PSY 254-03

The way in which we interpret, analyze, and use information about our social world. Social world - interactions. Cognition - mental action of acquiring knowledge & understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Our preconceptions guide how we perceive and interpret information. We construe the world through belief-tinted glasses

Humans are categorizing creatures.

Formation of categories about people based upon their common attributes.

A mental model that stands for, or symbolizes, the category.

Organized structure of knowledge built up from experience. Theory about how the social world operates. Enriches our understanding of the world. Increases ability to process information and make decisions.

Schemas are mental concepts or templates that guide or perceptions and interpretations. Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex depends on not only on the word spoken but also on how we automatically interpret the sound (sects vs. sex).

Schemas react and are shaped through the changing of culture and norms.

Organizes things according to gender categories. Social perceptions adhere to cultural standards. Judgments follow cultural gender standards.

Schema for a common event. Describes how a series of events is likely to occur in a well-known situation. Used as a behavioral guide. Aids in problem solving. (E.g., attending class, eating dinner, going to a restaurant.)

Recent exposure to certain events increases the accessibility of certain memories, categories, or schemas. Occurs spontaneously and unconsciously. Our memory system is a web of associations.

Priming is the awakening or activating of certain associations. Priming one thought, even without awareness, can influence another thought, or even an action. (E.g., watching a scary movie alone at home can activate emotions that, without our realizing it, cause us to interpret furnace noises as a possible intruder.)

Algorithm, Heuristics.

Our cognitive system is fast and frugal (sparing or economical). Specializes in mental shortcuts. Forms impressions, makes judgments, and invents shortcuts. We do so by heuristics.

Time-saving mental shortcuts. Reduce complex judgments to simple. Allows us to “stretch” our cognitive resources. Requires little thought. May not always work.

A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments. Enable us to live and make routine decisions with minimal effort. In most situations, our snap generalizations – “That’s dangerous!” – are adaptive. The speed of these intuitive guides promote survival.

A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct answer to a problem. (E.g., 3 x 3 = 9.)

A solution strategy seems reasonable given your past experiences solving similar problems. May pay off with a quick correct answer, but may lead to incorrect answer.

When going through a new grocery store looking for pickles, you could go up and down every aisle, examining each product until you found the pickles. This would be using an algorithm.

You could look at the signs above the aisles and look for the word “condiments” and assume that pickles will be on that aisle. This would be using a heuristic.

To judge something by intuitively comparing it to our mental representation of a category is to use representativeness heuristic. Representativeness (typical-ness) heuristic usually is a reasonable guide to reality. But, it does not always work.

The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member.

Tendency to judge the category membership of things based on how closely they match the prototype of that category. Helps us categorize others quickly. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”. The more representative the object is, the more probable.

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social injustice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.

Which of the following alternatives is more likely? Linda is a bank teller or Linda is a bank teller, and active in the feminist movement. Linda is a bank teller, and active in the feminist movement. Representativeness heuristic. The more representative the object is, the more probable.

It is impossible for the 2nd alternative (bank teller and activist) to be more likely than the first (bank teller).

Use the representativeness heuristic to incorrectly judge the overlap of two uncertain events as more likely than either of the two events.

The likelihood of the overlap of two uncertain events cannot be greater than the likelihood of either of the two events because the overlap is only part of each event.

If examples are readily available in our memory, then we presume that other such examples are commonplace. Do more people live in Iraq or Tanzania? Most likely answer to how readily Iraqis and Tanzanians come to mind. Most people, having vivid images of Iraqis, guess wrong. Although, we are often well served by this cognitive rule, called the availability heuristic. The more easily we recall something, the more likely it seems.

A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come to readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace.

Tendency to judge the probability of an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event. An event may be prominent in memory because it happened recently or because it is particularly striking or vivid. Deaths from shark attacks are highly publicized. Creates greater fear. In fact, death from diabetes is a far more likely cause of death.

Mental bias resulting in our quantitative judgments leaning toward our initial anchor point. We want to be correct in our judgments. We bias our judgments toward our initial anchor point. When presented with accurate information, we adjust insufficiently toward the correct answer.

When meeting a new person, your first impression forms an anchor of that person. You may not process subsequent information about that person as fully as it should be processed. Problem: we become too attached to the anchor.

No time for systematic analysis. Overloaded with information. Issues in question not very important. Little other knowledge to use in decision making.

Hind-sight bias.

The tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome. Especially One’s ability to have foreseen how something turned out. Also known as the “I knew it all along” phenomenon.

After-the-fact overestimation of our ability to have foreseen the outcome of an event. Occurs right after outcome is known. Gains strength over time. Does not occur for extremely unusual/unforeseen events. Fueled by our desire to make sense of a situation. (Example: “I knew this would happen all along”.)

Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t.

If our team loses or wins a big game by one point, we can easily imagine how the game could have gone the other way and thus we feel regret. Imagining worse alternatives helps us feel better. Imagining better alternatives and pondering what we may do better next time helps us prepare to do better in the future. Imagining what would have been.

Tendency to mentally reconfigure past events by imagining alternative versions or outcomes. Most frequently follows negative/unexpected events. Thoughts typically focus on how the event may have been prevented. Make us feel better about negative outcomes. Better prepares us for the future. (E.g., After a car accident, you say, “At least I did not get hurt”).

The process of consciously blocking out unwelcome thoughts.

Important in Self-Regulation. Monitoring process. Acts as an early warning system to notify you of an undesired thought. Monitors: warns.

Operating Process. Then activates and consciously distracts attention away from the unwanted thought. Operates: distracts.

Process by which we try to detect other people’s temporary states and enduring dispositions. (Disposition: A person’s inherent qualities of mind and character.). Build a “working model” of an individual and use the model to guide our behavior toward them. Integrative process. Each bit of information is interpreted within the larger context.

Sending & receiving information using gestures, expressions, vocal cues, and body movements rather than words. To create a working model of others. 2 most important channels are facial expressions and body movements.

Anger, disgust, fear, happiness, surprise, sadness, contempt.

We infer underlying emotional states by reading geometric patterns of bodies during social interactions. Body and arm displays of angry/threatening are more diagonal or angular. Those of warm and welcoming displays are more rounded.

Cultural differences in nonverbal communication can be significant. Nonverbal communication considered different in countries outside of North America. Eye contact, nodding the head, shaking hands, touching, personal space.

Tendency to adopt the behaviors, postures, or mannerisms of interaction partners without conscious awareness or intention. Mimicking of speech patterns/accents. Laughing and yawning when others do. Adoption of body postures and gestures.

Biological basis, mirror neurons. Provides positive social reactions (reinforcement).

Cluster of socially defined expectations that individuals in a given situation are expected to fulfill. (E.g., Obligatory laugh).

Different social roles of men and women lead to differences in perception of their behavior. Sexes engage in different patterns of behavior to properly play their roles. Females display extravagant expressiveness. Males display manly emotion.

Our judgments of people depend on how we explain their behavior.

Words and gestures people consciously try to transmit to others. Planned, calculated behavior. Freely given.

Wide range of behavior unintentionally transmitted and of which people are much less aware. Also known as nonverbal leakage. Better indicators of possible deception.

Changes in speech patterns making it possible to detect deception. Shorter answers, stories make less sense, voices tense, pitch rises, speech slower, more pauses/hesitations.

Personality trait and behavior connectedness.

Assumptions people make about which personality traits and behaviors go together. (Implicit: Essentially or very closely connected with.) Passed from generation to generation.

Evaluative consistency. Tendency to view others in a way that is internally consistent. We distort or explain away contradictions. Commonly employed in making social judgments.

We endlessly analyze and discuss why things happen as they do, especially when we experience something negative or unexpected. Attribution theory analyzes how we explain people’s behavior. Process by which people use information to make inferences about the causes of behavior or events. (Inference: A conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.)

Locates the cause of an event to factors internal to the person. Personality traits, moods, attitudes, abilities, effort.

Locates the cause of an event to factors external to the person. (Luck, other people, situational factors.)

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Inference that the actor’s action corresponds to, or is indicative of, a stable personality characteristic. People infer personality traits from overt actions. If a plausible explanation exists, correspondence is low. If only one plausible explanation exists, correspondence is high. (Correspondence: A close similarity, connection, or equivalence.)

People more likely to make dispositional attributions about behavior that is socially undesirable.

• Actions freely chosen are considered to be more indicative of a person’s true personal characteristics than those that are coerced.
• (Coerce: Persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats.)

Uncommon effects. Outcomes that could not be produced by any other actions. We analyze behavior in the context of other potential behaviors. We compare consequences of chosen behavior to consequences of actions not taken. We then infer strength of the intention by looking for unique (uncommon) consequences.

For something to be the cause of a particular behavior, it must be present when the behavior is present and absent when it does not occur. Cause and observed effect must co-vary. Discounting principle. When a particular event has several possible causes, we are less likely to attribute the effect to any particular cause.

Consensus - The extent to which others react the same way to some stimulus or entity. Consistency - The extent to which the person reacts to the stimulus in the same way on other occasions. Distinctiveness - The extent to which a person reacts the same way to other, different stimuli.

Whenever there are several possible causal explanations for a particular event, people tend to be much less likely to attribute the effect to any particular cause.

The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon other’s behavior. We often see behavior as a corresponding to a disposition.

Tendency to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes of other people’s behavior. Dispositional attributions give us greater confidence in predicting future behavior. Our desire for predictability makes us more susceptible. Perceptual salience is a significant contribution. (Salience: prominent or conspicuous.)

Driving into a gas station, we may think a person parked at the second pump, (blocking access to the first) is inconsiderate. That person, having arrived when the first pump was in use, attributes her behavior to the situation. When explaining someone else’s behavior, we often underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the extent to which it reflects the indivual’s traits and attitudes.

We observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves. In some experiments, this has led to differing explanations for behavior.

Attribute our own behavior to external causes and other’s behaviors to internal factors. Observers place greater importance on dispositional factors. Actors emphasize situational factors (for their own behavior). We observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves. When we act, the environment commands our attention. When we watch another person act, that person occupies the center of our attention and the environment becomes relatively invisible.

When our action feels intentional and admirable, we attribute it to our own good reasons, not to the situation. It’s only when we behave badly that we are more likely to attribute our behavior to the situation, while someone observing us may spontaneously infer a trait.