UCI Psych 9C Misterm #2

The confirmation bias

tendency for people to favor information that conforms with their preconceived positions, regardless if true or not

eg. horscopes, prayer, getting every red light

Implications of confirmation bias

-everything you believe is linked to initial impressions

(first impressions set a schema, and subsequent impressions are interpreted within that schema)

Biased expectancies and Self fulfilling Prophecy

The Late Bloomer Study

-Rosenthal and Johnson measured the IQ of a bunch of elementary school students

-a subset of the kids was shown to be intelligent

-In the end, that group showed greater gains because they were given more attention

Groupthink

the tendency for groups to make bad decisions when the group is under pressure, facing external threats and is biased

**look at slide

When groupthink is most likely to occur

1. overestimation of groups power +righteousness

2. closed mindedness

3. pressures toward uniformity

Ways to overcome groupthink

1. encourage critical thinking and dissent

2. bring in fresh perspectives

3. take time to think about consequences

The Halo Effect aka. the "what is beautiful is good" sterotype

when more attractive people tend to also be seen as warmer, more intelligent, more honest, nicer, and better lovers

*if you like one aspect of someone or something you'll attribute positive attributions to it

Cognitive dissonance

the discomfort caused by two conflicting ideas simultaneously

30 Rock example,

-she liked the jeans and they were ethical

-then she found out they were unethical and that caused tension

-she tried to deny them being immoral but could'nt so ended up changing the jeans

another eg. tedious task

The Overjustification Effect

giving someone an external reward to do something "crowds out" the internal reward

The Ben Franklin Effect

doing someone a favor makes you like them more because you have to justify why you did them the favor in the first place

Belief in a Just World

when we believe the world is fundamentally just but bad things happen to bad people

eg. Lerner(1965) showed that participants who viewed people being exposed to shocks formed negative opinions of the shock victims

-people with higher just world beliefs show more negative attitudes to under privleged groups

Dual Inheritance Theory

human evolution is the product of genes and culture

-cultural information that proves to be useful gets passed down to the next generation

-culture allows accumulation for small things that leads to bigger things

eg. cooking for our digestive systems

The conformity bias

frequency dependent(frequency = time)

imitating what people do is a cue of its success

the prestige bias

model-based

learning from or imitating what successful people do

Deindividuation (The Mob Mentality)

we lose our sense of morals and ethics in a group of people when everyone else is doing it

-there is a reduction in self awareness and individual responsibility which leads to reduction in norm following

eg. group lynchings are more violent

The Bystander Effect

in a situation, the more witnesses there are, the less likely we are willing to help (bc the responsibility isn't on us)

The Heat of the Moment

peoples answers and views will change depending on the situation (refer to PP)

The Spotlight Effect

we vastly overestimate how much attention people pay to us: we think we are the center of our universes but so does everyone else

eg. embarassing shirt example

Illusion of Transparency

we generally overestimate how much of our own mental state is known to others eg. lying, teaching

The curse of knowledge

the difficulty in recognizing that others don't have the knowledge that you already do

The Better than Average Effect

aka the Lake Woebegone Effect

we tend to think we are better than average

-reasons for this are that they're ambiguous traits and people focus on particular aspects they're good at

-people are generally told what they're good at rather than their failures

Self Serving Bias

attributing success to internal factors and failure to external factors

Simplification of the Other

other peoples success and failures are always due to internal factors

The Fundamental Attribution Error

when explaining other peoples behavior, the tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situational factors

eg. obedience test where subject inflicts pain pain on another is automatically evil

Social Identity Theory

when we naturally split the world into us vs them and build it out of the smallest categories

-we derive self esteem from seeing our group doing good and better than others

-we don't just want to help out group but hurt the other group

Availability Heuristic

relying an information that is easier to retrieve when making judgments + how frequent and impactful the encounters were

eg. dog on a leash vs duck on a leash

how frequent + impactful -----> how easy comes to mind -----> estimation of event occurring

Negativity bias

more drawn to bad news rather than good

eg. add more info from slides

Survivorship Bias

the logical flaw in selectivity considering the cases that survived, and ignoring the places that didn't

eg. add more from slides

Representativiness Heuristic

the tendency to rely on how well a person represents their schema for each group rather than concentrate on the base rates of each group

eg. Linda the feminist or bank teller

**consider the bigger picture

False Negative and False positive

Anchoring bias

relying too heavily on an initial piece of information in decision making

Solution Aversion

denying problems when we don't like the solution

Problem Appeal

enjoying problems when we like the solution

Planning fallacy

we consistently need to underestimate how much time we"ll need to complete a task

Optimism Bias

our tendency to overestimate our likely hood of experiencing good events, and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing bad events

Gambler's Fallacy

*tendency to perceive that the situation is random, yet that believe the situation must be 'balanced by nature.'

Ex: coin flip: landed heads four times so the next guess people will make is tails

Why?

Because they believe that it must balance out to tails despite the fact that each of these events are independent random events.

Hot Hand

- the tendency to occur when people perceive that they ( or someone ) has control of the event

- Ex: if you're 3 sunk shots in a row, you are more likely to sink you next shot (except that you are not)

Why not?

Because the event of the shot and the person are independent variables, the person has no control on whether the shot will go in consecutively.

Loss Aversion

losses are psychologically more powerful than gains

Endowment Effect

Merely owning something makes us value it more

Social Psychology

the study of how people influence other people's thoughts, feelings, and actions

Ingroups vs Outgroups

groups to which particular people belong

v

groups to which those do not belong

2 conditions for group formation:

Reciprocity- if person A helps or hurts Person B, then Person B will help or hurt Person A

Transitivity- people generally share their friends' opinions of other people

Social facilitation

where the presence of others generally enhances performance

Spandrel

not every trait that exists does so for adaptive reasons

-an evolutionary byproduct

e. male nipple, belly button

Risky-shift effect

when groups make riskier decisions than individuals do

Group polarization

the process by which initial attitudes of groups become more extreme over time

Normative influence (1st reason people conform)

when people go along with the crowd to avoid looking stupid

Informational influence (2nd reason people conform)

when people assume that the behavior of the crowd is the correct way to respond

Foot-in-the Door effect

if people do a small request, they're more likely to do a larger request

Door in the face Effect

people are more likely to agree to a small request after they have refused a large request

Foot-in-the-door

someone who has already agreed to something will agree to the increased amount

Reasons for bystander intervention effect:

1. diffusion of responsibility (people expect other people to help)

2. if uncertain of the situation, people are scared to help

3. people are less likely to help when anonymous and can remain so

4. people weigh how much harm do they risk to themselves by help vs what benefit they can get

Outgroup bias and cooperation?

-sharing superordinate goals helps reduce hostility

-jigsaw class room where students are experts on a specific piece of information and share with ingroup and outgroup

Vestigial Traits

an ancestral trait that remains even though it no longer confers any fitness advantage

eg. wisdom teeth,human appendix

Exaptation

a trait tha initially evolved for one purpose but came to adaptively serve another

Naturalistic Fallacy

ought-is can't be naturalistic fallacy (only is-ought)

Mere exposure effect

the idea that greater exposure to a stimulus leads to greater liking for it

Explicit attitudes

attitudes people can report

implicit attitudes

attitudes that can influence a person's feelings at an unconscious level

Personal attributions

explanations for people's behavior that refers to internal characteristics

Situational attributions

explanations that peoples behavior that refers to outside events

Actor/Observer discrepancy

For others, people only focus on their internal character but only focus on the situations for themselves

Proximity

how people come into contact with each other because they were physically nearby

Matching principle

most successful romantic couples tend to be physically similar

What do men and women want in a partner?

Men are attracted to youth and fertility to maximize passing genes and women want someone who can provide resource to them and family

How does culture happen

variation

selection

transmission

False Positive

When you recieve a positive but should have recieved a negative

eg. when you get a positive pregnancy test but you aren't pregnant