Ch 2 social beliefs and judgement

Chapter 2: Social Beliefs and Judgement

1. Perceiving Our Social World

  • System 1 vs. System 2 Thinking (Kahneman, 2011)

    • System 1 (Automatic Thinking)

      • Intuitive, fast, subconscious (e.g., gut feelings, quick reactions).

    • System 2 (Controlled Thinking)

      • Deliberate, slow, effortful (e.g., solving a math problem, recalling facts).

  • Priming

    • Subtle activation of certain associations in memory that influence behavior (e.g., seeing words related to aging makes people walk slower).

  • Embodied Cognition

    • Physical sensations influence judgment (e.g., holding a warm cup leads to perceiving others as warmer/kinder).

  • Belief Perseverance

    • Clinging to initial beliefs even when proven wrong (e.g., belief in conspiracy theories despite evidence).

  • Constructing Memories

    • Memories are reconstructed at retrieval, not stored like a video.

    • Misinformation Effect

      • Incorporating false details into memory after exposure to misleading information.

2. Judging Our Social World

  • Intuition & Automatic Thinking

    • Schemas

      • Mental templates that shape perception (e.g., stereotypes).

    • Emotional Reactions

      • Instant responses that occur before conscious thought (e.g., jumping at a loud sound).

  • Overconfidence Phenomenon

    • The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs (e.g., students overestimating their test performance).

  • Negativity Bias

    • Negative information has a stronger influence than positive information (e.g., one critical comment outweighs many compliments).

  • Magical Thinking

    • Unrelated thoughts or actions perceived as logically connected (e.g., wearing lucky socks for exams).

  • Illusory Thinking

    • Illusory Correlation

      • Perceiving a relationship where none exists (e.g., believing lucky charms affect performance).

    • Illusion of Control

      • Overestimating control over events (e.g., gamblers thinking they can influence dice rolls).

    • Regression Toward the Mean

      • Extreme behavior or performance returning to average over time (e.g., an athlete’s outstanding performance declining).

  • Heuristics (Mental Shortcuts)

    • Representative Heuristic

      • Judging something based on how well it fits a stereotype (e.g., assuming a philosophy major is a feminist activist).

    • Availability Heuristic

      • Judging likelihood based on easily remembered examples (e.g., fearing plane crashes due to media exposure).

  • Counterfactual Thinking

    • Imagining alternative scenarios (e.g., "If only I had studied more, I would’ve passed.").

3. Explaining Our Social World

  • Attribution Theory

    • How individuals explain behaviors:

      • Dispositional Attribution

        • Behavior attributed to personality traits.

      • Situational Attribution

        • Behavior attributed to environmental factors.

  • Fundamental Attribution Error

    • Overestimating personality influence and underestimating situational factors (e.g., assuming a waiter is rude without considering they might be having a bad day).

  • Actor-Observer Bias

    • Attributing own actions to situational factors but others' actions to personality traits (e.g., blaming traffic for being late but considering another's lateness as laziness).

  • Kelly’s Attribution Model (1973)

    • Uses three factors to determine behavior cause:

      • Consistency

        • Does this person always behave this way?

      • Distinctiveness

        • Do they behave differently in other situations?

      • Consensus

        • Do others behave similarly in this situation?

  • Self-Awareness Effect

    • Increased awareness of our attitudes and behaviors when focused on ourselves.

  • Cultural Differences

    • Individualistic Cultures

      • More likely to make dispositional attributions (e.g., assuming laziness for failure).

    • Collectivistic Cultures

      • More likely to make situational attributions (e.g., attributing failure to bad luck or unfair conditions).

4. Expectations of Our Social World

  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

    • A belief that leads to its own fulfillment (e.g., if teachers expect certain students to excel, those students may perform better).

Summary of Key Takeaways

  1. Our thinking is influenced by both automatic (System 1) and controlled (System 2) processes.

  2. Memories are constructed and modified over time instead of being retrieved perfectly.

  3. Cognitive biases (overconfidence, heuristics, illusions) affect our judgments.

  4. Attribution errors lead to misinterpretations of behavior, favoring personality over context.

  5. Expectations can shape reality, making beliefs self-fulfilling.