Social Cognition

Question 1

Controlled/conscious/explicit

Answer 1

• controlled
• slow
• effortful
• voluntary
• flexible
• ex: studying

Question 2

Automatic/unconscious/implicit

Answer 2

• automatic & doesn’t want to work
• quick
• effortless
• governed by habit
• difficult to control or change
• involuntary
• ppl. rely on automatic cognition
• ex: reading a sign on the street

Question 3

Division of mind

Answer 3

• conscious vs. automatic

* ex: when told to name the color of the word and the color of the word is contradicting the word

Question 4

Heuristic

Answer 4

• Rule of thumb
• mental shortcut to make a judgement
• ex: when somebody tells you to buy them something and you go with what is most expensive

Question 5

Availability heuristic

Answer 5

• tendency to judge the likely hood of an event by availability in memory
• media creates this
• ex: thinking the homicide rate is higher when in reality the suicide rate is, but we believe the homicide rate is higher bc that is what we constantly see presented in the media

Question 6

Survivorship Bias

Answer 6

• tendency to disproportionately concentrate on the ppl. or things that survived some process & ignoring those that didn’t
• ex: happens in business (start-ups)

Question 7

Sunkcost fallacy

Answer 7

• tendency to continue endeavor once an investment in $ , time or effort has been made – particularly when costs can’t be recovered
• often can be irrational
• ex: not wanting to break up because the 2 have been in a relationship for a long time

Question 8

Moral Reasoning

Answer 8

• Moral judgments are often the product of quick/automatic judgments, which then give rise to slow conscious moral reasoning
• ex: the brother & the sis deciding to have sex = automatically think it is wrong, but there isn’t any consequence so is what they did really wrong?

Question 9

Motivated cognition

Answer 9

• ppl. motivated to arrive to a particular conclusion
• often seek out info that supports their desired beliefs
• often able to provide reasonable justification
• ex: A guy tells girlfriend he is going to call on sunday but ends up calling on tuesday and the girl says, “at least he called”

Question 10

Inattention blindness

Answer 10

• Failure to notice fully visible, but unexpected objects bc attention is engaged on another tast
• Ex: the “tourists” asking for directions and while the person they asked is giving them directions the couple steals the phone, wallet and tablet. Many viewers including the guy who was saying the directions did not notice because they were focused on the directions.

Question 11

Automaticity

Answer 11

• influence that the environment has on your decision, automatic cognition, often w/o one’s knowledge or awareness
• Having a default choice

Question 12

Unconscious behavior guidance systems

Answer 12

1. Environmental/contextual features
   a. Evaluations of others & objects
   b. motivational states
   c. perceptual system
2. Behavioral Responses

Question 13

Priming

Answer 13

• The activation of concepts of mental representations in our mind via ex: the internet
• can be hidden in written/paper tasks

Question 14

Embodiment

Answer 14

• cognition & feelings can be influenced by your sensory experiences & bodily states
• Results in a study: People in vertical nodding condition were more persuaded by message, compared to those in horizontal shaking condition

Question 15

Enclothed cognition

Answer 15

• Systematic influence that clothes have on the wearers psychological processes.
• ex: dressing well for an interview can cause the interviewee to do better on the interview

Question 16

When does reason trump automatic cognition?

Answer 16

• Time
• high motivation to attend to situation
• under self-reflection
• motivation for accuracy

Question 17

Attribution

Answer 17

• explanation for the cause of an event/behavior

Question 18

Dispositional attribution

Answer 18

• personal attribution
• Attributing behavior to a persons disposition or traits
• George Zimmerman perceived to be a racist.

Question 19

Situational attribution

Answer 19

• attributing behavior to enviornment

Question 20

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 20

• tendency to overestimate dispositional influences & underestimates situational influences for others behaviors.

Question 21

Actor observer bias

Answer 21

• for negative events, we make dispositional attributions for others but situational attributions for our own behavior.
• if you failed your drivers test & you say it was bc you were having a bad day vs. if your friend fails & you say he is a crazy driver.

Question 22

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 22

• an originally false social belief of another person that lead the other person to fulfill the originally false belief with their behavior.
• ex: waitress not treating teenage guests 100% bc they are perceived to be bad tippers.

Question 23

Self-fulfilling prophecy 3 steps

Answer 23

1. Perceiver has expectation
2. Perceiver behaves towards target in a way that is consistent with expectation
3. Target behaves towards perceiver in a way that is consistent w/ perceivers behavior & the expectation is confirmed.

Question 24

False consensus effect

Answer 24

• tendency for ppl to overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes & behaviors.

Question 25

Base-rate fallacy

Answer 25

• finding that ppl are insenstive to statistics

* “a single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic”

Question 26

Counterfactual thinking

Answer 26

• tendency to imagine a possible outcome that could have occurred, but did not occur.

Question 27

Impression formation

Answer 27

• integrating info about a person to come up with a impression about them

Question 28

Information integration theory

Answer 28

(1) current state of the perceiver (2) weighted average of the target persons characteristics

Question 29

Belief perseverance

Answer 29

Tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited.