Chapter 5: Social Cognition

social cognition

a movement in social psychology that began in the 1970s that focused on thoughts about people and about social relationships

attribution theory

focuses on how people interpret the causes of events (internal trait or external pressure)

cognititve miser

a term used to describe people’s reluctance to do much extra thinking

stroop test

a standard measure of effortful control over responses, requiring participants to identify the color of a word 

stroop effect

in the Stroop test, the finding that people have difficulty overriding the automatic tendency to read the word rather than name the ink color (James Ridley Stroop)

knowledge structures

organized packets of information that are stored in memory

schemas

knowledge structures that represent substantial information about a concept, its attributes, and its relationships to other concepts

scripts

knowledge structures that define situations and guide behavior

priming

activating an idea in someone’s mind so that related ideas are more accessible

framing

how information is presented to others

gain-framed appeal

focuses on how doing something will add to your health

loss-framed appeal

focuses on how not doing something will subtraact from your health

counter-regulation

the “what the heck” effect that occurs when people indulge in a behavior they are trying to regulate after an initial regulation failure

attributions

inferences people make about events in their lives

self-serving bias

people prefer to attribute their successes to ability and effort but tend to attribute their failures to bad luck or task difficulty

actor/observer bias

the tendency for actors to make external attributions and observers to make internal attributions

fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias)

the tendency for observers to attribute other people’s behavior to internal or dispositional causes and to downplay situational causes

heuristics

mental shortcuts that provide quick estimates about the likelihood of uncertain events

representativeness heuristic

the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extend to which it resembles the typical case

availability heuristic

the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relavant instances come to mind

simulation heuristic

the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which you can imagine (or mentally stimulate) it

anchoring and adjustment

the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by using a starting point (called an anchor) and then making adjustments up or down.

confirmation bias

the tendency to notice information that confirms one’s beliefs, and to ignore information that disconfirms one’s beliefs

illusory correlation

the tendency to overestimate the link between variables that are related only slightly or not at all 

one-shot illusory correlations

the tendency to overestimate the link between variables that are related only slightly or not at all 

base rate fallacy

the tendency to ignore or underuse base rate information and instead to be influenced by the distinctive features of the case being judged

hot hand

the tendency for gamblers who get lucky to think they have a “hot” hand and their luck will continue 

Gambler’s fallacy

the tendency to believe that a particular chance event is affected by previous events and that chance events will “even out” in the short run 

false consensus effect

the tendency to overestimate the number of other people who share one’s opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs

false uniqueness effect

the tendency to underestimate the number of other people who share one’s most prized characteristics and abilities

false uniqueness effect

the tendency to underestimate the number of other people who share one’s most prized characteristics and abilities

theory perseverance

proposes that once the mind draws a conclusion, it tends to stick with that conclusion unless there is overwhelming evidence to change it (cognitive miser might also be relevant)

statistical regression (to the mean)

the statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to be followed by others that are less extreme and closer to average

illusion of control

the false belief that one can influence certain events, especially random or chance ones

counterfactual thinking

imagining alternatives to past or present events or circumstances (different to **regret**, which involves feeling sorry for misfortubes, losses, etc.)

upward counterfactuals

imagining alternatives that are better than actuality

downward counterfactuals

imagining alternatives that are worse than actuality

first instinct fallacy

the false belief that it is better not to change one’s first answer on a test even if one starts to think that a different answer is correct

debiasing

reducing errors and biases by getting people ot use deliberate processing rather than automatic processing

meta-cognition

reflecting on one’s own thought processes