Social Cognition

Question 1

Sunk cost fallacy

Answer 1

A reluctance to waste money that leads people to continue with an endeavour whether it serves their future interests or not, because they have already invested money, effort or time in it

Question 2

Risk aversion

Answer 2

Preference for a sure outcome over a gamble with a higher or equally expected value

Question 3

Risk seeking

Answer 3

Rejection of a sure thing in favour of a gamble of lower or equal expected value.

Question 4

Bakshy et al (2015)

Answer 4

10.1 million US facebook users

Facebook, unlike twitter, often includes ‘friend’ networks that are ideologically cross-cutting, hence increasing the change that users are exposed to information that is not aligned with their existing beliefs

Sharing of ‘hard’ news (e.g. politics, world affairs) along ideological lines
Information exposure more cross-cutting:

What friends share
Algorithms
Individual choice

Question 5

What are the individual differences that affect framing?

Answer 5

Cognitive styles - the extent to which people enjoy engaging in deliberative thought processes - less sensitive to framing

Sensation seeking trait - high risk more likely

Impulsivity - respond better to gain frames than loss frames whereas the opposite is true of those high in anxiety

Question 6

Regression effect

Answer 6

The statistical tendency, when two variables are imperfectly correlated for extreme values on one of them to be associated with less extreme values on the other

E.g if there are an unusual number of road collisions in a town one year it is likely to decrease the second year regardless of interventions

Question 7

Regression fallacy

Answer 7

The failure to recognise the influence of the regression effect and to offer a causal theory for what is simply a statistical regularity

They overstate the effect of something

Question 8

Todorov et al (2008)

Answer 8

Used faces with neutral expressions and found that people form impressions along two dimensions: power and dominance & positive-negative and trustworthiness (approach or avoid).

Question 9

Ambday and Rodenthal (1993)

Answer 9

Participants are shown short silent clip of lecturer teaching a class and asked to rate them, ratings compared with the class the lecturer teachers and were significantly similar

Question 10

Fowler, Lilienfield and Patrick (2009)

Answer 10

Participants shown varied times of prisoners and asked to judge if they were psychopaths

Results matched professional assessments

Question 11

Matza (1964)

Answer 11

Gang members when asked individually were opposed to brutality and violence but conformed in the gang

Question 12

Shelton and Richeson (2005)

Answer 12

Found that people rarely make contact with people of different ethnicities due to fear of rejection but believe the other person’s lack of effort is due to lack of interest and therefore no contact is ever made

Question 13

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)

Answer 13

Told teachers random pupils were “bloomers” and those pupils performed better on later IQ tests

Treated differently by teacher

Question 14

Kassin, Goldstein and Savitsky (2003)

Answer 14

In mock crime students are told random pupils are guilty and their interrogation questions are more incriminating causing them to be more defensive, hence look more guilty.

Question 15

Doob and MacDonald (1979)

Answer 15

The amount of TV people watched was highly correlated with their fear of being a victim of crime

Question 16

Slovic (1993)

Answer 16

Negative events have a bigger impact on trust in management of nuclear power than positive events - asymmetry of trust

Question 17

Weber (2001)

Answer 17

Those who had experienced climate change events such as flooding were 70& more likely to spontaneously mention it as an important issue facing Britain and was also affected by psychological distance – first hand info

Question 18

Strack, Martin and Schwartz (1988)

Answer 18

Asked participants “how happy are you with life in general?” And “how many dates have you been on in the past month”

When order was reversed they found correlation between responses doubled

Question 19

Asch (1946)

Answer 19

Present particpants with this list of words: Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious with intelligent either placed last or first and found a primacy effect.

Intelligence is perceived positively therefore ambiguous words that follow are more likely to be perceived this way too or paid less attention to

Question 20

Levin and Gaeth (1988)

Answer 20

Meat viewed more healthy if labelled 75% lean rather than 25% fat

Question 21

McNeil et al (1982)

Answer 21

400 Physicians asked if they would recommend a cancer treatment either pitched to them with survival stats or mortality stats and found mortality condition were 26% less likely to

Question 22

Meyerowitz & Chaiken (1987)

Answer 22

Frame statement of breast self-examination benefits in loss or gain frame and found loss frame more effective

Question 23

Tversky and Kahneman (1981)

Answer 23

Give p’s dilemma of outbreak of disease with 2 programs in 2 conditions each program is framed as loss or gain

70-80% chose gain (survival) options regardless of program

Question 24

Rothman et al (1999)

Answer 24

Message framing stressing loss or gain in either risky or safe way about dental hygiene

Found gain frames are more effective in safe option and vice versa

Question 25

Chandran and Menon (2004)

Answer 25

Framed risk of mono in stats by day or by year and measured their risk perception for themselves, best friend and average student

If its by day risk is high for all three but by year self

Question 26

Snyder and Swann (1978)

Answer 26

Gave p’s a list of interview questions (11 extrovert, 10 introvert and 5 neutral) and either asked to find out if they are introverted or extroverted (they picked questions directed at this even when they were given incentives for accuracy).

They also manipulated certainty of hypothesis but this had no effect.

Question 27

Lord et al (1979)

Answer 27

Given same studies with one supporting and one opposing Capital Punishment and interpreted and evaluated them according to views and their attitudes were stronger

Question 28

Boysen and Vogel (2007)

Answer 28

Used groups with extreme views on homosexuality and showed them biological explanations of homosexuality to reduce stigmatisation

How persuasive they thought the material was effected how they evaluated the info

Question 29

Barbera et al (2015)

Answer 29

Retweets occurred mostly along ideological lines

Question 30

Cohen (1981)

Answer 30

Participants watch a video of husband and wife having dinner and half think she is a librarian whereas others think she’s a waitress.

Participants memory of details about wife were influenced by the stereotype activated e.g would remember her drinking wine in librarian condition and beer in waitress.

Question 31

Trope (1986)

Answer 31

Showed participants a paragraph about Donald who’s done lots of outdoor sporting activities on his own and taken risks etc after a perception task showing a list of positive adventurous words or negative reckless words which affected their judgement of Donald.

Question 32

Bargh et al (1996)

Answer 32

Had particpants perform sentence completion task with half having words related to elderly people and they walked away slower than controls.

Question 33

Simon and Charbris (1999)

Answer 33

In basketball and gorilla experiment which shows how selective attention can cause us to ignore huge things.

Question 34

Bargh and Pietromonaco (1982)

Answer 34

When presenting hostile or non hostile words subliminally to particpants and asking them to judge a person that had committed a moderate amount of hostile acts, and those in hostile condition judged more negatively.

Question 35

Poortinga & Pidgeon, (2004)

Answer 35

(GM food study) shown that the impact of negative events (like a nuclear incident) depends on people’s prior attitudes

When people have intermediate/undecided views the negativity bias prevails but when they are strong its the confirmation bias

Question 36

Danes-Raj & Epstein (1994)

Answer 36

The marble problem

Question 37

Tversky and Kahneman (1973)

Answer 37

Asked participants to judge whether k, l, n, r and v occurred more frequently at the start or third position of words

69% said first as its easier to think of examples.

Question 38

Ross and Sicoly (1979)

Answer 38

Asked married couples to estimate contribution to housework, arguments etc and found they each overestimated their own contribution (added up to more than 100)

Question 39

Song and Schwartz (2008)

Answer 39

Found people judged a recipe harder to cook if the font was more difficult to process

Question 40

Slovic et al (1982)

Answer 40

Risk of death perceived for different causes is correlated with how its covered in media

Question 41

Schwartz et al (1991)

Answer 41

Asked participants to list 6 or 12 examples of when they were assertive and found those in 6 condition rated themselves as more assertive (6 less numbers but easier to recall, 12 more numbers but harder)

Question 42

Tversky and Kahneman (1973b)

Answer 42

Presented participants with a paragraph describing a student and asked them to rank subjects in how similar they were to him, how likely it is he chose them or control where they didn’t read paragraphs and ranked subjects for popularity

Rankings of likelihood are virtually same as similarity and not base rate

Question 43

Ajzen (1977)

Answer 43

When given a pupils strengths and weakness and asked likeliness of them passing an exam base rate information on pass rates did effect judgements

Question 44

Beuhler et al (1994)

Answer 44

Asked students towards end of year when they expected to submit their thesis

They correlated highly but still showed an optimistic bias

In another study participants who were encouraged to recall a past experience were twice as likely to complete by predicted time

Question 45

Tversky and Kahneman (1974)

Answer 45

Give students 8X7X6X5X4X3X2X1 or reverse and the estimate is much higher when the bigger numbers are first and both a much lower than answer

Question 46

What is social cognition?

Answer 46

The study of how people think about the social world and arrive at judgements that help them interpret the past, understand the present and predict the future

Question 47

What is the construal principle?

Answer 47

States that to know how a person will react in a given situation you must understand how they experience the situation.

Question 48

What is the role of information on decision making?

Answer 48

When we try to make a decision, or evaluate something or someone we use information to derive at that judgement.

Therefore we rely on this information being complete and accurate, but this is not usually the case.

Sometimes we make judgements on minimal information e.g impression formation.

Question 49

Impression formation and information

Answer 49

Studies show that we use facial features to judge whether a person is weak or strong for example a baby face is perceived as weak.

Although this appears fairly accurate it may be that these people are treated in ways that cause them to conform to expectations.

This may also have severe consequences for example people with baby faces being treated nicer in court or judged harsher in interviews.

Accuracy alone isn’t that important but what is important is its influence on behaviour.

Question 50

First hand information pros and cons

Answer 50

First hand information has the advantage of not being filtered by other people and is assembled by you making it seem more reliable but it is limited in many ways.

You are subject to attentional and motivational biases, the information may not be representative and information from other peoples behaviour might not be reliable as they may not be expressing/revealing their true self.

Question 51

Pluralistic ignorance

Answer 51

When misconception occurs when people act in ways that conflict with their private believes due to concern of social consequences but when everyone follows that logic an illusion is created and everyone misperceives the group norm.

This is true of social commitments as if your true attitudes conflict with a person or group you may be reluctant to express them at risk of jeopardising the relationship.

Question 52

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Answer 52

Are the tendencies to act in ways that cause your expectations to happen.

Self-negating prophecies can also occur, for example believing nothing bad will happen to you causing you to take more risks.

Question 53

Second hand information pros and cons

Answer 53

Most of our judgements are based on knowledge that comes from other sources.

This is necessary as we cannot experience everything ourselves.

People who transmit information often have an ideological agenda which is the desire to foster certain beliefs of behaviours.

Examples of this include companies advertising their products and campaigns discrediting opposition.

Question 54

The negativity bias

Answer 54

Suggests negative information tends to attract more attention and have greater psychological impact than positive information.

This may be adaptive as its more useful to know about threats so we can prepare for or avoid them.

There is an overemphasis on bad news also both in daily conversation in order to seem more interesting and in media coverage to grab attention.

An example is reports on crime are violent 80% of the time compared to 20% of all crimes actually being violent.

Question 55

Framing effects

Answer 55

The influence on judgements or evaluations resulting from the way information is presented, such as the order of presentation or how something is worded.

Types:
>order effects 
>spin 
>valence 
       >attribute
       >goal 
       >risky choice 
>temporal

Question 56

Order effects

Answer 56

The primacy effect which is the disproportionate influence on judgement by information presented first and the recency effect is the disproportionate influence on judgement by information presented last.

Both attention and memory processes result in these effects.

Question 57

Spin framing

Answer 57

Spin framing is when content is varied and used to highlight certain facts or arguments for example in 1947 the War Department changed its name to the Defence Department.

Question 58

Valence framing

Answer 58

Is a form of pure framing where no information is changed but salience and focus of attention is drawn to either the positive or negative aspect of something.

There are different types of valence framing including, attribute, goal and risky choice.

Question 59

Attribute framing

Answer 59

Type of manipulation generally presents an attitude object in alternative ways, highlighting different attributes of the object in different presentations, and examines how evaluation of that object changes between presentation modes.

Question 60

Goal framing

Answer 60

Focusing on the goal of an action or behaviour, specifically on the potential benefits in what’s called a gain or loss frame.

Loss aversion refers to the tendency for a loss of a given magnitude to have more psychological impact than an equivalent gain (negativity bias).

Question 61

Risky choice framing

Answer 61

Refers to the loss vs game framing in context and finds also that most people are likely to take risks if decision is framed in terms of avoiding losses rather than realising gains.

Question 62

Temporal framing

Answer 62

Refers to whether something is framed as occurring now or in the future.

The construal level theory outlines the relationship between psychological distance and abstract or concrete thinking.

Psychologically distant actions and events are thought about abstractly and psychologically close ones are thought about in concrete terms.

Question 63

Confirmation bias

Answer 63

The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it, which is particularly true when we have strong attitudes already.

This even occurs if balanced information is provided.

Especially with the use of the internet’s people can find support for almost any view or attitude. Bias effects both information selection and interpretation.

Question 64

Polarisation hypothesis

Answer 64

Lord et al (1979)

That groups in society polarise their views through biased assimilation, if they are more susceptible to info that confirms their beliefs then its going to strengthen their attitude.

They argued people dismiss and discount opposing evidence and derive importance from supporting evidence.

Their study suggests that providing people with contradictions information will strengthen their belief rather than moderate it regardless of how convincing or legitimate the alternative evidence is.

Question 65

Kuhn and Lao (1996)

Answer 65

Criticism of polarisation hypothesis

Found there was a difference between actual and self-reported attitude change and a repeated study of Lord et al found that polarisation is not the norm so maybe the study elicits demand characteristics

Question 66

Social media and the confirmation bias

Answer 66

Influences attitude polarisation as we tend to be disproportionately connected to ideologically similar users which limits exposure to alternative views.

People also share posts that are aligned with their attitudes which can influence group polarisation.

Echo chambers refers to the selective exposure, ideological segregation and political polarisation that occurs due to social media.

Question 67

Understanding novel inform

Answer 67

Involves using what we already know to make sense of it.

Perceiving and understanding the world involves the simultaneous operation of bottom up and top down processes.

Bottom up processes are data driven mental processes in which an individual forms conclusions based on the stimuli encountered in the environment, which is difficult when we have little data.

Top down processes are theory driven mental processes in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of pre- existing knowledge and expectations.

Question 68

Role of schemas in understanding new information

Answer 68

Information is organised in schemas, in which related information is stored together.

The various schemas we posses affect our judgements in many ways; by directing our attention, structuring our memories and influencing our interpretations.

They allow us to navigate the world in a less overwhelming way but can sometimes be misleading.

Question 69

The influence of schemas

Answer 69

Attention is selective and influenced by schemas of knowledge. Because they influence attention they also influence what information you are likely to remember i.e what you were paying attention to. Judgements are made using memory retrieval and therefore are also influenced by schemas. Schemas influence encoding and retrieval.

Interpretations are also affected by schemas as when new information is ambiguous we rely heavily on top-down processes to compensate.

Schemas can also influence behaviour as research shows certain types of behaviour are elicited automatically when people are exposed to stimuli in the environment that bring to mind a particular schema. This is an example of priming, the presentation of information designed to activate a concept and hence make it accessible.

Question 70

Activating schemas

Answer 70

Recent activation makes it more accessible and easy to use.

If a person uses a particular schema frequently it may become chronically accessible and therefore likely to be used still more often in the future as it has heightened accessibility.

Habits have three ingredients; frequency, automaticity and stable context.

Schemas can also been unconsciously activated using subliminal stimuli.

Expectation can also activate a schema so that it is readily applied on encounter, this saves mental energy. This can also affect our own behaviour as seen with self-fulfilling prophecies.

Question 71

The two mental systems

Answer 71

When faced with any decision there are two mental systems operating.

The intuitive system which is fast and automatic working in parallel, and the rational system which is much slower and controlled, working serially.

These systems work together and there are three possible outcomes; they agree, they disagree or the intuitive system responds too quick for the rational to contribute.

Question 72

Heuristics

Answer 72

Intuitive mental operations, performed quickly and automatically, that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgement.

They are viewed as mental shortcuts, that effectively deal with judgements under uncertainty but can also lead to systematic error.

It’s important not to confuse them with biases as they are used because they typically produce correct and useful judgements

Question 73

The availability heuristic

Answer 73

Is the process whereby judgements of frequency or probability rely on how readily pertinent instances come to mind.

There are many examples of this for example a biased assessment of risk as a result of over representation of dramatic events in the media and stereotype formation.

Fluency refers to the feeling of ease associated with processing information and can affect how we think about things as seen in the Cognitive Reflection Test.

Question 74

The representativeness heuristic

Answer 74

Process whereby judgements of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect.

People show a neglect of base rate information, such as the relative frequency of something when making a judgement.

When base rate information has causal effects the base rate fallacy is reduced and also when people are encouraged to take an “outside” view on the problem for example focussing on a class of students rather than just one.

This heuristic aslo effects causal judgements for example a small effect has a small cause etc.

Question 75

The planning fallacy

Answer 75

Tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a particular project, even when they are fully aware that they have failed to complete similar projects on time in the past.

People tend to only focus on the factors you can control which can be seen when people are asked to say out loud plan of how and when they will complete something as only 3% acknowledge possible problems and 7% past experiences.

Question 76

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic

Answer 76

Occurs when we do not have enough time to carry out all steps of solving a problem and therefore do the first few steps and use them as an anchor to estimate the product by adjustment.

These adjustments are usually insufficient and fail to account for situational constraints. A prominent anchor we use is the self when deciding how other people would act, which reveals an egocentric bias.

This effect can be reduced if we have more time, incentives for accuracy and know more about the person.

Question 77

The joint operation of avail ABA day representativeness heuristics

Answer 77

Can create an illusory correlation which is the belief that two variables are correlated when they are in fact not.