week 2 - social cognition

week 2 - social cognition

Automatic thinking 

unconscious, unintentional, involuntary, low effort

Controlled thinking 

conscious, intentional, voluntary, high effort. Human are only animals to do controlled thinking. Can reflect on past and foresee future events. Often can only think of one thing at a time. 

Social psychology based on automatic thinking. 

Automatic thinking useful - autopilot to navigate large supply of information and filter out unimportant info. e.g. what to pay attention to in the environment. 

Schemas - fill in blank and make sense of unclear info quickly. Specific event - aka script schemas. Learned to subjective to past experience. Preconceived expectations. 

Help us effortless know how to behave in a new environment. 

Kelleys experiment 1950 - 

Kelley (1950) Looked at the impression's students formed of a guest lecturer in an economics class

Participants were given one of two biographical note about the lecturer before he arrived

Experiment

IV = Warm versus cold biographical note

“People who know him consider him to be a very warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined.” 

“People who know him consider him to be a very cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined.” 

DV = Impressions of the guest lecturer

Outcome

Students who had a “warm” schema for the lecturer gave him significantly higher ratings

They were also more likely to ask him questions and participate in class discussion. 

Conclusion 

Warm schema set up expectation that informed behaviour. 

:( low replicability. 1950s! 

Disadvantage to schemas 

• Leads to stereotyping. 

• Also attributes person to personality type and not situation. Fundamental attribution error. 

• Cultural determinants of our schemas. Individual vs collectivist cultures. 

which is more effort: Assimilation or accommodation 

Accommodation - more effort. People resistant to changing synapse. 

Synaptic genesis

early childhood. High level of synaptic formation. Basis of schemas made. Up to 2 years

Synaptic pruning

more intricate understanding of world via adaption. Therefore through time increase in strength and less likely to change. 2 years onwards

Accessibility

extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of the mind and therefore likely to be used when making judgements about the social world. Experience influences what schemas you apply to that situation. 

3 reasons schema is more accessable

Schema accessable for 3 reasons: 

• Past experience - schema strong as been thought a lot about. 

• If schema relates to a current goal. Schema fits what features of a situation you are more likely to notice. Therefore if aligns with current goal it will become more forefront 

• Recent experiences - readily available as recently used. e.g. recently on the news. 

Higgins et al 1977 experiment 

• Researchers put ppt in 2 groups. Read 2 types of words: positive or negative. Priming. 

• Then read paragraph about Donald. 

• Ambitious description as could be interpreted as positive or negative 

  If memorised positive words earlier they were 7X more likely to form positive impressions of Donald. 

  Schema accessible and applicable. 

  Priming - automatic thinking - unintentional, unconscious, quick. 

Billingsley et al 2018; White et al 2019 - priming goals 

Billingsley et al 2018; White et al 2019 - priming goals 

Divide-the-money-task 

Ppts can keep all the money or divide the money with another ppt 

IV - ppt write and think about a) god and their religion or b) neutral topic 

Findings; those in a) gave more money than those in b). 

Conflict between goal priming - its immediate goal outweighing priming of long term moral goals. 

Priming metaphors about the body and mind: - WILLIAMS AND BARGH 2008 

iv - temperature of coffee ppt was holding (hot vs cold) 

DV - how they judged stranger 

Hot coffee - primes warm and friendly.

Iced coffee - unfriendly and cold 

(Dutton & Aron, 1974)

Met a confederate on a bridge and asked to write a story of their picture

IV = Bridge stability (high suspension or low sturdy)

DV = Post-experiment contact

Findings:

Those on higher bridge more likely to contact the experimenter

Attraction and arousal - misattribute arousal 

 (Liljenquist et al., 2010)

Metaphors of cleanliness 

IV = Smell of room (citrus -

scented spray versus no odor)

DV =  Likelihood to donate time and money to a charity

Findings:

Those who sat in the clean smelling room were more

trusting of a stranger and more likely to give to charity

heuristics 

• Efficient. 

• Availability heuristic - how easily it comes to mind. Tend to select info based on how easily examples come to mind

• Representative heuristic - is A similar to B 

Schwarz et al 1991 - 

Thinking of 12 examples of assertive behaviour vs 6 examples. Those who had to think of 12 struggled more therefore judged individual as less assertive than those who had to think of 6. 6 came more readily to mind than 12. 

We tend to select info based on how easily examples come to mind 

:( - leads to errors in judgement e.g. dr diagnosis 

Affects our perceptions of risk 

Representative heuristic 

• Selects schema based on the similarity between the stimulus ands then schema 

• Can be problematic when the base-rate of members of the category is low - if 70% of students are psych but someone has a pencil and calculator - misattribution to engineering student despite base rate of 70% psych. 

Disadvantages of schemas 

• Biased memory reconstructing - EWT 

• Confirmatory hypothesis testing - selectively seeking info that supoorts ones beleifs

• Self-fulfilling prophecies 

Memory reconstruction 

• People who read a story about a marriage proposal can later insert incorrect details e.g. they had future plans together or he bought roses. However details were consistent with a marriage proposal schema 

• People who read a story about rape added info that was related to a rape schema 

• EWT experiment with car at different speeds - hit/ smashed/ added broken glass. Loftus and Palmer 1974

Snyder and Swann 1978

• asked half ppts to find out if other person was introvert and the other half to find out if confederate was extrovert. -people select questions that confirmed their hypothesis. 

• Interviews confirm expectations regardless of individuals personality. 

• Reducing confirmatory hypothesis testing: holding opposite hypothesis or having a need for valid info. Better interview testing 

Self fulfilling prophecies 

• Perceiver’s false expectations about another lead that person to adopt those expected attributes and behaviours. fundermatnal attribution error. 

• How treating someone based on your schema influences them to behave in a way that is confirming your schema. 

Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968/2003

Experiment: Students completed a test that was thought by teachers (i.e., deception) would indicate how well students were expected to “bloom” academically in the upcoming year. 

Half of the students at random were identified as bloomers

IV: Students were perceived as bloomers (or not) in the minds of their teachers

DV: IQ tests at the end of the year

Finding: students who were identified as bloomers were more likely to reacher higher IQ points at the end of the year than those not identified as bloomers. This is due to extra attention given by teachers to those who were identified as bloomers 

Highly replicable 

Controlled thinking - counterfactual reasoning

Counterfactual reasoning - mentally changing some aspects of the past as a way of imagining what might have been (imagining alternative outcomes). Effortful undoing of reactions to the past. Can have big influences on our emotional reactions to events. 

Most likely engagement when unexpected or negative events. The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome the stronger the emotional reaction to is. 

jason and mark - Mark and Jason are registering for classes for next semester. They leave their house together, have breakfast, talk to a friend, arrive at the office at same time. Mark is told the class he wanted was filled to capacity yesterday. Jason is told the class he wanted was filled 10 minutes ago. Who is more upset?

Jason more upset due to counterfactual reasoning like - I should have left 10 minutes earlier. 

Effects of counterfactual reasoning 

Positive consequences - males people feel better (Buffone et al 2016). Gives motivation to improve and prepare for the future 

Negative consequences - if it leads to rumination - repetitive focus on negative things. Associated with depression 

Naive realism

overestimate accuracy of our judgments and decisions 

Planning fallacy 

overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past. 

Improving human thinking 

• Remind people to reflect on previous experiences

• Remember all the things that got in the way of a previous assignment

• Make people more humble

• Ask people to consider the point of view opposite to their own

• Consider the context of other people's behaviours (power of the situation)

• Teach basic statistical principles

• Facilitates application of principles to everyday life

• Performance on a Test of Statistical Reasoning Abilities by Graduate Students in Different Disciplines
  After 2 years of graduate study, students in psychology and medicine showed more improvement on statistical reasoning problems than students in law and chemistry did.(Adapted from Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, & Cheng, 1987)