundle of 3 facts or learn bundle of 4 facts

• loss-frame: learning a bundle of 3 facts, but can choose to learn a bundle of 4 facts

• more likely to choose 3-facts in loss frame

experiment 3

• presented 1 set of unrevealed facts: US states or national customs or foreign languages

• gain-frame: learn 1 of the facts for sure or take a 33/66 gamble of learning all 3 facts vs. none

• loss-frame: can lose 2 of the facts for sure or take a 33/66 gamble of learning all 3 facts vs. none

• more likely to gamble in loss frame for all conditions

what price are people more likely to buy things at (free effect)? (Shampanier, 2007)

Offer 1: Ferrero = 27 cents, Hershey’s = 2 cents, or nothing → 40% chose Ferrero, 45% chose Hershey’s, 15% chose nothing (not a big difference)

Offer 2: Ferrero = 26 cents, Hershey’s = 1 cent, or nothing → 40% chose Ferrero, 40% chose Hershey’s, 20% chose nothing (no difference)

Offer 3: Ferrero = 25 cents, Hershey’s = Free, or nothing → 10% chose Ferrero, 90% chose Hershey’s, 0% chose nothing (free option drastically changes choices)

Why do we seem to over-value things that are free? (Shampanier, 2007)

• participants in 2 groups: (1) offered a Lindor chocolate for 14 cents or a Hershey’s for 1 cent; (2) offered a Lindor chocolate for 13 cents or a Hershey’s for free

• Then asked to rate how they felt about the offer (measure of affect) - felt the best about the free Hershey’s

• 2nd experiment added on a condition of carefully analyzing your decision before making it → found that less people chose the free option than the paid option

why would you ask participants to carefully evaluate their decision before choosing a chocolate?

mitigated initial emotional reactions to things and allowed more cognitively available info to be integrated

do we value a thing that we built more than the same thing that we did not build? (IKEA effect) (Norton, 2012)

participants either bid on an IKEA box they built OR one that was already built

• built: willing to pay $0.78 and rated it 3.81/5

• didn’t built: willing to pay $0.48, rated it 2.50/5

do we value things we built ourselves even when the thing we did not build is significantly nicer than ours? (Norton, 2012)

participants bid on origami they made, origami made by a novice, and origami made by an expert

• self: $0.22

• novice: $0.05

• expert: $0.27

higher quality holds higher value than our own creation

does building something ourselves increase its value? (Norton, 2012)

participants asked to bid on Lego they built, pre-built Lego, and Lego they built and then took apart

• built: $0.84

• pre-built: $0.32

• built than took apart: $0.43

does collaboration reduce the IKEA effect? (Marsh, 2022)

British and Indian children were asked to either build a foam monster on their own OR with a partner

• children experienced the same level of IKEA effect (no cultural differences)

• culture didn’t change the level of IKEA effect

How might we explain the Ikea effect from a cognitive perspective? (Mochan, 2012)

one group built a lego car and the other group examined an already made lego car → bid on how much they’d pay to keep it and rated how proud they felt about the cat

• built it: $1.20, 4.39/5

• examine it: $0.57, 2.81/5

proudness is a significant contributor to the existence of the IKEA effect

triad categorization task

ask preschooler what item fits best with another item - which item best pairs with a train? a bus or train tracks?

• analytic pairing: trains and busses are both large vehicles

• holistic pairing: trains run on tracks

• Western countries most likely to take an analytic response (Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, US, UK) (Heinrich, 2023)

are there cultural differences in cognitive biases? (Yiend, 2019)

UK and Hong Kong groups tested interpretation bias (how you evaluate something) and attentional bias (what tends to grab attention)

• interpretation: participants read a passage and then filled first missing letter of word at the end, rated how two sentences, one positive and one negative, matched the passage → effects were similar in UK and Hong Kong

• interpretation: participants make 5-word sentences out of scrambled words → UK had less positive interpretations, Hong Kong had more positive interpretations

• attentional: named colour of word as fast as they could → UK had greater attention to threat words, Hong Kong had greater attention to positive word

• attentional: after each word pair, identified whether an E or an F is then presented → UK had weaker positive attention, Hong Kong had stronger positive attention

• migration to UK from Hong Kong associated with weaker positive attribution/less attention as migration time went up, Hong Kong from UK associated with positive

• supports less presence of psychopathology in Hong Kong

different cultural group allowed insight into if differences were truly a culturally different profile, not just broader cross-cultural differences

emotional stroop task (Yiend, 2019)

participants name ink colour of words with emotional or neutral valence

object-level processes

basic cognitive processes (discussed in part 1 of course) - memory, language

metacognition (Ackerman, 2017)

thinking about one’s thinking - how we plan, monitor, assess our own understanding and performance

feeling of error (Ackerman, 2017)

subjective experience that something went wrong and an error was made

feeling of rightness (Ackerman, 2017)

degree to which first solution that comes to mind feels right

final confidence (Ackerman, 2017)

subjective probability that final response to a problem is correct

final judgement of solvability (Ackerman, 2017)

after giving up on a problem, estimated probability that the problem is nevertheless solvable

initial judgement of solvability (Ackerman, 2017)

subjective probability that a problem is solvable, either by one’s self or by anyone, based on a brief, initial impression

intermediate confidence (Ackerman, 2017)

subjective probability that each putative solution is correct

metacognitive control (Ackerman, 2017)

initiating, terminating, or changing allocation of effort to a cognitive task

metacognitive monitoring (Ackerman, 2017)

subjective assessment of how well a cognitive task is, will, or has been performed

meta-memory (Ackerman, 2017)

monitoring and control of learning and remembering

effort justification (Marsh, 2022)

person's tendency to attribute the value of an outcome they put effort into achieving as greater than the objective value of the outcome

similarity rating task (Yiend, 2019)

presents pairs of emotional expressions of different intensities and asks participants to rate similarity of each pair on a numerical scale

Scrambled Sentences Task (Yiend, 2019)

reordering words to make meaningful sentences with either a positive or negative meaning

dote probe paradigm (Yiend, 2019)

assesses selective attention where participants stare at centre of a screen and then indicate where another dot stimulus appears on the screen as fast as possible

core topics of 309 part 2

• priming/unconscious biases

• metacognition and metareasoning - evaluating our thinking

• cognitive biases regarding value (framing, aversion, IKEA effect)

• cultural variation of cognitive biases

loss-framing

scenario worded to make participants believe they already have the items/money they do not have

gain-framing

scenario worded to make participants believe they are getting something they do not already have

IKEA effect vs. endowment effect vs. free effect

Ikea has to do with building something yourself, endowment with owning something, free with attitude towards an object when it is suddenly free

• discussed emotional response to free effect only