Chapter Three

Question 1

What Are The 3 Motives Behind Thinking That Influences Our Choices?

Answer 1

1. Need for accurate knowledge
2. Need for closure (affected by personality and expertise)
3. Need to confirm what one already believes

Question 2

The 2 Systems We Use To Think About The Social World

Answer 2

Cognitive and experimental system

Question 3

Cognitive System

Answer 3

• A conscious, rational, and controlled system of thinking
• • Front of brain, slow, effortful, infrequent, uses rule-based logic, conscious.
• Fits rules into logical patterns, think critically, plan behaviour, and make deliberate decisions

Question 4

Experiential System

Answer 4

• An unconscious, intuitive, and automatic system of thinking
• Middle of brain, fast, automatic, frequent, uses implicit associations, subconscious
• Guided by automatic or implicit associations among stimuli, concepts, and behaviours that have been learned from experience, uses heuristics.

Question 5

Dual Process Theory

Answer 5

Theories that are used to explain a wide range of phenomena by positing two ways of processing information

Question 6

Heuristics

Answer 6

Mental shortcuts, or rules of thumb, that are used for making judgements and decisions. Experienced are more swayed by chance of loss than wins.

Question 7

Attitudes

Answer 7

Emotional reactions to people, objects, and ideas.

Question 8

The 2 Attitudes Used to Evaluate Something Good or Bad

Answer 8

Implicit and explicit attitudes

Question 9

Implicit Attitudes

Answer 9

Automatic associations that make up the experiential system. Some evolved, most learned from culture.

Question 10

Explicit Attitudes

Answer 10

Attitudes people are consciously aware of through the cognitive system

Question 11

Automaticity Processes

Answer 11

Performing behaviour without much conscious attention

Question 12

Controlled Reasoning Processes

Answer 12

Overriding the experiential system to solve unexpected problems and attain goals. Must gain awareness, motivation and ability for this to occur.

Question 13

The 5 Ways The Unconscious Is Smart

Answer 13

1. The motives that guide thinking often operate unconsciously
2. Memory consolidation occurs during sleep
3. Unconscious mind wandering can help generate creative ideas
4. Intuition can facilitate sound decisions
5. Unconscious emotional associations can promote beneficial decisions (somatic marker hypothesis)

Question 14

Somatic Markers of Risk

Answer 14

People learn to avoid higher risk choices such as in gambling. People with ventromedial damage to the prefrontal cortex do not show this arousal and do not learn to avoid the risk

Question 15

Categories

Answer 15

Mental “containers” in which people place things that are similar to each other

Question 16

Schema

Answer 16

A mental structure, stored in memory, that is based on prior knowledge of learned associations

Question 17

Scripts

Answer 17

Schemas that represent knowledge about events

Question 18

Impressions

Answer 18

Schemas that represent knowledge about people

Question 19

Schemas Cultural Source of Knowledge

Answer 19

• Direct contact with people, events and ideas
• Indirect contact with parents, teachers, peers, books, newspapers, magazines, television, and the internet

Question 20

Where Do Schemas Come From?

Answer 20

Schemas are built through experience where information is categorized. It is culturally universal, but the content of and how schemas are organized is shaped by cultural experiences

Question 21

How Does A Schema Work?

Answer 21

Accessibility, salience, priming and associative networks.

Question 22

Accessibility

Answer 22

The ease with which people can bring an idea into consciousness and use it in thinking

Question 23

Salience

Answer 23

An aspect of a schema that is active in one’s mind and consciously or not colours perceptions and behaviour

Question 24

Priming

Answer 24

Exposure to a stimulus in the environment increases the salience of a schema

Question 25

Associative Networks

Answer 25

Models for how pieces of information are linked together and stored in memory. These links result from semantic and experiential associations.

Question 26

Confirmation Bias

Answer 26

• We tend to seek out and evaluate new information so that it confirms what we already believe or feel
• Ambiguous information is interpreted in a schema-confirming manner
• People pay more attention to schema-consistent information

Question 27

Self- Fullfilling Prophecy

Answer 27

Schemas can create the social reality that one expects

Question 28

What Can Change Confirmation Bias

Answer 28

• When observations conflict with initial expectations
• When awareness of or concern about bias exists
• People can be successfully taught what confirmation bias is and how to prevent this bias from influencing decision making

Question 29

The 3 Psychological Motives of Social Cognition

Answer 29

Need for accuracy, quick closure (uncertainty is unsettling, meaning maintenance model), confirm existing beliefs