Social Psychology Notes on Social Beliefs and Judgments

SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGMENTS

• Focus on perception of social worlds rather than self-perception.
• "Perception is reality" emphasizes subjective views shaped by past experiences and expectations.
• Relevant concept: Top-down processing influencing long-term memory.

PRIMING

• Definition: Priming involves the influence of one stimulus (the "prime") on the perception of another stimulus.
• Past experiences and expectations inform individual schemas that can be primed.
• Types of Priming:
  • Conscious Priming: Direct exposure to ideas can foster related judgments and behaviors.
  • Example: Bargh et al. (1996) study:
    • Participants subjected to polite, rude, or neutral word primes.
    • Result: Higher percentage (over 80%) of participants in polite condition waited to interrupt conversation, indicating that primed ideas triggered corresponding behaviors.
  • Subliminal Priming: Undetectable word flashes influence reaction times.
  • Participants reacted faster to related words (e.g., "butter" after "bread").
  • This supports the idea that social information processing can occur unconsciously.

BELIEF PERSEVERANCE

• Definition: The tendency to hold onto beliefs despite contrary evidence.
• Typical methodology involves:
  • Planting a false idea in participants’ minds.
  • Participants often generate rationalizations for why the idea is true even after being told it's false.
• Example: Ross et al. (1975) study on interpreting suicide notes:
  • Participants given false performance feedback continued to believe their abilities were above or below average based on that feedback, showing belief perseverance.
• Reduced belief perseverance occurs when participants are prevented from creating justifications for their beliefs.

MEMORY RECONSTRUCTION

• People reconstruct memories based on their current beliefs, leading to misremembering the past.
• Example: Holmberg & Holmes (1994) study:
  • Married couples recalled happiness levels two years ago but misremembered due to current feelings. Those unhappy at Time 2 incorrectly thought they were unhappy at Time 1.

INTUITIVE JUDGMENTS

• Definition: Judgments made without deep reasoning, often based on gut feelings.
• Distinction between explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) thinking.
• Intuitive judgments are generally preferred due to their ease, but they can lead to errors unless the individual is experienced in the area or faced with complex situations.
• Example: Kruger et al. (2005) studied first instinct fallacy, revealing that individuals often trust their initial answer even when changing them yields better performance.
• Research by Lyons et al. (2021) demonstrated overconfidence in distinguishing fake news, showing a significant gap between perceived accuracy and actual performance.

HEURISTICS

• Heuristics are mental shortcuts aiding quick processing but often compromise accuracy.
• Types of heuristics:
  1. Representativeness Heuristic: Assumes an item belongs to a group if it resembles a typical member (e.g., tall individuals assumed to be basketball players).
  • Example: Scenario regarding a character named Linda tests representativeness vs. statistical likelihood of being a bank teller or an activist.
  1. Availability Heuristic: Judgments made based on how easily examples come to mind, potentially skewed by vividness (e.g., overestimating the population of the UK based on familiar examples).