Social Psychology – Chapter 2 – How We Think about the Social World
Social cogniton – the manner in which we interpret, analyze, remember, and use
informaton about the social world
Our thinking about the social world proceeds on “automatcc – quickly, efortlessly,
and without lots of careful reasoning
o Advantage: litle/ no efort, eecient
Controlled processing (more careful & logic thinking) tends to occur when something
unexpected happens
Affect – our current feelings or moods
Heuristcs: How we reduce our efort in social cogniton
Heuristcs – simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid and
seemingly efortless manner
Informaton overload – instances in which our ability to process informaton is exceeded
(e.g. through stress)
to deal with such situatons, people use various strategies to “stretchc their cognitve
resources (heuristcs)
Conditons of uncertaint – where the “correctc answer is diecult to know or would take a
great deal of efort to determine
Representativeness: Judging by Resemblance
Representatveness heuristc – a strategy for making judgements based on the extent to
which current stmuli or events resemble other stmuli or categories
o Often wrong: decisions based on this rule ignore base rates – the frequency
with which given paterns or events occur in the populaton
o Cultural groups difer in the extent to which they rely on it (Asians consider
more potental causal factors when judging efects than do Americans)
Protot pe – summary of the common atributes possessed by the members of a category
a quick way to make a guess about a person, compare with prototype
Availability: “if I can retrieve instances, they must be frequent”
Ease of retrieval efect can mislead us: assumpton that because specifc scenes are
readily available in memory, they accurately refect the overall frequency, when in fact, they
don´t
(afects judgements that are self-relevant more readily than judgements about others)
Availabilit Heuristc – a strategy for making judgements on the basis of how easily specifc
kinds of informaton can be brought to mind
Error: we overestmate the likelihood of events that are dramatc but rare because
they´re easy to bring to mind
, The more informaton we can think of, the greater its impact on our judgements
If judgement involves emotons or feelings “easec rule
If judgements involve facts or the task is inherently diecult “amountc rule
Anchoring and Adjustment: Where you begin makes a diference
Anchoring and Adjustments – a heuristc that involves the tendency to use a number of
values as a startng point to which we then make adjustments (e.g. bargaining)
used in uncertain situatons
Powerful even in situatons where it shouldn´t operate Example: in court,
sentences were harsher when partcipants were exposed to a lenient anchor &
source of anchor did not mater
Status Quo Heuristic: “what is, is good”
Similar to the availability heuristc, objects and optons that are more easily retrieved from
memory may be judged in a heuristc fashion as good, and as beter than other
objects/optons that are new, rarely encountered, or represent a change from the status quo
Schemas: Mental Frameworks for Organizing Social Informaton
Schemas – mental frameworks centering on a specifc theme that help us to organize social
informaton and that guide our actons and the processing of informaton relevant to those
contexts (not always accurate)
The Impact of Schemas on Social Cognition: Atention, ,ncoding, Retrieval
Schemas infuence all of the following aspects of social cogniton:
Atenton – what informaton we notce
o they (schemas) often act as flter: informaton consistent with them is more
likely to be notced and to enter consciousness
o they are likely to be relied on when experiencing cognitive load – when we´re
trying to handle a lot of informaton at one tme
Encoding – the processes through which informaton we notce gets stored in
memory
o informaton inconsistent with existng schemas get encoded into a separate
memory locaton remembered easily
Retrieval – process through which we recover informaton from memory in order to
use it in some manner
o People report informaton consistent with their schemas, but informaton
inconsistent with their schemas are also strongly present in the memory
Priming: Which Schemas Guide Our Thought?
The stronger and beter-developed schemas are, the more likely they are to infuence
our thinking, and especially our memory for social informaton
Social cogniton – the manner in which we interpret, analyze, remember, and use
informaton about the social world
Our thinking about the social world proceeds on “automatcc – quickly, efortlessly,
and without lots of careful reasoning
o Advantage: litle/ no efort, eecient
Controlled processing (more careful & logic thinking) tends to occur when something
unexpected happens
Affect – our current feelings or moods
Heuristcs: How we reduce our efort in social cogniton
Heuristcs – simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid and
seemingly efortless manner
Informaton overload – instances in which our ability to process informaton is exceeded
(e.g. through stress)
to deal with such situatons, people use various strategies to “stretchc their cognitve
resources (heuristcs)
Conditons of uncertaint – where the “correctc answer is diecult to know or would take a
great deal of efort to determine
Representativeness: Judging by Resemblance
Representatveness heuristc – a strategy for making judgements based on the extent to
which current stmuli or events resemble other stmuli or categories
o Often wrong: decisions based on this rule ignore base rates – the frequency
with which given paterns or events occur in the populaton
o Cultural groups difer in the extent to which they rely on it (Asians consider
more potental causal factors when judging efects than do Americans)
Protot pe – summary of the common atributes possessed by the members of a category
a quick way to make a guess about a person, compare with prototype
Availability: “if I can retrieve instances, they must be frequent”
Ease of retrieval efect can mislead us: assumpton that because specifc scenes are
readily available in memory, they accurately refect the overall frequency, when in fact, they
don´t
(afects judgements that are self-relevant more readily than judgements about others)
Availabilit Heuristc – a strategy for making judgements on the basis of how easily specifc
kinds of informaton can be brought to mind
Error: we overestmate the likelihood of events that are dramatc but rare because
they´re easy to bring to mind
, The more informaton we can think of, the greater its impact on our judgements
If judgement involves emotons or feelings “easec rule
If judgements involve facts or the task is inherently diecult “amountc rule
Anchoring and Adjustment: Where you begin makes a diference
Anchoring and Adjustments – a heuristc that involves the tendency to use a number of
values as a startng point to which we then make adjustments (e.g. bargaining)
used in uncertain situatons
Powerful even in situatons where it shouldn´t operate Example: in court,
sentences were harsher when partcipants were exposed to a lenient anchor &
source of anchor did not mater
Status Quo Heuristic: “what is, is good”
Similar to the availability heuristc, objects and optons that are more easily retrieved from
memory may be judged in a heuristc fashion as good, and as beter than other
objects/optons that are new, rarely encountered, or represent a change from the status quo
Schemas: Mental Frameworks for Organizing Social Informaton
Schemas – mental frameworks centering on a specifc theme that help us to organize social
informaton and that guide our actons and the processing of informaton relevant to those
contexts (not always accurate)
The Impact of Schemas on Social Cognition: Atention, ,ncoding, Retrieval
Schemas infuence all of the following aspects of social cogniton:
Atenton – what informaton we notce
o they (schemas) often act as flter: informaton consistent with them is more
likely to be notced and to enter consciousness
o they are likely to be relied on when experiencing cognitive load – when we´re
trying to handle a lot of informaton at one tme
Encoding – the processes through which informaton we notce gets stored in
memory
o informaton inconsistent with existng schemas get encoded into a separate
memory locaton remembered easily
Retrieval – process through which we recover informaton from memory in order to
use it in some manner
o People report informaton consistent with their schemas, but informaton
inconsistent with their schemas are also strongly present in the memory
Priming: Which Schemas Guide Our Thought?
The stronger and beter-developed schemas are, the more likely they are to infuence
our thinking, and especially our memory for social informaton
