social psych: chapter 3 - social beliefs and judgements

social beliefs and judgements

fast system 1

fast, automatic, unconcious, effortless, associative

ex: 2+2, red means stop green means go

slow system 2

careful deliberation, slow, logical, effortful, indecisive, makes you work

ex: 239 + 471

priming

when a stimulus activates a mental cluster of information

effects can be replicatded

ex:

• seeing or hearing the word “doctor” makes you faster to recgnize the word “nurse” than an unrelated word like bread”

• activating a concept like baby made participants more likely to complete stems like (“cr___) as congruent words like crib or cry

Spreading Activation Theory

our mind works through a network of concepts. when youre exposed to a concept, the mind readies itself (through priming) to talk about other closely related concepts

Weapons Priming Effect

being presented with a g** can activate aggressive thoughts and increased aggresion

publication bias

scholarly journals almost exclusively publish results where there is a significant relationship between variables

• almost never publish no results

p- hacking

cheating in science

• related to publication bias

errors in system 1

• overconfidence bias

• availability heuristic

• base rase neglect

• representativeness heuristic

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

overconfidence bias

people are prone to feeling unrealistically confident in their estiamtions, prognostications and knowledge

ex:

• new delhi and beijing miles

• estimating covid 19 cases

• college students predicting the likelihood of various outcomes for the semester

• mutual fund portfolios

• most confident students performed worse on the test

over precision

giving too narrow an estimate in situations like the on eabove

why are people overconfident

overconfident 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-challenging information

you mostly seek out information that agrees with what you already believe and avoid information that challenges it.

you SELECT what youre EXPOSED to

• ex: conservatives watch Fox, liberals watch MSNBC

confirmation bias

the tendency to reach conclusions that support prior attitudes and beliefs

you're not searching for the truth, you're searching for proof that you were right

• can take many forms

  • selective exposure bias

  • memory bias - people are better at remembering strong arguments that support their beliefs, but theyre better at remembering weak arguments that challenge their beliefs

What does the Oregon Lawyer v Engineer experiment show?

• representativeness heuristic

• base rate neglect

• FINDING FROM AN EXPERIMENT

  • Participants were told that a psychologist at a graduate school in Oregon interviewed 30 lawyers and 70 engineers and wrote a short profile of each one. Then they read one profile, supposedly picked at random, about a man named James. He's twice divorced, hangs out at the country club, regrets trying to follow in his successful father's footsteps, and is quarrelsome with people. Participants were asked: is James a lawyer or an engineer?

  • Found: 80% guess lawyer, which makes no sense because there are way more engineers than lawyers, he description doesn't really prove he's a lawyer, it just sounds like a stereotype of one

availability heuristic

the more easily we recall something, the more likely it seems

availability heuristics related issue

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

counter factual thinking

imagining alterntive outcomes for what happened and its eeffect on our sense of regret

counter factual thinking example

• changing your answer on an exam and getting the question correct

• changing your answer and getting the question incorrect

FINDING:

• students perceive #2 more frequent but #1 is actually more frequent

• imagining how things could have turned out differently

people are irationally quick to see “patterns” in completely random events

• participants reviewed the results of a hypothetical 50 day cloud seeding experiment

  • some days the clouds were seeded

  • some days it rained

  • Days completely chosen at random

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

regression towards the mean

in the long run, short term trends of unusual performance tend to “self correct” as performance tends to ultimately return to average

• when something is unusually good or unusually bad, the next time it's usually closer to normal

• extreme results dont tend to last

examples of regression towards the mean

When you’re going through a major rut, you might try some new things to get out of it…

• journaling, therapy, chiropractic treatment, ivermectin supplements, etc.

• no matter what you do, when you’re in a bad rut, the most likely short-

term/medium-term outcome is regression toward the mean -- you’re likely to come out of the rut and return to your “average” self/status.

• But, people don’t give credence to the silent power of regression toward the mean.

Instead, they credit whatever intervention they tried.

What did the Harold experiment consist of?

• participants were tasked with “training” an imaginary fourth grader named harold to arrive to school on time

• for each day during a 3 week period,a computer displayed harolds arrival time, between 8:20-8:40 (at random)

• participants then selected a response to his arrival time, randing from strong priase to strong reprimand

  • Day 1: show up early (praise)

  • Day 2: show up late (reprimand)

  • Day 3: show up early as a cause of being reprimanded

Harold experiment finding

nature operates in such a way that we often feel punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them

misinformation effect

Traffic accident verb experiment

• participants watched a video of a traffic accident

  • randomly assigned to be asked “how fast were the cars going when they {contacted/hit/bumped into/smashed into/collided with} each other?

• the more intense the verb, the faster people said the cars were going. People who heard "contacted" guessed around 32 mph, while people who heard "smashed into" guessed around 41 mph. Same video, very different memories.

what is the main finding of the traffic accident verb experiment?

• misinformation effect

lost in a mall experiment

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

  • ~40% “remembered” the event and could recall details

hot air balloon experiment

• showed photos of participants on a hot air balloon ride from when they were five

• it never happened, the photos were created in photoshop

  • ~over 50% “remembered” the event

what experiment is this?

reiteration effect

repeated statemetns receive higher trush ratings, regardless of actual truthfulness

true or false statement experiment

• participants read several statements (marked as either TRUE or FALSE)

• a few days later, they came back to the lab and rated the truthfulness of several statements - some were repeated from the prior session; some were new

• STATEMENTS FROM THE PRIOR SESSION WERE RATED AS MORE TRUTHFUL, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY HAD BEEN MARKED TRUE OR FALSE

true or false statement experiment finding

• statements from the prior session were rated as more truthful, regardless of whether they had been marked TRUE or FALSE

• shows illusory truth effect aka the reiteration effect - nothing about the statement got more accurate you just heard it more

belief perseverance

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

identifying suicide notes experiment

• partipants were given bogus feedback

  • A. you got 24/25 correct

  • B. you got 10/25 correct

• then they were told that the feecback was bogus

suicide identifying note study finding

• group A (told they got 24/25 correct → BOGUS) thought that they were more talented at this task

• shows belief perseverance - clinging to your intial conclusion, even after the underlying facts have been discredited

fake article about firefighters experiment

• participants read a fake article that said the best firefighters are either

  • risk takers

  • very cautious

• then told that the article they read was bogus

• what trait is most important for being a firefighter

  • A - risk taking

  • B - cautiousness

• shows belief perserverance

fake article about firefighters experiment

FINDING

• social theories and personal beliefs persist even after the initial evidence or data used to form them is completely discredited

Male on the phone with female experiment

• Beforehand, male participants were provided with a FAKE profile of the female

  • IV: females profile pics were either atrractive and unattractive

• the male participants then rated the female conversation partners on various perfonality traits

  • attractive women were rated as more sociable and humorous

• Third party listeners who did not see the females also rated attractive women as more sociable, humorous, more poised more attractive

Male on the phone with female experiment finding

1. Man believes she's attractive

2. Man treats her warmly

3. She responds warmly

4. She actually comes across as more sociable, confirming his belief

5. behavioral confirmation

   • when erroneous beliefs about a person influence their behavior

   • when your expectations about someone change how they actually behave, so they end up confirming what you expected.

behavioral confirmation

when erroneous beliefs about a person influence their behavior

male and female teaching assistant experiment

• make participants were tasked with interviewing female participants for a prospective job as the males interviewer’s teaching assistant

  • unbeknownst to the female interviwees, the male interviewers were randomly assigned to be told either that the female participant was attracted to him or not attracted to him

• when the male thought the female was attracted to him

  • independent judges rated the female’s participant as more flirtatious

  • neither the males (self report) not the independent judges rated the males as being more flirtatious in this condition

• MAJOR P HACKING