Social Psychology

Daniel Kehneman

Created 2 brain systems

System 1

automatic processing: the intuitive, automatic, unconscious, and fast way of thinking. "Intuition" "Gut feeling"

System 2

Controlled processing: the deliberate, controlled, conscious, and slower way of thinking

Priming

activating particular associations in memory
- Can influence another thought or action
- Things consciously noticed can influence interpretations of events
- Social information processing is automatic

Embodied Cognition

mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments
- Bodily sensations communicate the brain systems responsible for social thinking

Automatic Processing

"implicit" thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness (system 1)
- Involves schemas, and emotional reactions which effect expertise & judgement

Controlled Processing

"explicit" thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious (system 2)

Overconfidence phenomenon

Tendency to be more confident than correct; overestimate the accuracy of a belief

Confirmation Bias

Tendency to search for information that confirms preconceptions
- Ideological echo chambers
- Only researching things that help your argument
- System 1 snap judgment

Heuristic

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments

Representativeness Heuristic

Tendency to presume, despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling a typical member.
EX: Stereotyping black people as criminals more likely to search for them

Availability Heuristic

A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory; if instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace.
EX: airplane study if a crash happens some might believe it's more common

Counterfactual thinking

imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened but didn't

Illusory correlation

Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship that actually exists
- People easily perceive random events as confirming their beliefs
- Gamblers win it means skill was involved while loses are "flukes" or due to outside influences

Belief perseverance

Persistence of one's initial conceptions. Even if something was said it was false a lot of the time people will still defend the belief

Misinformation effect

incorporating "misinformation" into one's memory of an event and receiving misleading information about it

Attribution Theory

Theory of how people explain others' behavior

Dispositional attribution

Attributing behavior to the person's dispositions and traits

Situational attribution

Attributing behavior to the environment

Misattribution

Mistakenly attributing behavior to the wrong source

Spontaneous trait inference

Effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone's behavior.
- The librarian carries the old woman's groceries across the street

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency for the observer to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others' behavior

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A belief that leads to its own fulfillment

Experimenter Bias

Research participants sometimes live up to what they believe experimenters expect of them

Behavioral confirmation

Type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations