uiuc psyc 201 quiz 2 (ch. 4-5)

social cognition

encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of info in the brain which relates to members of same species

bias

tendency to consider info disproportionately when evaluating an idea/belief/thing

snap judgment (minimal info)

people tend to make very complex inferences about motives and personality based on very small amounts of info

two most prominent dimensions assessed (minimal info)

trustworthiness (positive - negative)

- functional judgment - approach/avoid

dominance (power)

- functional judgement - dominance/submission

misleading info

information that we get firsthand is not always correct

scenario: teachers' expectations influence student performance

- before school year - teacher given "info" about students

- randomly labeled some students as "intellectual bloomers"

**results -- at end of year "intellectual bloomers" had made more progress

- reason: teachers gave those students more attention, challenged them more, gave them more material and more difficult material

pluralistic ignorance

misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of a concern for the social consequences - actions that reinforce the erroneous group norm

i.e. you didn't understand a lecture but suspect everyone else did so you act like you aren't confused

pluralistic ignorance example

ignorance in situation where:

- majority of group members have a private belief in A, but

-- they seem to publicly express belief in B

because everyone appears to believe in B, when you (as group member) try to figure out what everyone else believes, you will incorrectly determine that they believe in B

- you can't read their minds, you can only read their behavior

- behavior is not always an accurate indicator of their mind

as result, you continue to act as if you believe in B

- people often behave in line with group norms for fear of negative social consequences (motivation for impression management)

- bias in firsthand info due to judgment

primacy effects (order effect)

info presented first has an overly strong influence on later judgments

i.e. sampling ice cream and try 12 flavors, 1st flavor would stick in your head more

recency effect (order effect)

info presented last has an overly strong influence on later judgments

i.e. sampling ice cream and try 12 flavors, last flavor would stick in your head more

asch study (primacy effect)

evaluate individual described as intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious

- individual rated favorably if adjectives presented in that order

- if adjectives presented in opposite order, an individual rated less favorably

framing effect

influence on judgment resulting from the way that info is presented

i.e. 90% alive vs. 10% dead

spin framing (framing effect)

changing way something is phrased/framed so that it looks more favorable or unfavorable

i.e. United States board of war and order --> United States department of defense

i.e. 80% lean ground beef vs. 20% fat ground beef

temporal framing

how actions and events are framed within a particular time perceptive

i.e. taking a hard class (2 months before, you're excited vs. the day of, you dread it)

construal level framing

psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms

i.e. helping a friend move Saturday at 9 am vs. helping a friend move today in 20 min

construal level theory

a theory about the relationship between psychological distance and abstract or concrete thinking: psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms

i.e. low level of abstraction, rich in detail --> chewing your food, carrying couch upstairs, giving panhandler a dollar

i.e. high level of abstraction, low in detail --> dining out, helping a friend, being generous

**some things seem more desirable when they are further away

confirmation bias

tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that supports it

schemas

top-down/abstract; mental concept/shortcut

top-down processing

the use of preexisting knowledge to organize individual features into a unified whole

theory driven; filter and interpret new data based on what you already know

base judgments/decisions on preexisting expectations/knowledge

i.e. if you see the chair you've stubbed your toe on before --> avoid it to make sure it doesn't happen again

bottom-up processing

the analysis of the smaller features to build up to a complete perception

data driven; put together pieces of info to see what you get

base judgments/decisions on stimuli you encounter

i.e. stubbing your toe on a chair --> the pain receptors detect pain and send this information to the brain where it is processed --> how we interpret those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our experiences, and our thoughts

influence of schemas

1. attention - we can't pay attention to everything so schemas direct us to what's important (ignore rest)

2. memory - we are more likely to remember stimuli that has caught our attention

3. construal - schemas influence our interpretation/construal of info

donald study (priming)

presented participants with words related to either recklessness or adventurous

- participants then read about Donald, who was ambiguously reckless or adventurous

- participants rated how much they liked Donald

**results -- participants rated Donald higher on traits consistent with the schema they were exposed to during the priming phase

two systems of thought that guide our responses to stimuli

intuition (automatic)

reason (controlled)

intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought

quick, automatic, based on associations, performs many operations simultaneously/in parallel

i.e. like a computer where things are happening in the background

reason

slower, more controlled, based on rules and deductions, performs one operation at a time/serial

heuristic

decision-making shortcut; variety of mental operations that are commonly used to make quick and efficient judgments

- necessary for survival and decision-making

**BUT can lead to errors

availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

i.e. likelihood of dramatic deaths (shark attack) are overestimated to commonplace deaths are far more likely (stroke, electrocution)

fluency (heuristic)

feeling of ease associated with processing info; believing something because it is easy for your mind to process it

i.e. unfamiliar or irregular words are harder to process than simple and familiar words

representativeness heuristic

tendency to compare things or individuals to the prototypes of their category

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

i.e. "does this person seem like a Republican?" rather than "is it likely this person is a Republican?"

logic (representativeness heuristic)

members of certain groups often resemble the group prototype

if something strongly resembles the prototype, we may ignore other important info

base-rate info

info about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population

i.e. person is more likely to be a Republican if the local population has a lot of Republicans

i.e. "how many people at UIUC are women?" --> X / whatever total pop. is

subliminal

below the threshold of conscious awareness

regression effect

statistical tendency, when any two variables are imperfectly correlated, for extreme values of one of them to be associated with less extreme values of the other

i.e. tall parents tend to have tall kids, but not as tall as the parents themselves

i.e. students with worst scores on midterm tend to do badly on final, but not as bad as before

regression fallacy

failure to recognize the influence of the regression effect and to offer a causal theory for what is really a simple statistical regularity

i.e. appearing on cover of Sports Illustrated is bad luck as it is typically followed by a bad injury or loss in a game but people on average only appear on the cover near the end of their career --> they don't do as well afterwards

illusory correlation

belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not

bad news bias

the tendency of the news media to focus on bad news rather than good news; leads people to believe they are more at risk of victimization than they really are

i.e. positive correlation between the amount of time spent watching TV and fear of victimization

self-fulfilling prophecy

tendency for people to act in ways that bring about the very thing they expect to happen

i.e. when interrogators thought someone was guilty, they acted in ways that elicited apparent evidence of guilt

attribution theory

set of concepts explaining how people assign causes to the events around them and the effects of people's causal assessments

how people explain the causes of the events they observe

counterfactual thoughts

thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had been done differently

i.e. if only I had studied harder --> lack of effort was cause

emotional amplification

emotional reactions to counterfactual thinking increase depending on how easy it is to imagine the alternative

- emotions are proportional to how easy it is to imagine it not happening

i.e. who feels worse: someone who misses her plane by two hours vs. someone who misses her plane by two minutes

emotional amplification example

scenario: man shopping at a store --> robbery occurs --> man is injured

- version 1 - he normally shopped at this store

- version 2 - he went to different store for change of pace

**participants thought he should be compensated $100,000 more for injuries in version 2

casual attribution

linking an event or behavior to a cause to explain the behavior

process by which you decide if behavior was caused by P or E

internal or dispositional attributions

something about the person caused the behavior

external or situational attributions

something about the environment caused the behavior

covariation principle

behavior should be attributed to potential causes that co-occur with the behavior; a principle of attribution theory that holds that people attribute behavior to factors that are present when a behavior occurs and are absent when it does not

has 3 parts (consensus, distinctiveness, consistency)

*people tend to rely more on consistency/distinctiveness than consensus

*people don't always have all 3 parts

consensus

do most people do this in the situation?

- yes --> high --> behavior driven by situation

- no --> low --> behavior driven by person

distinctiveness

does the target person only do this in this particular situation?

- yes --> high --> behavior driven by situation

- no --> behavior driven by person

consistency

does the target person do this all the time in this situation, or was this a one-time occurrence?

- yes --> high --> necessary to make a specific attribution

- no --> low --> hard to make a specific attribution

**has to always be high in order for specific attribution to be made

situational attribution

consensus, distinctiveness, consistency are all high

i.e. john is late

- 7 others late

- john not late to other classes

- always late

dispositional attribution

consensus and distinctiveness is low, but consistency is high

i.e. john is late

- 0 others are late

- late to many classes

- late 4 times

discounting principle

the idea that people should assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced it

if people act in an expected way (in-role), we tend to discount the internal attribution

i.e. is interviewee being pleasant because of who they are, or because it's a job interview?

augmentation principle

the idea that people should assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if other causes are present that normally would produce a different outcome

if people act in an unexpected way (out-of-role), we tend to augment the internal attribution

i.e. if person comes into job interview at investment banking firm in a tie-dyed t-shirt and flip-flops, we might explain the cause of his attire to his personality --> he has unique style

self-serving attributional bias

the tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances, and to attribute success and other good events to oneself

i.e. was last time you received an A because you were smart or because easy test vs. last time you got a C, was it because you weren't smart or test was hard?

beckman study (self-serving attributional bias)

participants required to tutor a student who is having difficulty with material

- after 1st round --> students assessed, did poorly

after 2nd round --> half of participants - students did poorly, other half - students improved

**results -- participants take credit if student improved and blame student if they still did poorly

fundamental attribution error

tendency to overestimate person's behavior to personality and underestimate environment

gilbert and jones study (fundamental attribution error)

participant either questioner (asks questions) or responder (answers questions with scripted responses not about personality)

questioner tells responder which answer to give; they know answers are scripted

**results -- responders who were told to recite scripted altruistic responses were rated more favorably than those told to recite scripted selfish responses

**because responses are scripted, they tell us nothing about the person

perceptual salience (cause of FAE)

other people are usually much more attention-grabbing than the context or the situation

we pay more attention to people than other objects

i.e. participants saw a video of a conversation between two people

- half saw version that showed one person, other half saw both equally

**greater responsibility assigned to person they could see

attribution and cognition (cause of FAE)

dual process model (automatic vs. controlled)

scenario - participants watched silent video of a woman having convo

- women looked anxious (biting nails, tapping fingers, shifting)

- told she was responding to innocuous/anxiety-inducing questions

- half of participants were asked to memorize list of words while watching video - distracted

*IV (busy with memory task vs. not busy) *DV (dispositional anxiety)

**RESULTS -- people rated anxiety lower when busy

dual process model

a description of decision making that involves two processes, one rapid and based on prior experience (automatic), the other slow and deliberative, using abstract reasoning (controlled)

- we make an initial, automatic dispositional attribution

- we characterize the person based on the behavior

- upon reflection, we take what we know about the situation and adjust the dispositional inference

actor-observer difference

difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment

- actor (more likely to make situational attributions)

- observer (more likely to make dispositional attributions)

*this is the fundamental attribution error +

i.e. husband doesn't pick up dry-cleaning

husband --> "my meeting ran late and no time to do it" (actor/situational)

wife's explanation --> "my husband is lazy, inattentive, doesn't care" (observer/dispositional)

culture and causal attribution

there are marked cultural differences in susceptibility to the fundamental attribution error

individualistic cultures focus on individual freedom, autonomy, choice, personal goals, attributes, preferences

- fosters strong tendency to make person attributions (i.e. commit the FAE)

collectivistic cultures focus on group memberships, social roles, conformity to group norms, obligations to other people

- fosters greater tendency to consider situational attributions

morris and peng study (culture and causal attribution)

cartoon of individual fish swimming in front of group of fish

- individual fish scooted off from approaching group

- individual fish joined by group and swam together

- individual fish joined group

**Americans thought behavior of individual fish was internally caused vs. Chinese thought behavior of individual fish externally caused

hong study (priming culture)

participants shown animation of single fish swimming away from larger group

- American-primed participants more likely to attribute behavior to individual choices of fish

- Chinese-primed participants attribute to actions of group

social class (culture and causal attribution)

Eastern/Western not only cultural distinction that shows differences in FAE

Social class differences mimic cultural differences

- high SES individuals highly independent

- low SES highly interdependent

- low SES people more likely to cite situational causes for events

i.e. What is driving recent spike in U.S. economic inequality?

· low SES: lack of equal educational opportunities

· high SES: lack of effort

explanatory style (individual differences)

person's habitual way of explaining events

three dimensions

- internal/external (internal vs. external cause)

- stable/unstable (things will never change vs. things may improve)

- global/specific (affects many areas of life vs. applies to few)

pessimistic explanatory style

explain negative events in terms of internal, stable, and global causes

i.e. it's not my fault, can't change it

- people who regularly see negative events --> tendency of depressed/anxious, weak sense of control and give up easily

- related to undesirable life outcomes (including lower grades)

optimistic explanatory style

explain negative events in terms of external, unstable, specific causes

- encourages can-do outlook

- less prone to despair

- related to positive life outcomes (including better physical health later in life)

just world hypothesis

the belief that people get what they deserve in life and deserve what they get

i.e. victims of rape/domestic abuse are responsible for their fate (WHICH THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT)

todorov study (minimal info/snap judg.)

inferring personality from physical appearance

- participants rated faces on attractiveness, aggressiveness, likability, trustworthiness, competence

- given varying amounts of time: 100 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms

- IV: time restrictions

-DV: attributions/personality

- control group: could take as much time as they needed to form a judgment

**results -- time doesn't matter

simons study (schemas - attention)

- participants watched a video of two teams passing a basketball back and forth, asked to count number of passes made by one of the teams

**results -- only about half of the participants noticed a gorilla walking through

kitayama study (culture/causal attribution)

copy the line from the "Target Stimulus" box into a new box

- participants were either told to draw a line that's exactly the same absolute size (1 inch) or the same relative size (33% of the box height)

**results -- individualist cultures do better with the absolute task (ignore context)

**results -- collectivist cultures do better with the relative task (pay attention to context)