PSYC2160 Ch. 3 Notes

Act I: The Morning Autopilot (On Automatic Pilot)

You wake up in your late 20s, hitting the snooze button on your phone. Without even being fully conscious, you navigate to the kitchen, grind the beans, and start the French press. This is Automatic Thinking: thought that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless. You aren’t calculating the physics of the water temperature; you’re on social autopilot.

1.1 The Library of Your Mind (Schemas)

As a college student, imagine your brain is like a perfectly curated Notion workspace or a set of Spotify playlists. These are your Schemas—mental structures that organize knowledge about the social world.

  • The "Librarian" Playlist: When you walk into the campus library, you don't have to wonder if you should scream or whisper. Your schema for "Librarians" and "Study Zones" tells you exactly how to behave.

  • The Advantage: Without schemas, every day would feel like the first day of an impossible internship. You’d have to deliberate over every single interaction from scratch.

  • The Disadvantage: These "folders" can lead to stereotypes. If you have a schema that "All influencers are shallow," you might miss out on a genuine connection with your classmate who happens to have 50k followers.

Act II: The Coffee Shop Encounter (Accessibility & Priming)

You’re at your favorite local cafe. You see someone staring intently at their laptop, looking stressed.

2.1 Why did you think that?

  • Accessibility: If you just finished a grueling 4-hour study session for your Abnormal Psych midterm, you might think, "That person is having a manic episode." This is Accessibility—the likelihood that a schema is invoked because it’s at the front of your mind.

  • Priming: Perhaps the cafe smells intensely of lemon cleaner. Research suggests that Clean Smells (Metaphors) can prime you to be more trusting or helpful. Because of the physical sensation of "cleanliness," you might find yourself more willing to watch that stranger's laptop while they grab a refill.

Act III: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

You have a group project meeting. You’ve heard your partner, "Alex," is lazy.

  1. Expectation: You go into the meeting expecting Alex to do nothing.

  2. Action: You don't assign Alex any important tasks and speak to them in a condescending tone.

  3. Reaction: Alex feels excluded and unmotivated, so they actually do nothing.

  4. Result: You say, "I knew it!" This is the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: your expectations influenced your behavior, which caused the expected behavior to come true.

Act IV: The Decision Dilemma (Judgmental Heuristics)

You’re trying to decide whether to take a weekend trip or stay and study. You use Judgmental Heuristics (mental shortcuts).

  • Availability Heuristic: You remember three friends who failed the last midterm. Because these examples come to mind so easily (are "available"), you decide you must stay and study, overestimating the actual danger of failing.

  • Representativeness Heuristic: You meet a new student who is wearing trendy vintage clothes, drinking an oat milk latte, and carrying a film camera. You immediately assume they are an Art History major because they fit the "prototype," even though they might actually be a Data Science student.

Act V: The Global Perspective (Cultural Influences)

Imagine you’re studying abroad with a student from Tokyo.

  • Your Style (Analytic Thinking): As a Westerner, you focus on the individual "objects"—your own goals, your own grade, the specific person in front of you.

  • Their Style (Holistic Thinking): Your friend focuses on the "context"—how the whole group is feeling, the history of the classroom environment, and the relationships between everyone in the room.

Act VI: The "If Only" Moment (Controlled Thinking)

You get your midterm grade back. It’s an 89—just one point away from an A.

6.1 Counterfactual Reasoning

Now you switch to Controlled Thinking: conscious, intentional, and effortful. You engage in Counterfactual Reasoning, mentally rewriting the past: "If only I hadn't changed my answer on question 12!"

  • The Contrast: This is much more emotionally painful than if you had gotten a 70. The closer the "close call," the more intense the emotional reaction.

6.2 The Planning Fallacy

You realize you’re a victim of the Planning Fallacy. You thought it would take 3 hours to finish your paper, but it took 8. To fix this for the final, you can apply Statistical Reasoning—using your past data to make better future judgments.

Midterm Cheat Sheet: Potent Contrasts

  • Automatic vs. Controlled: Autopilot (effortless) vs. Manual Override (effortful).

  • Availability vs. Representativeness: "What I can remember easily" vs. "What fits the stereotype."

  • Analytic vs. Holistic: The "Single Object" focus vs. The "Whole Web" focus.