Social Cognition PDF

Social Cognition Automaticity: ○ Automatic thinking is: Unconscious. Effortless. Unintentional/Involuntary. Ex: seeing a billboard and instantly knowing what it mea...

Social Cognition Automaticity: ○ Automatic thinking is: Unconscious. Effortless. Unintentional/Involuntary. Ex: seeing a billboard and instantly knowing what it means. ○ People are cognitive misers (take the easiest path, take shortcuts). ○ Schema: A mental structure that organizes ones knowledge about the world. Schema function: Organize info. Direct attention. Influence memory. ○ You don't just remember the event, you remember the schema. Accessible: We can use schemas because they're accessible, even if they're not always the most appropriate. What leads to accessibility? ○ Expertise. Knowing or caring about a subject can make it leak into your thoughts. ○ Goal State. You need to buy a gift for your mom so you start to notice things you haven't in malls or shops per say because you have a goal. ○ Very recent experience(s). New info can also leak in because you think differently or learn something. Priming. ○ Process by which recent experience increases accessibility of schemas, traits, and concepts. ○ Ex: you say "yellow," I start thinking: bus, students, school, UVA. Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977): ○ Ostensibly two-part study.  ○ Part 1: perception. Positive applicable v. Negative applicable memory words ○ Part 2: person perception. Positive applicable v. Negative applicable memory words lead you think different things about characterization perhaps. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 1) Expectations (schemas) affect our behavior towards another in consistent ways. 2) The other person responds to our action... 3)...In a way that confirms our initial expectation (schema). Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) - The "Bloomer" Study Teachers get files indicating some students are "Bloomers." That's it. Students given IQ tests at end of year. ○ Teachers: Treated Bloomers more warmly. Gave Bloomers more and more varied feedback. Taught Bloomers more. Gave Bloomers more chances to respond and shaped responses. Types of Automatic Thinking: Heuristics: ○ A mental "shortcut" that allows judgements to be made quickly. ○ A way of coming up with a decision without really pondering all the info that goes into making that decision. Trading speed for accuracy. Ex: You miss a phone call and assume that if it was important, they would call back. Maybe that was their last phone call due to an accident. ○ The Availability Heuristic: Making a judgement based on how accessible (available) information is in memory. Ex: Is it safer to fly or to drive. 43,000 car deaths in U.S in 2022. 229 airplane deaths worldwide in  2022. Airplane deaths are far more televised because it is so rare making people believe it is safer to drive. ○ The Representative Heuristic (taxi example): Judging at attribute, event, or outcome based on how well it matches one's schema/expectations. Ex: Looking for professor in Newcomb. UVA students = 22,000. UVA Faculty = 1,500. I won't ask every single person I see if they're the professor, I will use judgement. How old are they? Are they wearing professor-like clothes? Fischhoff and Bar-Hillel (1984): People may privilege representative information over Base-Rate information. Independent Variable = Base-Rate. ○ Group 1: High Lawyer Base Rate (70 lawyers/ 30 engineers). ○ Group 2: High engineer Base-Rate (70 engineers/ 30 lawyers). Dependent Variable: category Identification. ○ "Is the guy in the study a lawyer or engineer? ○ High lawyer Base-Rate: 61.2% chose lawyer. ○ High engineer Base-Rate: 61% chose lawyer. People chose representative data over the Base-Rate. ○ Anchoring/Adjustment (is mt everest taller or shorter than 1500 ft? VS is mt everest taller or shorter than 60,000ft? : A judgement strategy where one adjusts their answer based on a starting value/exemplar (anchor). How many states were there in the U.S in 1840? (26). ○ "The U.S declared independence from Great Britain in 1776." This younger anchor may cause a lower guess to the question. ○ "The U.S will celebrate its 225th year as an independent nation in 2001." This more time-mature anchor may cause a higher guess to the question. Research Methods in Social Psychology: Empirical questions: things we can study and measure. A question has to be empirical for it to be a social psychological question. Confirmation Bias: ○ Searching for/processing information in ways consistent with pre-existing beliefs. Psychology is a scientific endeavor ○ Use the scientific method Generate theories and hypotheses. Devise tests. Analyze test results. Publish/present findings. Replicate. ○ Basic Observation (watching (one way mirror)). ○ Archival Analysis (for old data that can't be reached by ppl like ww1 because all the people from then are dead now). ○ Limits: Restricted to the observable. May be rare. May be subtle. Doesn't say why ○ ○ The Correlational Method: Correlation is a statistical estimate of the relationship between two variables. A positive correlation: ○ Increases/decreases in one variable are associated with increases/decreases of another. In + In or Dec + Dec ○ 0 -1 ○ The closer the variable (R) is to –1, the stronger the correlation is. Limitations:  ○ Correlation does not equal Causation. ○ Ex: Consumption of mozzarella cheese is almost directly correlated with number of civil engineering doctorates awarded. Extraneous (Third) Variables: ○ A variable that accounts for the correlation between variables of interest. We may have no idea what that variable is. Also called confounds or confounding variables. ○ The Experimental Method: Experiments. A way to try and establish cause. Independent Variable: The variable you manipulate. Three conditions – no stress, some stress, high stress. Dependent Variable: The variable you measure. Internal Validity: The only thing affecting the DV is the IV. ○ Experimental Control ○ Random Assignment to Conditions. Dilutes/minimizes confounding variables in experiment. External Validity: How well do results generalize to other situations/people. Psychological Realism: Studys why something happens rather than the outcome. Lab tests don't produces results as natural than real life. Doesn't have to be fully realistic – as long as you think it is. South Bank University fake pub. ○ Field Experiments: Experiment conducted in a natural setting as opposed to a laboratory. ○ Replication/Meta-Analysis: Repeat the Study.  Different setting. Different population. ○ Ethical Issues in Social Psychology: Principle A: Beneficence and Nonmaleficence. Psychologists strive to benefit those whom they work with and take care to do no harm. Not no harm, just a bit. Studying slight aggression. Principle E: Respect for People's Rights and Dignity. Psychologists respect the dignity and worth of all people, and the rights of individuals to privacy, confidentiality, and self-determination. Deception? YES, if... Lies may happen with a reason to ensure validity. Lies have to be justified by significant, scientific, educational, or applied value and there's no other way. Explain deception as early as is feasible and allow for withdrawal of data. Only about 10% of participants withdrawal their data after deception. Safeguards: ○ Colleagues. ○ Peer Review. ○ APA Ethics Code. ○ Hoffman Report (2015). ○ Department of Health and Human Services. ○ Institutional Review Board (IRB). ○ How does violence in video games affect aggression in real life? NYC "wolf pack rape case." The Central Park 5 (proved innocent after 13 years in jail and settled for $40 million). Introduction to Social Psychology: "Man is by nature a social animal" - Aristotle People need people for health, solitary confinement is a human rights' violation due to its impacts to health. Sigmund Freud 1856-1939: Focus on the individual. All the science happened within the individual and external forces were just stimuli for the internal. B.F. Skinner 1904-1990: Focus on the environment. He doesn't believe in free will. Everything about you is the product of your learning history. What goes on in the environment and how we respond. The internal is only to respond to the external.  Kurt Lewin 1890-1947: B= f(P,E). Behavior is a function of a person and their environment. Focus on both the internal and the external. Social Psychology is: the scientific study of how- ○ Thoughts, ○ Behaviors, ○ And emotions Are influenced by the presence of other people, ○ Real or imagined. "Some people are fucking idiots" Construal: One's interpretation, perception, or comprehension of the social situation. ○ Gestalt Psychology: The subjective experience of a phenomenon is more important than the objective reality of the phenomenon. An optical illusion – our brains produce the illusion – it is the experience that we have within, it's not actually happening. Ferris Bueller famous painting (Cameron's reaction). ○ Naïve Realism (you think you are right and people who don't agree with you must be wrong): The belief that one's construals reflect objective reality. The way we see it is the way it is for us independently. Vallone, Ross, & Lepper (1985) The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre (two sides shown the same coverage, and both groups thought it was biased against them). Different reactions to the same video based on political choice. No one is at fault for different perceptions and viewpoints, it is simply a result of their past experiences influencing their ideas today. Liberman, Samuels, & Ross (2004) Partners play 7 rounds of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: cooperate or defect. If both cooperate, both make money. Both defect, no money.  If one defects and one cooperates, the defector makes more money. Cooperating helps you win, but most people defect. Partners were selected by RAs based on their likelihood to cooperate or compete. They were told the game was called either: ○ The Community Game or the Wall Street Game. The Community Game had higher cooperation than the Wall Street Game.