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PSYC Midterm 2

Terms in this set (49)

Explain the "Tide" experiment, how it shows implicit priming, and results and implications
-Group 1 was asked to memorize the "moon ocean" word pair, whereas the control was not.
-When asked for fav detergent, grp 1 said Tide significantly more often than control, even though most people's explanations did not include priming
-Shows that people can be implicitly primed, but they are unaware of it
Explain the "florida" study, how it shows implicit priming, and results and implications
-Grp 1 was given elderly primes like gray and bingo, whereas grp 2 was given neutral primes like sky and desk. Their walking speeds were measured and grp 1 had statistically significantly longer walking times, showing that implicit priming can even subconsciously affect our walking speed.
Explain the 17 year study, how it shows implicit priming, and results and implications
-People were shown black and white paintings, and 17 years later, they were better at identifying fragmented versions of the pictures with which they had been primed compared to the control group which had never seen the pictures
-Subjects had no recollection of the pictures, so study not only shows people are unaware of priming, but also that implicit priming can last for a very long time.
1) What is stereotype threat?
2) How was it demonstrated?
3) What makes stereotype threat disappear?
1) When you performing in an area where you group is negatively stereotyped, you conform to the stereotype and perform worse because of that pressure
2) If male and female subjects asked to take a math exam, even though they are equally prepared, male subjects do better than female subjects because of the stereotype that women are worse at math.
3) Tell them about the perceived stereotype but say that for this test men and women always perform equally well, this dispels the stereotype and eliminates the performance gap between genders.
Describe "big fish in small pond effect" study, results
-Subjects were asked to judge whether people were lying, and then they were given fake scores, and asked to self-evaluate their lie-detection ability.
-subjects that scored 5th of 10 but worst in their 5p group had significantly lower evaluations then people that scored 6th of 10 but 1st in their 5p group, so we underestimate ourselves if we compare ourselves to the superior group
Describe 1) above average effect, 2) magnitude of the effect, 3) who is affected, 4) why we still feel inadequate despite the effect
1) People tend to have overly favorable views of their own abilities compared to others.
2) effect is HUGE
3) everyone
4) People hold themselves to standards of comparisons that are well above average
What is illusion of explanatory depth? Describe study by which it was demonstrated.
-People think that they can explain concepts with greater precision, depth, and coherence than they actually can
-In three groups, people were asked: 1) whether they know how something works, 2) to give the causal procedure for how something works, 3) to answer a diagnostic question about the process. The self-rating of knowledge was highest for 1), and lowest for 3), showing that people overestimate their ability to explain concepts.
How does excessive internet searching affect our ability to self-assess our knowledge? Explain study by which it was demonstrated
-People were first asked to answer questions using 1) the internet or 2) no internet. Then, they were presented with totally different questions and asked to self-rate their ability to answer those questions--people in the internet condition rated themselves more highly than the control across all categories
-This shows that excessive internet searching creates an illusion by which we mistake easy access to information to our own understanding of the info, leading us to overestimate our own capacities.
When do we experience illusion of skill acquisition? How do we get rid of it?
We experience illusion of skill acquisition when we watch a skill being done without practicing ourselves--watching only does not improve skill. We get rid of it by actually trying it out--practicing, instead of just watching.
Describe/recognize a method that has been demonstrated by a study to be effective in reducing planning fallacy. There are two studies.
1) recall relevant study
In the recall condition, people were asked to recall past experiences, and then asked to estimate the time that it would take to the current task, but there was no big improvement from the control condition where they were not asked to recall. However, in the recall relevant condition, people were asked to also consider whether they would finish task if they completed as usual, and to think of a plausible scenario such that would they'd be able to finish by predicted time--this drastically reduced planning fallacy, so it's important to only recall past experiences but to make them relevant
2) third person perspective: if people are asked to visualize themselves riding a bike down a road from a 1st person perspective vs 3rd person perspective, people who took a 3rd person point of view gave larger estimates for the time it would take to complete a task. This happens because taking a 3rd person perspective may help one contextualize the task, thinking about a broader spectrum of info, and consider possible obstacles that are in the way.
Describe a study demonstrating optimism bias in non-human animals
-Mice are trained with food tones (hit the lever to get food) and noise tones (hit the lever and get a white noise), and then are then tested with intermediate tones across a spectrum between the food tone and noise tone frequencies.
-For central ambiguous tones, mice are more likely to hit the lever, demonstrating that even animals overestimate the prob of positive events.
Explain how the 3 different forms of confirmation bias account for the above average effect
1) info seeking:
People tend to search for information in line with their hypothesis that they are above average, and their good self performance is very available in their own minds, leading to an inflated self-evaluation relative to others.
2) overweighting
When instances in which other people do well and instances in which a person himself has done well are both available in a person's mind, they will give more weight to their own positive performances due to egocentrism and underweight information about other people, leading to an inflated self-evaluation relative to others
3) biased assimilation:
If presented with evidence that other people are good at a task, they will reinterpret or rationalize that evidence to fit their initial hypothesis that they are better than most people at a task. Thus, they will have a inflated self-evaluation relative to others.
Explain how the 3 diff forms of confirmation bias account for the planning fallacy
Info-seeking:
-people will seek out only information that confirms their own hypothesis, so if they think they will complete a task in predicted time, they will think of the moments in which they have successfully done so and fail to consider the times in which they do not, and will thus underestimate the time it will take to complete the current task.
overweighting
-when faced with instances in which someone has successfully or unsuccessfully completed a task in predicted time, people give more weight to the instances in which they finished as predicted if they hypothesize that they will finish in time, leading them to underestimate timing for the current task.
assimilation
-if the initial hypothesis is that they will finish in time, they will rationalize and reinterpret any instances in which they didn't finish in time to fit their hypothesis that they will finish in time, leading them to underestimate the time it takes to complete a task.
Can infants infer others' goals? Describe a study and implications
Yes
-Infants were habituated with a hand moving toward a ball, then they were tested with 2 conditions: 1) same path new goal (bear) or 2) different path same goal (ball, swapped with bear).
-Infants were more surprised as measured by looking time by condition 1), showing that infants categorize hand actions in terms of the same goal, and that infants can infer that people have goals.
Describe a study, results and implications of: juice-box false-belief task
-When children were shown a juice box and asked what was in the box, children said juice, but when ropes were revealed from the box, and children were asked what they initially thought was in the box, the children said ropes.
-this demonstrates that the children fail to correctly attribute a false belief--which shows a deficit in theory of mind.
Describe a study, results and implications of: false photograph task
-If a picture is taken of an object in position X, and then the object is moved to position Y, and preschoolers are asked whether the object in the photograph was in position X or Y, they say position Y.
-This occurs because the salient representation of the object being in position Y is too difficult to inhibit, which supports the domain-general account for the delay in understanding of false beliefs, because there are no mental representations being dealt with and the problem is simply failing to inhibit a salient feature.
Describe a study, results and implications of: curse of knowledge
-People in the knowledge condition were informed that person B had moved person A's violin to a red box from the blue box, and more people ended up choosing the red box being the one that person A would search upon returning, compared to the ignorance (control condition).
-Shows that even adults display deficits in the false belief task similar to that of children's, curse of knowledge bias: their knowledge of an event compromises their ability to reason about another person's beliefs
Describe a study, results and implications of: tapping study
-Tappers estimations of the accuracy of listeners' guesses was much higher than the actual frequency of correct answers of the listeners
-This occurs because the tune is very salient in the tappers' heads due to the availability heuristic, so they fail to understand how the listener could not guess the tune they are tapping.
What is the status signals paradox? Can describe a study
-participants asked which accessory they would wear to make friends, most chose more expensive option, but another group asked whether they'd be friends with people with the higher status accessory, and they preferred normal status.
-Status signals paradox refers to the idea that people think that displaying high status markers will make them more attractive as friends but when choosing friends people find those that have neutral status markers more attractive as potential friends.
Describe Kruger's study on sarcasm, results and implications
-People were asked to transmit either sarcastic or serious statements to a partner through email or phone.
-People were much more accurate at guessing sarcasm if the message was through the phone compared to email, but the senders predicted that receivers would be about equally accurate for both the email and phone conditions, so people overestimate their ability to communicate clearly over email.
Describe Savitsky's study on ambiguous phrases, results and implications
-People are asked communicate specific messages through ambiguous phrases to either a friend/spouse or a stranger.
-Though predictions were higher for closer people, all listeners, close or strangers, scored approximately the same,
-So, 1) we aren't better at reading minds of friends/spouses, 2) subjects were generally overconfident in the listeners' ability to understand their messages, and 3) subjects were even more overconfident in friends/spouses than strangers
Describe a study on cross-cultural differences in perspective taking. Which society better?
-Chinese or American subjects were asked to move a target object in the presence or in the absence (control) of a competitor, and their eye movements were tracked. While American subjects took longer to fixate on the target object in the presence of a competitor, Chinese subjects showed no difference in fixation time with or without a competitor, showing that they were able to completely take the director's perspective.
-Collectivist/Asian societies are better at perspective taking.
Describe 2 studies showing negative consequences of perspective taking. specify 1) context under which negative cons. obtained, 2) what neg cons. were
1) MBA students study
MBA students were asked in 1) to recall a time when they had collaborated and 2) recall a time when they had competed, and then were asked to rate the likelihood they would use unethical tactics to negotiate with a company. Only in the competitive condition, if the subjects took the perspective of the company, the subjects were much more likely to be willing to use unethical tactics, so perspective taking in competitive contexts can increase unethical behaviors.
2) Self persuasion study
In the control condition, subjects read an opposing view on UHC, and then asked to generate an argument for the opposing view, and ratings of their views on UHC after this process were better after than before, demonstrating self-persuasion. In the perspective taking condition, subjects took the perspective of the opponents view before generating an argument for the opponent, and ratings of their views on UHC after this process were no different than before, demonstrating that there is zero self persuasion, so perspective taking while dealing with a conflicting point of view can reduce self persuasion.
Describe 3 studies showing negative consequences of explaining our minds in terms of biological mechanisms.
1) Vohs & Schooler: determinism
-participants took a test where they received rewards for questions right, in control condition experimenters scored test. In participant scored conditions, they were primed with 1) free will or 2) determinism, and in 2), cheating increased relative to control, so determinism increases cheating.

2) Lebowitz & Ahn clinicians
-Clinicans were told that a person had social anxiety as a result of either a biological or psychosocial condition. Clinicians' empathy ratings were lower across the board for all disease in biological-explained condition; this happens because biological explanations make patient seem like a machine, and it's hard to build empathy to a machine.

3) Metha & Farina, confederate
-A confederate was presented as 1) being normal, 2) having a mental disorder resulting from a psychosocial condition, or 3) having a mental disorder resulting from a biological condition.
-Punishments in a learning feedback situation increased the most for 3), so people were more likely to view people that are biologically diseased as an outgroup.
Differentiate: deductive vs. inductive reasoning
Deductive: conclusion is necessarily valid given premises
Inductive: conclusion isn't always valid given defined premises but is supported by them e.g. sun rises in east for 4.6 bil days, it will rise in east tomorrow
Valid conclusions in conditional syllogisms are:
If p then q
p-->q (modus ponens)
not q-->not p (modus tollens)
Which choices in the Wason card selection task are valid? What are the implications of the content effect?
-A and 7, you have to look to try to falsify the rule.
-People do not make inferences through formal inference rules but instead rely on content-depedent information to make judgments, specifically they are good at conditional syllogism if the rule fits the action-precondition schema
Draw out 4 types of statements in categorical syllogisms
done
What is the slippery slope fallacy
Arguing that if one step is taken, a series of steps will be taken in the same direction, ignoring the intermediate possibilities, ending in a negative result e.g. if you legalize biracial marriage
What is false dichotomy
Arguing that there are only two options, when in fact it is not black and white e.g. you are either with us or against us
What is a straw person argument
Arguing against not the argument your opponent put forth but an easier position that you have made up, e.g. Eat your vegetables, you just won't be happy until I'm vegetarian
What is circular reasoning
Rationale of an argument is merely a restatement of the conclusion e.g. the speed limit should be lower because it's too high
What is an argument against the person
linking validity of premise to irrelevant characteristic of a person, e.g. you can't believe John saying God is real, he doesn't even have a job
What is guilt by association
Trying to associate a person's argument with another person or group that is not looked highly upon e.g. you think the gap between the rich and the poor is unacceptable, but communnists say that
What is appeal to authority
Citing a well known or liked public figure who also supports your arg e.g. Justin Beiber uses this product too
What is appeal to pity
appealing to the person's sense of pity or sympathy e.g. can i have a higher grade I worked so hard on this project
What is appeal to pride
persuading by person to agree by their sense of pride, e.g. you deserve the best so buy this product
Of 1) temporal contiguity, 2) spatial contiguity, 3) association/contingency, which are sufficient and necessary?
Neither for all of them or possibly just 3) necessary
Identify the meaning of each term in Rescorla-Wagner model
Two curves
a=saliency of cue
B=saliency of outcome
lambda=actual outcome (0=no,1=yes)
SVtotal=current associative strength and predicted outcome (current point)
dV=error, so change in association strength, amount that must be adjusted
1) learning curve steep up at first but levels off
2) extinction curve steep down at first but levels off
1) Describe how recency affects counterfactual reasoning. 2) and 3) Describe two studies that support: miller&gunasegaram
1) more recent events evoke counterfactual reasoning more strongly, and thus are ascribed more blame for negative outcomes
2) coin tossing study
-two people toss a coin, and the same result wins each $1000, but different results =$0. If results different the person who goes second is judged to experience more guilt than the first person.
-This occurs because the more recent event is perceived to be more mutable.
-3) the test study
-people chose test questions they predicted would be on the test, and then are told that they have guessed incorrectly.
-more likely to be critical of the teacher if the teacher made the test after they chose questions, as opposed to before, so more recent events evoke counterfactual alternatives more strongly and are blamed more
1) Describe how exceptional events affect counterfactual reasoning. 2) Describe a study in support: Macrae et al
-exceptional/abnormal events appear more mutable
-if a guy walks back home 1) the normal path or 2) a new path and gets mugged, people feel more sympathy in case 2) because they perceive the new path as an exceptional/abnormal event.
1) Describe how action vs inaction affects counterfactual reasoning. 2) Describe a study in support: Gilovich&Medvec
-action is perceived to be more mutable, BUT time moderates the action effect.
-If A and B are both struggling to decide whether to transfer, and A transfers but B doesn't, people will judge A to have more regret if things don't turn out well.
-However, in the long run, people judge that B will experience more regret.
-This occurs because over a long period of time, actions taken can be rationalized, but the pains of inactions (the thoughts of what if) are more difficult to suppress.
1) Describe how controllability affects counterfactual reasoning. 2) Describe a study in support: Girotto et al 3) What are the practical implications?
-Controllable events are perceived to be more mutable
-If a person fails to come home in time to rescue a dying wife because 1) he was stuck in traffic or 2) he took an extra trip to the grocery store, people feel more sympathy for the guy in 2) because they perceived that as a more controllable situation and thus more mutable.
-In crime cases, victims will often think about the controllable events (what they did) as opposed to the uncontrollable events (what the criminal did), consequently blaming themselves for not having done things differently to avoid the crime.
1) What is a positive-test bias?
2) Why is it irrational?
3) What info to seek to avoid it?
-tendency to search for information that will confirm their hypothesis X instead of not-X
-irrational because confirming evidence alone cannot prove a rule, you can only disprove a rule with disconfirming evidence. Also contingency cannot be properly calculated with only the confirming case
-You should seek information to disconfirm the hypothesis X
What is the best predictor for participants judgment of contingency? [Be able to apply to novel situation]
-The amount of joint X and Y (they only focus on one of the four boxes)
Calculate dP for a 2x2 contingency table. When does pattern of data support a causal/not-causal hypothesis?
-dP = ratio of event X occurring in case of Y - ratio of event X occurring in case of not Y. XY high and notXnotY high = support causal hypothesis
1) Describe the study about the on deterrent effects of the death penalty 2) be specific about when biased assimilation occured
-proponents and opponents of the death penalty were given short results of studies and then detailed research descriptions on deterring effect of death penalty, and were asked to rate their views each time
-when subjects read short results, their rating of the death penalty moved toward the results that they read (albeit to a lesser magnitude if initial beliefs were not the same)
-when subjects read detailed research descriptions, their rating of the death penalty flipped back to their initial views, as through biased assimilation people reinterpreted the provided details to fit their initial views, resulting in polarization in the presence of disconfirming results.
What is wrong with typical responses to 2-4-6 task? How can you get out of that trap? [Apply logic in new situation]
Typical responses provide examples to confirm their initial hypothesis, to get out of that trap, you must consider an alternative hypothesis
Describe study that examined contingency judgments with neutral/politically charged stimuli, results and implications:
-in control condition, liberal dems and conservative repubs answered contingency table questions for neutral stimuli, and scores increased as numeracy increased.
-in the case of politically charged stimuli, scores increased as numeracy increased only if the correct answer was in line with the subjects' intial beliefs about the particular question.
-surprisingly, only the "smart" people showed confirmation bias, so susceptibility to confirmation bias does not go away with higher intelligence.
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