social psych exam 2

the majority of information processing occurs automatically and unconsciously

system 1

FAST

automatic/unconscious/effortless

associative

system 2

slow

effortful

logical

priming(system 1 associative process)

when a stimulus activates a mental cluster of information

• Storbeck- seeing or hearing the word doctor makes you faster to recognize the word nurse than an unrelated word like bread

• Manhenke & Imhoff- activating a concept like baby made participants more likely to complete stems as congruent words like crib or cry

spreading activation theory- our mind works through a network of concepts.

• when you’re exposed to a concept, the mind readies itself to talk about other closely related concepts

weapons priming effect- being presented with a gun can activate aggressive thoughts and increase aggression

• many studies in this subject are not replicable

  • publication bias

  • p hacking

  • Meta analysis: evaluating the replicability of social priming studies

    • 94% of studies were not able to be repeated

errors in system 1

Kahneman & Tversky - with 98% confidence they had to determine the distance between new delhi and beijing

• should have only filled out incorrectly < 2% of the time

  • actually filled it out wrong 30%

  • overconfidence bias- people are prone to feelling unrealistically confident in thier estimations, prognostications, and knowledge

    • over precision- giving too narrow an estimate in situations like the one above

      • Boice- 18 infectious disease experts were asked to estimate the number of COVID 19 cases the us would have by 3/31/30 with 80% certainty

        • 3 out of 18 were correct(should have been 14)

      • overconfidence is often highest for distant future predictions

        • percent of failing an exam increases as the exam date approaches

    • malkiel- mutual fund portfolios selected by investment analysts perform about as well as randomly selected stocks

    • Dunlosky- the most confident students performed the worst on the actual test

      • over confident people are seen as more competent, higher status, and more romantically desireable

selective exposure bias- the tendency to predominately seek out attitude consistent information and avoid attitude challaneging information

• confimation bias- the tendency to reach conclusions that sipport prior attitudes and beliefs

  • selective exposure bias

  • memory bias- people are better at remembering arguements that support their beliefs

  • motivated reasoning

availability heuristic( errors in system 1)

the more easily we recall something the more likely it seems

• people are slow to understand specific examples from a general truth but people are quick to infer a general truth from a vivid example

  • Goldstein- after several high profile school shooting, 74% of american parents believed schools were more dangerous than in 1999 even though crime dropped by 50%

• counter factual thinking- imagining alternative outcomes for what happened and its effect on our sense of regret

  • ward & Jenkins- participants reviewed the results of a hypothetical 50 day cloud seeding experiment

    • the majority of participants detected a pattern between seeding and rainfall

      • people are irrationally quick to see patterns in completely random events

regression toward the mean( errors in system 1)

in the long run, short term tends of unusual performance tend to self correct as perfomance tends to ultimatelt return to average

• people tend not to honor the power of regression toward the mean

  • Schaffner- participants were tasked with training and imaginary fourth grader names harold to arrive to school by 8:30 am

    • arrived between 8:20 and 8:40

      • either responded with strong praise or strong reprimand

        • kahneman & tversky’s provacative claim- nature operates in such a way that we often feel punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them

biased processing of political information( hiccups in social information processing)

lee et al- people in every political party view the news media as unsympathetic to their party

Gramlich- prior to the 2020 election, both democrats and repblicans believed their party was the victim of more misnifomation attacks

minsiformation( hiccups in social information processing)

loftus & palmer- participants watched a video of a traffic accidnet

• asdigned to be asked if they contacted/hit/bumped into/collided with/smashed into

loftus & pickrell- lost in a mall

• got family members to tell people a story about their childhood

  • 40% remebered the event and could recall details

wade et al. - showed photos of people on a hot air ballown ride from when they were 5

• never happened but over 50% remebered the event

reiteration effect/illusory truth effect ( hiccups in social information processing)

repeated statements receive higher truth ratings, regardless of actual truthfulness

• hasher et al- participants read several statements, makered as either true or false

  • days later they came back to the labe and rated the truthfulness of several statments, some repeated some not

  • statements form the prior session were rated as more truthful regardless of wether they had been marked true or false

belief perseverance( hiccups in social information processing)

clinging to your intial conclusion, even after the underlying facts have been discredited

• ross, lepper, hubbard- participants tried to identity real vs fake suicide notes

  • either told you got 24/25 or 10/25( told it was bogus)

  • group A thought they were more talented(24/25)

• anderson, lepper, ross - participants read a fake atticle that siad the best firefighters are either risk takers or very cautious

  • told the article was bogus

  • had to determine what is the most important trait to being a firefighter

  • Result A→ risk taking, B→ caituousness

reconstructing our past attitudes ( hiccups in social information processing)

caBem & McConnell- carnegie mellon students answered a long survey that included a question about student control over the univerisyt curriculum

• a week later they wrote an essay opposing student control

• asked to recall answers from the survey, they remebered holding the opinion that they NOW held( denied the essay influenced them)

people wose beliefs or attitudes have changed often insit that they have always felt the way they currently feel

McFarland & Ross- rated their current dating partner

• 2 months later rated them again

• if they were still in love they OVERESTIMATED the positvity

• if they broke up they UNDERESIMATED. the positivity

  • present bias- influences our recolection of past memories

expectations → reality ( hiccups in social information processing)

Snyder- male participants talked on the phone to female partcipants

• beforehand make parricipants were provided with a fake profile of the female either attacgtive or unnatractive

• rated the conversation on various personality traits

• rated attractive women as more sociable

  • third party listeners who did no see the photos also rated attractive women as more socialble

behavioral confirmation- when erroneous beliefs about a perosn influence their behavior

Miller et al- after being urged to be neat and tidy a class increased the amount of trash

• in another class students repeatedly congragulated and praised for being so neat and tidy- amount of trasj increased even more

  • labeling- a persuasion technique where you give a person a positive label and hope that they process to try to live up tot hat label through changes in behavior

attitude

a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor

why do we have attitudes

provide shortcuts for approach vs. avoid

• care about vs. dont care about

• enjoy vs. dont enjoy

• associated with reward vs. not

mere exposure effect (where do attitudes come from)

if you’ve seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet

• zajonc - participants reviewed novel stimuli(chinese like characters, turkish nonsense words, photos)

  • whichever stimuli were presented most frequently, participants rated as the most likable/pleasant

• mita et al

  • people prefer their own mirror image photos

  • people prefer their freinds regular photos

• goetzinger - had a student attend his class wearing a black bag

  • at first this person was treated with hostility

  • by the end of the semester, students made freinds with bag person

moderator - if X→ Y is moderated by Z, it means that X→ Y depends on Z

• if dislike the thing, then repeated exposure can make you dislike it even more

illusory truth effect(reiteration effect) - extensions of the mere exposure effect

repeated statements receive higher truth ratings regardless of actual truthfulness

processing fluency(fluency heuristic) - the easier information is to process, the more we believe it

• mcGlone & tofighbaksh - birds of a feather flock conjointly

  • participants were presuaded by aphorisms that rhyme

  • less persauded by non rhyming statements with identitcal meaning

• memory for new information is stronger when the information relates to a familiar subject

  • people familiar with baseball remember much more information from a prose passage about baseball

classical condition (where do attitudes come from)

a neutral stimulu(a strimulus that has no innate affect on your emotions or physiology) is repeatedly paried with a stimulu that does affect your emotions or physiology

• eventually, the formerly neutral stimulus becomes a trigger for the emotional/physiological response

• hows does this work for emotion words

  • the first time a baby hears the word good it is a meaningless sound

  • whenever the baby hears good it is usually paired with stimuli that produce positive emotions( good becomes a conditioned stimulus for positive emotions)

    • the word good can be paired with other concepts and condition these other concepts with positive emotions( SECOND ORDER CONDITIONING)

Operant conditiong (where do attitudes come from)

attitudes can result from explicit reward and punishment

• bostron et al- participants wrote an essay on a topic

  • by a coin flup received either and A or a D

  • Result: participants who received an A reported more favorable attitudes toward the topic

people are strongly, innately driven to do what everyone else is doing (where do attitudes come from)

people attidues conform to their peers attitudes

behaviors (where do attitudes come from)

we assume that attitudes lead to behaviors but its actually that behavior leads to attitudes

festinger & carlsmith- participants completed a task and were either given 20 or 1 dollar to lie about their enjoyment

• people given 1 said they enjoyed it more because they had to find a more internal reasoning

self perception theory(behavior → attitude)

people are observers of their own behavior, thus people often update their attitudes based on observations of their own behavior

• hoben & olsen- when participants read disparaging jokes about lawyers it produced more negatve attitudes toward lawyers when they volunteered to read the jokes

cognitive dissonance(behavior → attitude)

the uncomfortable feeling that occurs when

• knowledge and beliefs are inconsistent with recent behavior

• prior knowledge is inconsistent with new information

  • people are storngly motivated to relieve cognitive dissonance

    • it can be relieved by:

      • low effort= altering beliefs to match behavior

      • high effort = admitting fault,corrective behavior

    • external justification- concrete justification for doing something that is outside your mind

    • internal justification- justification for doing something that is within your mind

      • if your not provided with external jsutification, you’re infinitelt mor e likely to invent and internal justification

• linder eta al. - write an essay: ban controversial speakers

  • this is your assigned task OR. we would really appreicate it but its up to you

  • DV= attitude toward baning speakers

  • result: if you’re forced to do something, justifying the reason you’re doing it is uncessary

effort justification(cognitive dissonance)

a psychological tendency to overvalue an outcome or goal simply because you worked hard or suffered to achieve it

• to reduce cognitive discomfort your brain convinces yout hat the goal was amazing

• religious festival in mauritius

dissonance reduction studies

extraverts are generally happer than introverts

• Margolis & lyubormirsky- participants were randomyl assigned to behave either extraverted or introverted

  • extroverted = happier

  • introverted = less happy

  • moderators :

    • how big the change in ebahvior was

    • whether it felt more or less natural

• freedman- dont play with the special toy robot

  • researchers introduced a group of children to a cool, remote contorlled robot toy. then, they left the room, but before they left, they either gave the kids

    • a mild threat or a severe threat= both effectively deterred the kids

  • blanchard- volunteer tutoring & liking

    • 6th graders were randomly assigned to receive successs or failure feeback on a challenging math tash

    • success student were either

      • givne the opportunity volunteer to help a failure student

      • told it was mandatory to help a failure student

      • not given the opportunity to help

• benjamin franklin effect- when participants are asked and afree to do the rsearcher a personal favor, report higher liking for the reseacher

just world hypothesis

people show physiological signs of anxiety when they think about the world as chaotic, unfair, and unpredictable

just world motive- our cognition is motivated to relieve this discomfort

• thus we all ten to avaluate random/chaotic outcome as fair

• lester & simmons- participants watched women solve puzzles

  • when incorrect, the puzzle solvers received a painful shock

    • the longer the patticipants watched, the more negatively they rated the puzzle solvers character

      • and the more painful the shoch

        • the world was made just by financial compensation, so deorgation of the victim was no longer a necessary means of satisfying participants

• lerner- each participant observed two people work on a task

  • after the task, each participant saw ony one of the two workers receive a reward(determined by coin flip_

  • on average, participants rated the randomly rewarded worker as having worked harder

system justificaiton bias

the tendency to defend or rationalize the status quo and existing social/economic/political systems, when when these systems are unjust or disadvantageou to the people justifying them