Ch. 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments PDF

Daniel Kahneman (2011) - Nobel price winne - has had a significant impact on the fields of psychology, economics, and decision-making. - Shed light on the dual processes that shape our thoughts and judgments and has provided valuable insights into cognitive biases and human behaviour. - Understandin...

Daniel Kahneman (2011) - Nobel price winne - has had a significant impact on the fields of psychology, economics, and decision-making. - Shed light on the dual processes that shape our thoughts and judgments and has provided valuable insights into cognitive biases and human behaviour. - Understanding the interplay between these two thinking systems is crucial for making informed decisions, avoiding cognitive pitfalls, and improving critical thinking skills. - Says we have 2 brains systems; System 1; (Fast Thinking) - Unconscious, often automatic - thinking is fast, automatic, and intuitive. - It operates effortlessly and requires minimal mental effort or conscious attention. - It is responsible for quick, instinctive reactions to everyday situations. - functions automatically and out of our awareness - often called “intuition” or a “gut feeling” - Much more interesting and much more influential on behaviour - Relies on heuristics and shortcuts to make rapid judgments and decisions. - It is prone to biases and errors because it prioritizes speed over accuracy. - Examples of System 1 thinking include recognizing familiar faces, driving on a well-known route, and reacting to sudden, unexpected events. System 2; (Slow Thinking) - Requires our conscious attention and effort - slow, deliberate, and analytical. - It requires conscious effort and mental energy to engage - It is responsible for more complex reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. - involves careful evaluation, critical thinking, and weighing evidence - It is less prone to biases and errors compared to System 1 thinking but can be mentally taxing. - Examples of System 2 thinking include solving mathematical problems, planning for the future, and making important financial decisions. Consciousness training - You can help raise your consciousness and be aware of this - Helps people look inside themselves and see/understand why they feel/react/behave the way they do - typically refers to practices and techniques that aim to enhance one's awareness, self-awareness, and understanding of their own consciousness - often associated with various forms of meditation, mindfulness, and contemplative practices - Ex; Meditation, mindfulness, yoga, contemplative practices, cognitive therapies, neurofeedback, psychedelic-assisted therapy, spiritual practices - The goal of consciousness training is to develop a deeper understanding of one's thoughts, emotions, and the nature of consciousness itself. - - Consciousness training can have various goals, including personal growth, stress reduction, spiritual development, and the exploration of altered states of consciousness. The specific techniques and practices used may vary widely depending on the individual's goals and beliefs. Priming - Priming is activating particular associations in memory - subtle and often unconscious influences can shape our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. - Eg Trump, stereotypes - We can be “primed” without realising it - As soon as you know someone belongs to a certain group, you are primed to see and think about them in a certain way - Trump “fraud on the american republic” - Trump “we are rounding the turn” in reference to COVID - Thunder vs a bomb; in wartorn countries, if you hear thunder you are more likely to think its a bomb - Someone can mention food and then later on we will be hungry - Happens so quick and without your knowledge - Primes you to think a certain way whenever that topic comes up and is completely unconscious - Embodied cognition is the mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments - the pervasive influence of unconscious processes and embodied cognition on our social judgments and behaviors, demonstrating that many of our daily interactions and interpretations are driven by automatic and often unnoticed mental processes. Priming and Unconscious Influence; - Priming refers to the activation or awakening of certain mental associations or concepts, even without conscious awareness. - Ex; exposure to specific words, scents, or experiences can prime our subsequent thoughts, emotions, and actions. Subliminal Priming: - Some priming effects occur at a level below conscious perception. - For instance, participants may not consciously detect a briefly flashed image or word, but it can still influence their responses to later tasks or situations. Examples of Priming Effects; - Various examples demonstrate how imperceptible stimuli can prime behavior. - For instance, exposure to religious words can lead to increased altruism, while scents of cleaning products can prompt people to engage in cleaner or more socially responsible behaviours. Everyday Life and Mood; - Everyday experiences can prime our perceptions and behaviors. - Watching a scary movie can make us interpret normal sounds as threats, and our moods can prime us for positive or negative interpretations of past and future events. Impact of Learning and Education: - Reading about psychological disorders or medical symptoms can prime individuals to interpret their own experiences in those contexts, leading to heightened anxiety or health concerns. Automatic Social Information Processing: - Much of our social cognition operates automatically and without conscious intent, driven by processes outside our conscious awareness, often associated with what Kahneman calls "System 1" thinking. Embodied Cognition: - Physical sensations, such as temperature, tactile experiences, and bodily states, can influence our social judgments and attitudes. - For example, feeling cold can lead to perceptions of a colder environment, and sitting in an unstable chair can lead to judgments of relationship instability. Social Synchronization: - When people synchronize their bodily movements, such as through dancing or walking together, it can lead to increased rapport, empathy, and conflict resolution. - This highlights the connection between our physical experiences and social interactions. Intuitive Judgments - Our minds function in terms of conscious and unconscious processing. - acknowledges that intuitive thinking can be powerful and efficient but also emphasises the potential for illusions, misinterpretations, and constructed beliefs in our cognition. - Our thinking combines both automatic processing (impulsive, effortless, and without our awareness System 1) and controlled processing(reflective, deliberate, and conscious- System 2). - Automatic, intuitive thinking occurs not "onscreen" but offscreen, out of sight, where reason does not go. Examples of automatic thinking: ● blindsight. - Having lost a portion of the visual cortex to surgery or stroke, people may be functionally blind in part of their field of vision. - Shown a series of sticks in the blind field, they reported seeing nothing. - When asked to guess whether the sticks were vertical or horizontal, the patients, remarkably, got them all right. • Schemas are mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations of our experience. - Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex depends on how we automatically interpret the sound. • Emotional reactions are often nearly instantaneous, before there is time for deliberate thinking. - One neural shortcut takes information from the eye or ear to the brain's sensory switchboard (the thalamus) and out to its emotional control centre (the amygdala) before the thinking cortex has had any chance to intervene. - Our ancestors who intuitively feared a sound in the bushes were usually fearing nothing but when they were right and the sound was made by a dangerous predator, they became more likely to survive to pass on their genes to us. Given sufficient expertise, people may intuitively know the answer to a problem. - Many skills, from playing the piano to swinging a golf club, begin as a controlled, deliberate process and gradually become automatic and intuitive - Master chess players intuitively recognize meaningful patterns that novices-miss and often make their next move with only a glance at the board, as the situation cues information stored in their memory. Given very little information about someone even just a fraction of a second's glance at their photo--people's snap judgments can beat chance at guessing whether someone is outgoing or shy, straight or gay Powers of Intuition: - Intuition involves immediately knowing something without conscious reasoning or analysis, - often associated with System 1 thinking. - Advocates of "intuitive management" suggest that we should trust our hunches and non-logical, right-brain thinking when making judgments about others, hiring, firing, or investing. - Examples of automatic, intuitive thinking include the use of mental schemas, rapid emotional reactions, and the development of expertise that leads to intuitive recognition of patterns. - People can make snap judgments about others' personality traits with just a fraction of a second's glance at a photo. Implicit Memory and Unconscious Processing: - Some knowledge, skills, and conditioned dispositions are stored and recalled implicitly, with System 1, without conscious awareness. - Implicit memory can function even in individuals with brain damage or partial blindness, such as in cases of blindsight, where people respond correctly to stimuli they claim not to see. Subliminal Stimuli: - Subliminal stimuli, which are presented below the threshold of conscious awareness, can still influence our emotions and perceptions. - For example, subliminal images of a disapproving Pope affected self-esteem, especially for devout Catholics, after reading explicit content. - Can trigger a weak, fleeting response-enough to evoke a feeling if not conscious awareness there is no evidence that (for example commercial subliminal audio recordings can "reprogram your unconscious mind" for success. - In fact, a significant body of evidence indicates that they can't Limits of Intuition: - not all intuitive thinking is necessarily brilliant or accurate. - There's skepticism about the effectiveness of techniques like subliminal recordings in "reprogramming" the unconscious mind for success - the potential for illusion, misinterpretation, and constructed beliefs in our thinking. - For instance, individuals may create plausible explanations for their own puzzling behaviors. - Social psychologists study illusory thinking to understand normal information processing and the creation of false beliefs. - Illusory intuition also appears in how we take in, store, and retrieve social information. - As perception researchers study visual illusions for what they reveal about our normal perceptual mechanisms, social psychologists study illusory thinking for what it reveals about normal information processing. - These researchers want to give us a map of everyday social thinking, with the hazards clearly marked. Automatic Processing - “Implicit” thinking that is effortless, habitual, and , without awareness; roughly corresponds to “intuition. Also knows as System 1. Controlled processing - “Explicit” thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious. Also known as System 2. Overconfidence - overconfidence, which refers to the tendency for individuals to have unwarranted confidence in their judgments, predictions, and abilities, even when those judgments and predictions are often wrong - Very common, especially if you are incompetent - Overconfidence is a cognitive bias that leads individuals to be overly confident in their judgments and abilities, even when they are often mistaken. - This phenomenon can have significant consequences in various aspects of life and can be influenced by factors such as temporal perspective and social perceptions. Overconfidence and Cognitive Efficiency: - Our cognitive systems efficiently process a vast amount of information but sometimes at the cost of accuracy. - This leads to a phenomenon known as overconfidence, where individuals are overly confident in their judgments, even when those judgments are incorrect. Kahneman and Tversky's Study: - Conducted a study to illustrate overconfidence. - They asked people to provide ranges for factual questions, and most participants felt overly confident in their estimates. - About 30 percent of the time, the correct answer fell outside of the range they felt 98 percent confident about. Consequences of Overprecision: - Overprecision, or overly narrow estimates, can have significant consequences in real life, leading to issues like arriving late, missing deadlines, and making financial mistakes. Incompetence and Overconfidence: - Paradoxically, incompetence can fuel overconfidence. - People who lack competence in a particular area often overestimate their abilities because they may not recognize what competence looks like. - This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Intention vs. Behaviour: - People often give too much weight to their intentions when predicting future behavior, neglecting external factors that can influence their actions. - For example, individuals may have good intentions to donate blood but fail to do so due to busy schedules or forgetfulness. Temporal Perspective and Confidence: - Confidence tends to be highest when the future outcome is distant, but it drops as the moment of truth approaches. - For example, students may feel confident about finishing assignments promptly but often underestimate the time needed when the deadline approaches. Perceptions of Confidence: - Overconfident individuals are often perceived more favourably in social contexts. - They may be rewarded with higher status and seen as more competent, even when their confidence is not justified by their actual abilities. - This can have implications for leadership and interpersonal dynamics. Examples of Overconfidence: - Overconfidence can manifest in various aspects of life, such as people's expectations for their future performance in meeting goals, managing relationships, or exercising. - People tend to be too optimistic about their abilities and underestimate obstacles. - Did you ever argue with your parents, thinking “how could they be so wrong?” - How about Trump? “We are rounding the turn” - How about Russians? The Ukrainians Stockbroker overconfidence - Mutual fund portfolios selected by investment analysts perform about as well as randomly selected stocks. - The analysts might think they can pick the best stocks, but everyone else does, too stocks are a confidence game. - Worse, people who are overconfident invest more and more even when things aren’t going well, digging their heels after publicly declaring their choices Student overconfidence - In one study, students memorise psychology terms for a test typed in each term’s definition and then predicted how much credit they expected to receive. - The overconfident students - those who thought they were more accurate than they actually were - did worse on the test, mostly because they stopped studying. Why does overconfidence persist? - We like those who are confident. - - Group members rewarded highly confident individuals with high status - even when their confidence was not justified by their actual ability. Even as groups continued to work together repeatedly and learned that the overconfident individuals were not as accurate as presented, group members continued to accord them status. Overconfident people are seen as more desirable romantic partners than the less confident people. Confirmation Bias Confirmation Bias Defined: - Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to seek information that confirms their existing beliefs while avoiding information that may challenge or disprove those beliefs. - the inclination to actively look for and prefer information that aligns with one's preexisting beliefs and to ignore or avoid information that contradicts those beliefs. - the tendency to seek and favour information that aligns with existing beliefs, impacting not only how people perceive themselves but also influencing their choices of social connections and information sources. - It is often an automatic response associated with System 1 thinking, but conscious reflection can mitigate its effects. Examples of Confirmation Bias: - Opponents of same-sex marriage and supporters of same-sex marriage both avoided hearing opposing views, sacrificing the chance to win money. - People tend to choose news sources and social connections that echo their ideological beliefs, reinforcing their existing views. - Trudeau, Mask Wearing, COVID infection tares, antisemitism and antimulsim attitudes System 1 Snap Judgment: - Confirmation bias is often a quick, automatic, and intuitive response associated with System 1 thinking. - When people pause and engage System 2 thinking, they are less likely to succumb to this bias. Influence on Self-Image: - Confirmation bias plays a role in maintaining stable self-images. - People actively seek, elicit, and recall feedback that confirms their self-beliefs. - They also tend to choose friends and partners who verify their self-views. Testing Confirmation Bias Experimentally: - Researchers have tested confirmation bias by providing interviewers with hypotheses about individuals' traits and observing how interviewers ask questions to confirm those traits. - People tend to test for traits by looking for information that supports their expectations, and this can influence the behaviour of the individuals being tested. Self-Perception and Confirmation Bias: - people's self-concepts can be affected by confirmation bias. - When individuals are asked questions that confirm a particular trait, they may perceive themselves as having that trait and may even exhibit the corresponding behaviour. Impact on Evaluation of Happiness: - Confirmation bias can affect how people evaluate their own happiness. - When asked if they are unhappy with their social life, individuals may focus on confirming instances and feel happier as a result. Confidence in intuition versus statistical prediction - the limitations of human intuition in making predictions and decisions, emphasizing that statistical predictions tend to outperform intuitive judgments. - the superiority of statistical prediction over expert intuition in various prediction tasks and questions the value of intuition when empirical evidence supports the effectiveness of statistical methods. Overconfidence and Confirmation Bias: - Decision-makers often trust their intuitive judgments more than statistical data, even though they exhibit tendencies towards overconfidence and confirmation bias. Statistical Prediction Superiority: - When researchers compare statistical prediction to intuitive prediction, statistical methods consistently perform better. - Expert intuition is found to be even more unreliable. Empirical Evidence: - Several studies, including a meta-analysis of 134 studies, demonstrate that statistical prediction outperforms clinical or expert judgment in various domains, such as medical outcomes, economic outcomes, government agency outcomes, and miscellaneous other predictions. Combining Statistical Prediction and Expert Intuition: - Some studies have explored the possibility of combining statistical prediction with expert intuition to improve predictions. - Surprisingly, in such cases, predictions tend to be better if the expert's "improvements" are ignored. Implications for Graduate Admissions: - The findings have important implications for graduate admissions interviews, suggesting that standardised variables like undergraduate GPA and aptitude test scores are often more reliable indicators of potential success than interviews conducted by experts. - relying on intuition rather than statistical prediction in such cases is considered unethical. Reducing Overconfidence Beware of Dogmatic Statements: - The lesson is to be cautious of people's unwavering and dogmatic statements, as confidence does not necessarily indicate competence. - maintaining a balance between self-confidence and realistic judgement. - Overconfidence can cost us, but realistic self-confidence is adaptive. Techniques for Reducing Overconfidence: Prompt Feedback: - In fields where experts receive regular, clear feedback (e.g., weather forecasters, horse racing odds setters), they tend to have more accurate self-assessments. - Feedback helps them estimate their accuracy better. Consider Disconfirming Information: - Another way to reduce overconfidence is to encourage individuals to think of reasons why their judgments might be wrong. - This involves considering disconfirming information and can help individuals make more realistic assessments of their confidence. Incorporate Reasons for Doubt: - Managers and decision-makers can foster more realistic judgments by requiring proposals and recommendations to include reasons why they might not work. - This approach encourages individuals to consider potential pitfalls and limitations. Balancing Self-Confidence: - It's essential not to undermine people's reasonable self-confidence, as self-assuredness is necessary for making decisions and speaking up when wisdom is needed. - Overconfidence should be addressed, but realistic self-confidence remains adaptive. Heuristics - mental shortcuts that our cognitive system uses for quick thinking. - System 1 Heuristics as Mental Shortcuts: - Heuristics are simple and efficient thinking strategies that help us form impressions, make judgments, and create explanations quickly. - Our cognitive system employs these heuristics for fast decision-making, often with adaptive results for survival. Representativeness Heuristic: - the tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone of something belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member. - This heuristic involves making judgments based on how closely something matches our mental representation of a category. - In most cases, the representativeness heuristic reflects reality accurately. - However, it can lead to errors when the base rate is not considered. Examples of Representativeness Heuristic: - Example 1: - Frank, described as a twice-divorced man who spends time at a country club and regrets not following his father's footsteps. - Most students guessed he was a lawyer based on the description, ignoring the base rates of lawyers and engineers. - Example 2: People tend to guess that John, a 23-year-old White man who is an atheist and abuses drugs, likes heavy metal music, even though heavy metal fans are a minority. - This demonstrates the use of the representativeness heuristic in making judgments. Conjunction Fallacy: - People often mistakenly believe that the conjunction of two events is more likely than either event occurring individually, which is not logically accurate. Availability Heuristic: - The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that leads us to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples or instances related to that event come to mind. - If something is readily available in our memory, we tend to perceive it as more likely. - mental shortcut that influences our judgments and decisions based on the ease with which information can be recalled from memory, often leading to biases and inaccuracies in our assessments of likelihood and risk. - A major cause of stereotypes, prejudices - Impression formation- can happen very quickly - Something that's in the back of your mind the whole time - Built into you - Whenever you see someone in a certain group, you are prone to think and see them in a certain way - You automatically assume something Examples of the Availability Heuristic: - Example 1: - When asked whether more people live in Iraq or Tanzania, individuals often answer based on their familiarity with the countries or how easily they can recall information about them. - This can lead to incorrect judgments, as people frequently guess that Iraq has a larger population when, in reality, Tanzania has more inhabitants. - Example 2: - The availability heuristic can be influenced by the vividness and memorability of information. - If people hear or read about specific instances or examples (e.g., famous women's names), those examples become more available in their memory, and they may erroneously believe there are more such instances or events. - Example 3: - The availability heuristic is also influenced by media coverage. - Media attention to certain issues or groups can make them more cognitively available, leading people to overestimate their prevalence in society. - An example is the overestimation of the percentage of gay or lesbian individuals due to media attention. Impact on Decision-Making: - The availability heuristic can lead to biases in decision-making. - People tend to focus on vivid, easy-to-imagine events or instances and may underestimate the likelihood of less memorable or harder-to-picture events. Perceived Risk: - The heuristic can lead to a skewed perception of risk. - For instance, people may fear rare events (e.g., shark attacks) more than common, less memorable events (e.g., car accidents). - This leads to a phenomenon known as "probability neglect." Sensitivity to Unfairness: - The availability heuristic can also influence our perception of fairness. - Individuals may remember and focus on instances of perceived unfairness, such as struggles or harsh treatment, more vividly than instances of advantage. - This can lead to beliefs that one has faced more challenges than others. Counterfactual thinking: Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t. Illusory Thinking - The tendency to perceive patterns or correlations in random events where none actually exists, plays a significant role in shaping our everyday thinking. - leads people to perceive patterns or correlations in random events, especially when these patterns align with their preexisting beliefs. - This phenomenon affects decision-making, judgments, and professional assessments, often leading to biassed or inaccurate conclusions. Illusory Correlation: - A perception of a relationship where none exists or a perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists - People often tend to see a correlation or relationship between events even when there is none. - This is particularly evident when individuals expect certain relationships to exist, leading them to perceive an illusory correlation. - Based on anecdotal data - Taking a single instance and generalising it to everything - We are primed to see relationships that don't really exist The Cloud-Seeding Experiment: - An experiment conducted by William Ward and Herbert Jenkins involved presenting participants with the results of a fictional cloud-seeding experiment. - People were informed about which days clouds were seeded and which days it rained. In reality, the results were random. - However, participants believed they observed a relationship between cloud seeding and rain, conforming to their preconceived ideas. Confirmation Bias: - People tend to notice and remember instances that confirm their beliefs or expectations while ignoring or forgetting those that do not. - This confirmation bias reinforces the perception of illusory correlations. Impact on Professional Judgment: - Illusory thinking is not limited to the general public; it also affects professionals in various fields. - For instance, clinicians may express confidence in uninformative or ambiguous tests due to their belief in illusory correlations, which can affect their diagnoses and assessments. Self-Perception of Errors: - Individuals often find it challenging to recognize their own illusory thinking and cognitive errors. - This self-awareness is sometimes more apparent when assessing the thinking of others. - Researchers and professionals, including psychologists, can also fall prey to illusory thinking, unaware of the shortcomings in their own theoretical analyses. Editorial Review Process: - The difficulty of recognizing one's own cognitive errors is evident in the peer review process preceding research publication. - Researchers often find it easier to identify and critique the flaws in others' work compared to recognizing their own cognitive biases and errors. Illusory Thinking in Gambling: - Individuals often exhibit overconfidence and an illusion of control when it comes to gambling and financial decisions, which can lead to biassed judgments and behaviours. Choice Illusion: - People who are allowed to choose their own lottery numbers are more reluctant to sell their tickets compared to those with assigned numbers, indicating a preference for their chosen numbers. Betting Behaviour: - When playing games of chance, individuals tend to bet more money when competing against awkward or nervous opponents compared to confident ones. Confidence in Chance Events: - More than 50 experiments consistently show that people tend to act as though they can predict or control random chance events. Gamblers' Illusions: - Real-life gamblers often attribute their wins to skill and foresight, while losses are seen as "near misses" or due to external factors, such as bad calls or freak occurrences. Stock Trading: - Stock traders may feel a sense of empowerment and control when making their own stock trades. - However, this illusion of control can lead to overconfidence and frequent losses after accounting for trading costs. Illusory Control: - People have a desire for control and predictability. In situations where they perceive a lack of control, individuals may form illusory correlations, perceive nonexistent conspiracies, or develop superstitions to regain a sense of control. Regression toward the average: The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behaviour to return toward the person’s average Perceiving and Interpreting Events Perceiving and Interpreting Events: - The other side; ● wins the debate ● media “not fair” ● Belief perseverance ie.. rounding the corner, i wont get COVID, Climate change is a hoax Accuracy in Perception: - Despite some biases and logical flaws, our initial impressions of others are generally more accurate than not. - Our ability to understand and interpret people's thoughts and feelings becomes more accurate as we get to know them better. Prejudgments and Expectations: - Preconceptions and expectations can significantly influence how we perceive information. - Individuals may perceive the same information differently based on their pre-existing beliefs, values, and attitudes. Bias in Media and Perception: - People often perceive media, including news outlets and mediators, as biased against their own position or beliefs. - This perception can be used to assess their attitudes and can lead to further conflict, especially in areas like politics, religion, and science. Belief Perseverance: - persistence of your initial conceptions, as when the basis for your belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives. - Belief perseverance is the tendency to hold onto a belief even after it has been discredited. - Once individuals form a rationale or explanation for a belief, it can persist, making it challenging to change one's viewpoint, even when confronted with conflicting evidence. Power of Preconceptions: - Our preconceptions and expectations powerfully influence how we mentally construct events. - While they can be beneficial, they can also lead to us becoming prisoners of our own thought patterns, making it difficult to change our beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence. Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our World: - Memory is not like a storage chest but involves constructing memories at the time of recall. - Our current feelings and expectations can shape and influence our memories. - People can construct false memories, and misinformation can significantly impact their recall. - Elizabeth Loftus conducted experiments showing that misinformation can lead to the incorporation of false details into one's memories. - False memories can feel and look like real memories, making them as persuasive and sincere. - Children can be particularly susceptible to suggestive questioning and may produce false memories of events that never occurred. - False confessions can result from misinformation, leading to wrongful convictions in some cases. - DNA evidence has cleared wrongfully convicted individuals, with some cases involving false confessions. Misinformation effect: Incorporating “misinformation” into one's memory of an event, after witnessing an event and then receiving misleading information about it Reconstructing Past Attitudes - Our attitudes, emotions, and current perceptions of experiences and relationships can significantly impact how we reconstruct and remember our past behaviours and beliefs, often leading to inaccuracies and self-constructed narratives about our personal history. Attitude Change and Memory: - People often insist that their current attitudes have always been the same, even if they have changed. University Student Study: - In one study involving university students, participants initially answered a long survey that included a question about student control over the university curriculum. - A week later, these students were asked to write an essay opposing student control. - Interestingly, their attitudes shifted towards greater opposition to student control after writing the essay. - When asked to recall how they had answered the initial survey question, they falsely remembered holding the opinion they now had, denying that the essay had influenced their views. Wixon and Laird's Observation: - Psychologists D. R. Wixon and James Laird observed that individuals can rapidly, significantly, and confidently revise their own histories when their attitudes change. - This quick and pronounced revision of one's personal history highlights the impact of attitude shifts on memory and recall. Caterpillars and Butterflies: - Psychologist George Vaillant noted that individuals often undergo significant personal growth and change over time. - However, he also observed that people tend to falsely maintain that their current self has always been consistent with their past self. In other words, they "rewrite" their personal history. Rosy Retrospection: - People have a tendency to exhibit rosy retrospection, where they remember mildly pleasant events more positively than they initially experienced them. - This phenomenon often involves minimising unpleasant or boring aspects of the event while emphasising the high points. - The pleasure of positive experiences lies in the anticipation, the actual experience, and the rosy retrospection. Revising Memories of Relationships: - Our perceptions of relationships can influence our recollections of other people. - When romantic relationships change, our recollections of past feelings towards our partners can shift as well. - For example, individuals who have become more in love with their partners may recall a "love at first sight" experience. - Conversely, those who have gone through breakups are more likely to remember their partners as somewhat selfish and bad-tempered from the beginning. Fading Memories and Current Emotions: - Our memories can become hazy over time, especially when recalling emotions or past experiences. - When trying to remember emotions related to past events, current emotional states can influence our memories. - For instance, widowed individuals may recall the grief they felt upon their spouse's death five years earlier differently based on their current emotional state. Botox and Recovery from Depression: - Individuals who are depressed may recover more quickly when they receive Botox treatment, which prevents them from frowning. - This is because the inability to frown makes it more challenging for them to recall why they were sad, ultimately aiding in their recovery. Reconstructing Past Behaviour: - individuals tend to reconstruct their past behaviours and attitudes based on their current views, resulting in adjustments to their recollections that may make them appear more favourable or show perceived self-improvement. Memory Construction and Revision: - Memory construction allows individuals to revise their own histories based on their current views and beliefs. - In various studies and surveys, people often misremember their past behaviors, reflecting a tendency to adjust the past to align with their present perspectives. Toothbrushing Study: - In a study at the University of Waterloo, students were exposed to a message emphasising the benefits of toothbrushing. - Later, when asked to recall their toothbrushing habits over the previous two weeks, the students who received the message remembered brushing their teeth more often than those who had not, indicating how their present knowledge influenced their past memories (Ross et al., 1981). Underreporting and Overreporting: - People frequently underreport their bad behaviour and overreport their good behaviour, reflecting their desire to present themselves in a more positive light. Totalitarian Egos: - Social psychologist Anthony Greenwald coined the term "totalitarian egos" to describe individuals' tendencies to reshape their past to match their current beliefs and opinions. - This behaviour can be seen as similar to the events in George Orwell's novel "1984," where the truth was altered to align with the desired narrative. Perceived Self-Improvement: - Individuals who have undergone self-improvement efforts, such as psychotherapy or weight control programs, may report significant benefits from their efforts even if the objective improvement is modest. - This discrepancy occurs because they perceive themselves as having improved compared to their past selves, even if the change is not substantial Attribution Causality Misattribution Mistakenly attributing a behaviour to the wrong cause Attribution Theory The theory of how people explain the behaviour to others - for example, by attributing it either to internal dispositions or to external situations Dispositional Attribution Attributing behaviour to the person’s dispositions and traits Situational Attribution Attributing behaviour to the environment Spontaneous Trait Inference An effortless, automatic inference of traits after exposure to someone's behaviour. The Fundamental Attribution Error - We overestimate internal causes and underestimate the external causes of people’s behaviour - Ex; you think someone is cheap but in reality they lost their job and have no money Influence of the Social Environment: - Social psychology emphasises the importance of our social environment on our internal states, behaviours, and perceptions. - Small differences in situations can significantly affect how people respond. Fundamental Attribution Error: - The tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on other’s behaviour. - Also called correspondence bias because we so often see behaviour as corresponding to a disposition. - refers to our tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors and overestimate the influence of an individual's traits and attitudes when explaining their behaviour. - People often attribute others' actions to their personality rather than considering the situational context. - highlights our tendency to attribute behaviour to an individual's traits and underestimate the role of situational factors, even when evidence suggests otherwise. - This error in judgement has implications for our understanding of social interactions and behaviour. Attribution to Assigned Positions: - Research by Edward Jones and Victor Harris in 1967 demonstrated that even when people were informed that a debater's position was assigned by a debate coach, they still assumed that the debater genuinely held those beliefs. Underestimating External Influences: - Even when individuals are aware that they are causing someone else's behaviour, they tend to underestimate external influences. - For example, if individuals dictate an opinion that someone else expresses, they often perceive the person as actually holding that opinion. Presumption of Consistency: - People tend to presume that others are the way they act, even if they don't apply the same presumption to themselves. Overestimation of Knowledge: - In an experiment involving a quiz game, participants who played the role of questionnaires were assumed to be more knowledgeable by both contestants and observers, despite the advantage they had in creating questions. Common Attribution Error: - The fundamental attribution error is a common phenomenon, and even intelligent and socially competent individuals can make this attribution error. Influence of Social Power: - Those with social power, such as medical doctors, are often presumed to be experts in various domains, leading underlings to overestimate their knowledge and intelligence. Real-Life Examples: - The fundamental attribution error is often observed in real-life situations, where people misjudge the feelings and behaviours of others, assuming that others are as they appear, confident or convivial. Why Do We Make The Attribution Error? - The fundamental attribution error arises from our different perspectives when observing others and ourselves, as well as the degree of situational awareness and perceived variability in behaviour. - People tend to attribute traits and behaviours more readily to others while acknowledging the situational factors that affect their own actions. Actor-Observer Difference: - Attribution theorists suggest that this difference in perception arises from the varying perspectives we have when observing others versus when we observe ourselves. - When we act, the environment and situational factors are more apparent to us, while when we observe another person's actions, we focus on the person and may neglect the situation. - For example, when we get angry, we tend to attribute it to the situation; however, when someone else gets angry, we may attribute it to their personality traits. Temporal Factors: - The tendency toward the fundamental attribution error decreases over time. - A week after hearing someone argue a position they did not choose, people are more likely to credit the situation. - People may initially attribute outcomes to personal traits, but as time passes, they are more inclined to attribute them to circumstances. Perceived Situational Variability: - When asked to describe themselves or their friends, people tend to ascribe trait descriptions. - However, when recalling their past behaviour, they often see themselves as observers of their past actions, treating their past selves as distinct individuals from their current selves. Causes Where We Look for Them: - The attribution error occurs because individuals tend to find causes where they focus their attention. - People are more aware of how their behaviour varies with different situations, making them perceive themselves as more variable than others. Variability of Behavior: - People recognize the influence of external factors on their own behaviour and may describe themselves as "it depends on the situation." - However, they may be more likely to attribute consistent traits or behaviours to others, such as celebrities, as they are less aware of the situational factors that affect them. Cultural Differences In Attribution Error - Cultures play a significant role in shaping attribution errors. - Western cultures tend to emphasise internal attributions, assuming that people, not situations, cause events, and internal explanations are more socially approved. - Western children learn to explain behaviour based on personal characteristics from a young age. - The fundamental attribution error occurs across various cultures, but Eastern Asian cultures are more sensitive to the importance of situations. - In collectivist cultures, people are less likely to perceive others in terms of personal dispositions and are more inclined to offer situational explanations. - Some languages, like Spanish, promote external attributions, allowing individuals to attribute their actions to external factors. - Attributions made by individuals can predict their attitudes toward social issues, such as poverty and unemployment. - Attributing poverty and unemployment to personal dispositions often leads to unsympathetic political positions, while situational attributions lead to more support for those in need. - Cultural differences in attribution styles influence people's political and social attitudes. Why Study Fundamental Attribution Error? - The purpose of studying attribution errors is not to mock or deceive people but to understand how humans think about themselves and others. - Attribution errors often result from our mind's strategies for simplifying complex information, similar to perceptual mechanisms that sometimes lead us astray. - Humanitarian reasons drive the study of attribution errors, emphasising that people should not always be blamed for their problems, as many issues result from environmental causes. - Awareness of these biases is crucial because people tend to underestimate their susceptibility to attribution errors, like the fundamental attribution error. - The study of errors and biases offers more surprises, challenges, and benefits than a focus on human logic and intellectual achievement. - Social psychology aims to expose fallacies in thinking to help individuals become more rational, in touch with reality, and receptive to critical thinking. Expectancies Teachers expectancies And Student Performance - Often come from first impressions - the influence of teacher expectations on student performance and how students' expectations can also affect teachers. - Teachers often have varying expectations for different students based on factors like family background, labels such as "gifted" or "learning disabled," and social status. - Teacher evaluations are correlated with student achievement because teachers usually accurately perceive their students' abilities and achievements. - Some research suggests that teacher expectations can influence student performance. - A study of British schoolchildren found that students whose teachers expected them to perform well tended to perform well. - - However, further analysis revealed that the teacher-expectations effect is not as powerful and reliable as initially believed, affecting performance in only about 40% of cases. - High expectations seem to have a positive impact, particularly on low-achieving students. - Teacher expectations are transmitted through nonverbal cues, including facial expressions, body language, and behaviour toward students. - Students can also have expectations of their teachers, and these expectations can affect their perception of the teacher's competence and how much they learn. - In an experiment, students who expected to be taught by a competent teacher perceived their teacher as more competent and interesting, and they learned more. - The attitudes that students have toward their teachers can significantly impact their learning experience and academic performance. For example, students who received positive expectations about their teacher paid better attention in class and performed better academically. bidirectional nature of teacher-student expectations and their potential impact on student performance and the overall classroom experience. The teacher-expectations affect was famously demonstrated in an experiment by Rosenthal and Jacobson. Pygmalion in the Classroom Rosenthal and Jacobson - Classic study to look at the effects of first impressions - investigated the impact of teacher expectations on student performance. - In the study, teachers were falsely informed that certain students were "spurters" with high intellectual potential, even though this wasn't true. - The students identified as "spurters" made significant gains in their IQ scores during the school year, suggesting that the teachers' expectations positively influenced their performance. - Not only did these kids have better grades, their own self-perceptions were affected and their IQ scored higher The Pygmalion effect emphasises that teacher attitudes and beliefs about students can create self-fulfilling prophecies, affecting students' self-esteem, motivation, and academic outcomes. - It's important to note that the Pygmalion effect's strength and consistency vary in subsequent research, and it does not work for all students in all situations - Nonetheless, it underscores the significance of teachers' positive expectations in fostering a supportive learning environment. Behavioural confirmation a type of self fulfilling prophecy whereby peoples social expectations leaf them to act in ways that cause others to conform to their expectations Getting From Others What We Expect Expectations as Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: - While expectations of experimenters and teachers are often accurate, they can occasionally act as self-fulfilling prophecies. - Self-fulfilling prophecies can influence various aspects of life, including work settings, courtrooms, and police interrogations - For instance, teens whose parents believed they had tried marijuana, even when they hadn't, were more likely to try it later. The Impact on Personal Relationships: - Negative expectations sometimes lead people to be extra nice to someone, which can result in that person being nicer in return. - However, studies generally show that our expectations do affect social interactions, and hostility tends to beget hostility. - People often perceive and treat others based on their expectations, creating self-perpetuating cycles of behaviour. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Intimate Relationships: - Idealization and positive ideals in intimate relationships can lead to more positive outcomes. - When individuals love and admire their partners, it helps their partners become the person they are perceived to be. - Positive ideals can buffer conflicts, increase satisfaction, and improve the quality of relationships. Behavioural Confirmation: - Erroneous beliefs about the social world can lead others to confirm those beliefs, a phenomenon known as behavioural confirmation. - Men who believed they were talking to attractive women in a study acted more warmly, making the women appear more desirable. - The process of behavioral confirmation can have implications for issues like sexual harassment. Influence on Children's Behavior: - Expectations can influence children's behaviour as well. In a classroom study, children who were praised for being neat and tidy became tidier over time. - Positive reinforcement and labelling children as hardworking and kind can lead them to live up to those labels. Expectancies From Lecture Experiments Jim1 vs Jim 2 - Jim 1: 5 extraverted behaviours followed by 5 introverted - Jim 2: 5 Introverted behaviours followed by 5 extraverted - Who is perceived as more extraverted? - Look at theoretical background Theories 1. Primacy reigns supreme - First impressions are most important J1>J2 2. Recency reigns supreme - Most recent information is most important J2>J1 3. Averaging Model - It does not matter ; J1=J2 - There are the ONLY possible options, if one isn't right then it's the other Impression formation - First impressions are generally the most important - The dara generally supports primacy Primacy in Judgments of Ability - Jones had subjects observe a stimulus person doing a MC test of 30 items - Had 2 conditions; descending and ascending - Descending performance results; 15/30 - Started off doing well, then started doing really poorly - This person was perceived as having more ability, but they didn't This is priming and the availability heuristic Ascending performance results ; 15/30 DV = perceptions of ability Stereotypes - Can create first impressions and primacy judgments Physical attractiveness stereotype - Job recommendation, treatment by doctors and elementary school teachers can be affected by physical attractiveness Berscheid and Walter - Berscheid and Walster, later known as Hatfield, conducted a study on the topic of interpersonal attraction. - The study is often referred to as the "Berscheid and Walster (Hatfield) study on the matching hypothesis." - This research investigated the factors influencing romantic attraction and partner choice. - highlighted the role of perceived similarity in interpersonal attraction and partner choice, contributing to our understanding of human relationships and mate selection. Objective: - The study aimed to explore the factors contributing to interpersonal attraction, particularly in the context of romantic relationships. Methodology: - The researchers conducted a classic experiment where college students were paired for a "computer dance." - They measured the participants' attraction to their assigned partners through self-report questionnaires. Key Finding: - The study supported the "matching hypothesis," which suggests that people are more likely to form romantic relationships with individuals who are similar in attractiveness and other attributes. - In the experiment, participants tended to rate their partners as more attractive if they believed their partners had also rated them similarly. - This finding suggests that perceived similarity plays a role in romantic attraction. Karen Dion - conducted a study related to physical attractiveness. - focused on the "What is Beautiful is Good" stereotype, which explores how people tend to associate physical attractiveness with positive personality traits or qualities. Objective: - The study aimed to investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the attribution of positive personality traits. Methodology: - conducted a series of experiments to examine the "What is Beautiful is Good" stereotype. - They used various methods, including presenting participants with photographs of individuals and asking them to make judgments about the personality traits of the people in the photos. Key Findings: - The study found that people tend to attribute more positive personality traits, such as intelligence, kindness, and competence, to individuals they perceive as physically attractive. - This phenomenon reflects a stereotype where attractive individuals are often assumed to have more positive qualities, even in the absence of evidence. - the physical attractiveness stereotype; This stereotype can influence how people are perceived and treated in various social contexts, including dating, employment, and everyday interactions. Elfran College Cheating Case - The alleged cheater was attractive - They were liked better and consequently were judged less guilty and received less recommended punishment as a result Dushenko and Perry - Study “limitations to the generalizability of the physical attractiveness stereotype” - Subjects watched a 5 minute videotaped interaction - Stimulus Person was; Nice VS Obnoxious, Attractive VS Unattractive Findings: - Attractive person was liked more than unattractive person - Nice person was liked more than obnoxious person - Personality effect was much greater then the physical attractiveness - Unattractive nice person did much better than attractive obnoxious person CHAPTER SUMMARY: How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously? - We have an enormous capacity for automatic, efficient, intuitive thinking (System 1). - Our cognitive efficiency, though generally adaptive, comes at the price of occasional error. - Since we are generally unaware of those errors entering our thinking, it is useful to identify ways in which we form and sustain false beliefs. - Our preconceptions strongly influence how we interpret and remember events. - In a phenomenon called priming, people's prejudgments have striking effects on how they perceive and interpret information. - We often overestimate our judgments. - This overconfidence phenomenon stems partly from the much greater ease with which we can imagine why we might be right than why we might be wrong. Moreover, people are much more likely to search for information that can confirm their beliefs than information that can disconfirm them. When given compelling anecdotes or even useless information, we often ignore useful base-rainformation. This is partly due to the later ease of recall of vivid information (the availability heuristic). We are often swayed by illusions of correlation and personal control. It is tempting to perceive correlations where none exist (illusory correlation) and to think we can predict or control chance events. Moods infuse judgments. Good and bad moods trigger memories of experiences associated with those moods. Moods colour our interpretation of current experiences. And, by distracting us, moods can also influence how deeply or superficially we think when making judgments. How Do We Perceive Our Social Worlds? - Experiments have planted judgments or false ideas in people's minds after they have been given information. - These experiments reveal that as before-the-fact judgments bias our perceptions and interpretations, so, too, after-the-fact judgments bias our recall. - Belief perseverance is the phenomenon in which people cling to their initial beliefs and the reasons why a belief might be true, even when the basis for the belief is discredited. - Far from being a repository for facts about the past, our memories are actually formed when we retrieve them; they are subject to strong influence by the attitudes and feelings we hold at the time of retrieval. How Do We Explain Our Social Worlds? - Attribution theory involves how we explain people's behaviour. - Misattribution - attributing a behaviour to the wrong source-is a major factor in sexual harassment, as a person in power (typically male) interprets friendliness as a sexual come-on. - Although we usually make reasonable attributions, we often commit the fundamental attribution error when explaining other people's behaviour. - We attribute their behaviour so much to their inner traits and attitudes that we discount situational constraints, even when those are obvious. - We make this attribution error partly because when we watch someone act, that person is the focus of our attention and the situation is relatively invisible. - When we act, our attention is usually on what we are reacting to--the situation is more visible. How Do Our Social Beliefs Matter? - - Our beliefs sometimes take on a life of their own. Usually, our beliefs about others have a basis in reality. But studies of experimenter bias and teacher expectations show that an erroneous belief that certain people are unusually capable (or incapable) can lead teachers and researchers to give those people special treatment. This may elicit superior (or inferior) performance and, therefore, seem to confirm an assumption that is actually false. Similarly, in everyday life, we often get behavioural confirmation of what we expect. Told that someone we are about to meet is intelligent and attractive, we may come away impressed with just how intelligent and attractive that person is. What Can We Conclude About Social Beliefs and Judgments? - Research on social beliefs and judgments reveals how we form and sustain beliefs that usually serve us well but sometimes lead us astray. - A balanced social psychology will appreciate both the powers and perils of social thinking.