Summary PYC3701 Study Notes.

PYC3701 Study Notes. Social Psychology. SOCIAL COGNITION: HOW WE THINK ABOUT THE WORLD SU 2.1. SCHEMAS: MENTAL FRAMEWORKS FOR ORGANISING – AND USING – SOCIAL INFORMATION  Schemas: Mental frameworks centering on a specific theme that help us to organize social information. THE IMPACT OF SCHEMAS ON SOCIAL COGNITION: ATTENTION, ENCODING, RETRIEVAL  Schemas influence attention (the information we notice, for which schemas act as filters), encoding (the process by which information gets stored in memory), and retrieval.  Information inconsistent with schemas is more likely to be noticed and to enter our consciousness.  We rely most on schemas when we are experiencing cognitive load (a lot of information at once).  Information that is consistent with our schemas is encoded. Information that is sharply inconsistent with our schemas may be encoded into a separate memory location and marked with a unique “tag”.  Regarding memory: In general, people report remembering more information consistent with their schemas, but information inconsistent with their schemas may be strongly present in memory too. PRIMING: WHICH SCHEMAS GUIDE OUR THOUGHT?  Priming: a situation that occurs when stimuli or events increase the availability in memory or consciousness of specific types of information held in memory. Schemas can be temporarily activated by priming.  Unpriming: Refers to the fact that the effects of the schemas tend to persist until they are somehow expressed in thought or behaviour and only then do their effects decrease. If primed schemas are not expressed, their effects may persist for long periods of time.  The stronger and better-developed our schemas are, the more likely they are to influence our thinking, and especially our memory for social information. SCHEMA PERSISTENCE: WHY EVEN DISCREDITED SCHEMAS CAN SOMETIMES INFLUENCE OUR THOUGHT BEHAVIOUR © 2015 Together We Pass. All rights reserved.  Perseverance effect: The tendency for beliefs and schemas to remain unchanged even in the face of contradictory information.  Evidence suggests that schemas can be self-fulfilling – they both shape and reflect the social world.  Schemas help us make sense of the social world and process information efficiently, but they can also lock us into acting in ways that create the world we expect. REASONING BY METAPHOR: HOW SOCIAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR ARE AFFECTED BY FIGURES OF SPEECH  Metaphor: A linguistic device that relates or draws a comparison between one abstract thought and another dissimilar concept.  Because metaphors can activate different kinds of social knowledge, they can influence how we interpret events. SU 2.2. HEURISTICS: HOW WE REDUCE OUR EFFORT IN SOCIAL COGNITION  Social cognition: The manner in which we interpret, analyse, remember, and use information about the social world.  Heuristics: Simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid and seemingly effortless manner.  Affect: our current feelings and moods.  When we are subjected to more information than what we are capable of processing at one time, this results in information overload.  Processing capacity can be diminished by stress levels.  We rely on heuristics because they allow us to do more, with less effort. REPRESENTATIVENESS: JUDGING BY RESEMBLANCE  Prototype: Summary of the common attributes possessed by members of a category.  Representativeness heuristic: A strategy for making judgements based on the extent to which current stimuli or events resemble other stimuli or categories.  Decisions based on the representative heuristic can be wrong, because they tend to ignore base rates.  Base rates: the frequency with which given events or patterns occur in the total population.  Cultural groups differ in the extent to which they rely on the representative heuristic and expect “like to go with like” in terms of causes and effects.  Compared to North Americans, Asians rely less on the representative heuristic. © 2015 Together We Pass. All rights reserved. AVAILABILITY: “IF I CAN RETRIEVE INSTANCES, THEY MUST BE FREQUENT”  Availability heuristic: A strategy for making judgments on the basis of how easily specific kinds of information can be brought to mind.  Use of availability heuristic can cause us to overestimate the likelihood of events that are dramatic but rare because they are easy to bring to mind.  When using the availability heuristic, the amount of information we can recall is also influential.  If the judgement involves emotions or feelings, we tend to rely on the “ease” rule, whereas if the judgement involves facts or if the task is inherently difficult, we tend to rely more on the “amount” rule. ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT: WHERE YOU BEGIN MAKES A DIFFERENCE  Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: A heuristic that involves the tendency to use a number, value, or personal experience as a starting point to which we then make adjustments. An example is when a seller sets the price higher than he expects to get, and a buyer bids lower than he is willing to pay.  We have a tendency to let initial anchors influence our judgements.  Although we make adjustments to anchors, these adjustments are often not sufficient to overcome the initial impact of the anchors.  The tendency to make insufficient judgements is greater when people are in a state in which they are less capable of engaging in effortful thought. STATUS QUO HEURISTIC: “WHAT IS, IS GOOD”  When people are asked to make judgements and choices, they seem to act as though they believe the status quo is good. For example, the brand that has been on the market longer is better than the newer brand. SU 2.3. AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSING: TWO BASIC MODES OF THOUGHT  Social thought can occur in either of two different ways: in a systematic, logical, and highly effortful manner (controlled processing), or in a fast, relatively effortless, and intuitive manner (automatic processing). Both may occur together.  Research suggests that people have two different neural systems for processing social information – one that operates in an automatic manner, and one that operates in a systematic and controlled manner. © 2015 Together We Pass. All rights reserved. AUTOMATIC PROCESSING AND AUTOMATIC SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR  Automatic processing: This occurs when, after extensive experience with a task or type of information, we reach the stage where we can perform the task or process the information in a seemingly effortless, automatic, and nonconscious manner.  Research also shows that once automatic processing is initiated (e.g. through priming), individuals may – unconsciously – begin to prepare for future interactions with the people or groups who are the focus of this automatic processing. THE BENEFITS OF AUTOMATIC PROCESSING: BEYOND MERE EFFICIENCY  Research shows that we often attempt to deal with problems, and even complex decisions, while our attention is directed elsewhere.  Recent research suggests that automatic processing may even be superior to conscious thought when it comes to making good decisions.  Automatic thought has greater capacity, and may also reflect our real preferences more clearly.  Optimistic bias: Our predisposition to expect things to turn out well overall. Negativity bias: We show greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive information. The negativity bias is not universal, and may be eliminated if we find ourselves in situations in which paying attention to positive information is useful.  Overconfidence barrier: The tendency to have more confidence in the accuracy of our own judgements than is reasonable.  Most people believe they are more likely than others to experience positive events, and less likely to experience negative events.  People who are least competent in a domain are often most likely to be overconfident of their judgements in that domain.  Overconfidence often stems from errors of omission. We lack the relevant feedback that would help moderate our confidence. THE ROCKY PAST VERSUS THE GOLDEN FUTURE: OPTIMISM AT WORK  We tend to think our future will be happy and ‘golden’, with few negative events. SU 2.4. POTENTIAL SOURCES OF ERROR IN SOCIAL COGNITION: WHY TOTAL RATIONALITY IS RARER THAN YOU THINK A BASIC “TILT” IN SOCIAL THOUGHT: OUR POWERFUL TENDENCY TO BE OVERLY OPTIMISTIC © 2015 Together We Pass. All rights reserved.  When we think about the past, we tend to remember failures and unpleasant events.  When we think about the future, we focus on our dreams and plans.  Being optimistic about the future can make us feel good. If the basis for it is disconfirmed, we may feel bad – but only temporarily. © 2015 Together We Pass. All rights reserved. WHEN OPTIMISM AFFECTS OUR ABILITY TO PLAN EFFECTIVELY  Planning fallacy: The tendency to make optimistic predictions concerning how long a given task will take for completion.  When we make predictions about how long it will take to complete a task, we enter a planning or narrative mode of thought in which we focus primarily on the future and how we will perform the task. As a result, we are unable to remember how long similar tasks previously took. When we do take into account past experiences in which tasks took longer than expected, we tend to attribute such outcomes to factors outside our control.  Our estimates of when we will complete a task are also influenced by our hopes and desires: we want to finish at a certain time, so we predict that we will.  Power leads us to focus too narrowly on task completion, rather than the steps involved in getting there, which can lead us to seriously underestimate how long it will take to finish tasks. SITUATION-SPECIFIC SOURCES OF ERROR IN SOCIAL COGNITION: COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING AND MAGICAL THINKING  Counterfactual thinking: The tendency to imagine other outcomes in a situation than the ones that actually occurred (“what might have been”).  Counterfactual thoughts seem to occur automatically in many situations.  Studies show that anything that reduces our information-processing capacity strengthens the impact of counterfactual thoughts on our judgements and behaviour.  Counterfactual thinking can influence our social thought.  Depending on its focus, imagining counterfactuals for outcomes we receive can yield either boosts to, or reductions in, our current moods. If individuals imagine upward counterfactuals, the result may be dissatisfaction and envy. If individuals compare their current outcomes with less favourable ones, they may experience positive feelings of satisfaction and hopefulness.  We often use counterfactual thinking to mitigate the bitterness of disappointments.  Sometimes, engaging in counterfactual thought can enhance performance on important tasks.  Thought suppression: Efforts to keep thoughts out of our consciousness. This involves two components: a monitoring process, acting also as an early warning system, and an operating process, which includes an active prevention system. The two processes are effective, except when people are tired, experience information overload, or are emotional. People may then sometimes experience a rebound effect, where attempts to suppress unwanted thoughts lead to people actually thinking more about the information.