Social Psychology (Third Edition) PDF

# Social Psychology - Third Edition ## Authors * **Thomas Gilovich** - Cornell University * **Dacher Keltner** - University of California, Berkeley * **Serena Chen** - University of California, Berkeley * **Richard E. Nisbett** - University of Michigan ## Preface The quality of people's judgment...

# Social Psychology - Third Edition ## Authors * **Thomas Gilovich** - Cornell University * **Dacher Keltner** - University of California, Berkeley * **Serena Chen** - University of California, Berkeley * **Richard E. Nisbett** - University of Michigan ## Preface The quality of people's judgments derives in part from the quality of the information on which those judgments are based. Sometimes we have very little information at our disposal, as when we must make snap judgments about other people based only on their physical appearance and the tiniest samples of their behavior. People's judgments can show remarkable agreement with one another. The information available to us can contain biases, as when people behave in ways that do not reflect their true attitudes. Secondhand information can also contain biases: people often over-report negative and sensational stories. ## How Information is Presented * **Order effects** are the influence of the order in which information is presented. * **Primacy effect**: the information presented first exerts the most influence. * **Recency effect**: the information presented last exerts the most influence. * **Framing effects** are the influence of the way information is presented. * **Spin framing**: varying the content, not just the order, of the information, can frame it in a way that favors a particular conclusion. * **Positive and negative framing**: information can be framed in a way that emphasizes the good or the bad. * **Temporal framing**: how information is presented in terms of time can influence how it is processed. * **Construal level theory**: actions and events that are psychologically distant are thought about in abstract terms, whereas those that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms. * **Planning fallacy**: People tend to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project. * **Confirmation bias**: People more readily seek out information that would support the proposition that they are evaluating, rather than information that would contradict the proposition. ## Other Key Concepts * **Availability heuristic**: People tend to overestimate events or characteristics they have recently experienced or heard a lot about. * **Fluency**: The subjective experience of how easy information is to process influences our judgments. * **Representativeness heuristic**: People assess the likelihood of an event by judging how closely it resembles their prototype or stereotype of the event. * **Base-rate neglect**: People often ignore or underutilize base-rate information when making judgments. * **Illusory correlation**: People sometimes believe that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not. ## Other Topics Covered in the Text * **Reason, Intuition, and Heuristics** * **Focus on Culture** * **Predictions East and West** * **The Joint Operation of Availability and Representativeness**