The Cognitive Biases Quiz

Social cognition refers to how people think about themselves and the social world, including how they select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

The two modes of thinking are intuitive thinking (System 1) and analytical thinking (System 2).

Intuitive thinking is quick, reflexive, and often relies on 'hunches'. It requires little mental effort.

Analytical thinking is slow, reflective, and deliberate. It requires mental effort.

Automatic thinking refers to nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless forms of thought.

Schemas are mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about the social world and influence the information they notice, think about, and remember.

Understanding social situations and understanding language are examples of automatic functions.

Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees

Mr. Crane's flight left on time, Mr. Tees' flight was delayed

Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees

It is not specified in the text

The process of imagining alternative scenarios or outcomes that did not occur

Self-blame after the loss of a loved one

Preparation for the future

The tendency for people to have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments

Considering other opinions and teaching statistical and methodological thinking

Schemas are mental frameworks that organize our knowledge and provide continuity. They help direct attention, process information efficiently, influence interpretation, memory processes, and guide decision-making.

The three ways schemas become accessible are chronic availability, related to a current goal, and recent experiences (priming).

Priming is the process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept. An example is the study by Higgins et al. (1977) where participants were exposed to words that influenced their perceptions of a person before rating impressions of 'Donald'.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is when people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, causing that person to behave consistently with those expectations. Examples include the studies by Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) on teachers and IQ of students and Riley & Ungerleider (2012) on indigenous and ESL students.

Embodied cognition is the process by which bodily sensations activate mental structures, such as schemas. Examples include head nodding increasing persuasiveness of messages, holding a pencil in teeth increasing judgments of cartoon humor, and the perception of relationships as less stable when people are in physically unstable chairs.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts used to make judgments quickly and efficiently, saving mental effort. They are prone to errors because they rely on simplified decision-making strategies that can lead to biases and inaccuracies.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where judgments or decisions are made based on the ease with which information comes to mind.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where people make judgments or classifications based on the ease with which examples or instances come to mind.

One example of the availability heuristic is the study by Tversky and Kahneman (1973) where participants were more likely to recall famous names from a list and overestimate the total number of names when the famous names were mentioned.

The representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut where people make classifications or judgments based on similarity to typical cases.

An example of the representativeness heuristic is the study by Tversky and Kahneman (1974) where participants were asked to judge the likelihood of Steve being a farmer, salesman, pilot, librarian, or physician based on a description. Despite base rates, participants often ignored them and relied on the similarity of the description to a typical case.

Analytic thinking style refers to focusing on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context, whereas holistic thinking style refers to focusing on the overall context and the relationships between objects.

Attentional processes are shaped by culture as individuals from different cultures direct their attention differently based on their top-down knowledge and cultural norms. For example, Asian individuals may be more attentive to contextual information, while Western individuals may be more attentive to focal objects.

Controlled thinking refers to conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful thinking that requires mental energy and focuses on one thing at a time.