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Exam 1

Terms in this set (41)

social cognition
the ways in which people think about themselves and the social world, including how they select, interpret, remember, and use social information
automatic thinking helps us understand new situations by ...
relating them to our prior experiences
Korsakov's syndrome
people lack the ability to form new and add to preexisting schemas; they also create schemas where none exist
Harold Kelly (1950) of the study where he gave a note to kids before the lecture and then asked their opinions of the professor after, why did they have different experiences with the professor?
the two separate groups had two different schemas prior to meeting the professor
the more ambiguous our information is, ...
the more we use schemas to fill in the blanks
schemas help us reduce the amount of information we need and ...
help us interpret ambiguous information
accessibility
the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people's minds and are therefore likely to be used when making judgements about the social world
things become accessible for 3 reasons
1. because of past experience, meaning they're constantly active and ready to be used (ie. a previous experience with alcoholism makes you more aware of the symptoms)
2. it is related to a current goal (ie it's something you're studying for an exam)
3. recent experiences, meaning that a schema as been primed by something you might have recently experienced (ie. reading an article about mental illness and then seeing someone acting in a strange way on the bus)
priming is a good example of automatic thinking because ...
it occurs quickly, unintentionally, and unconsciously
self-fulfilling prophecy
when people inadvertently make their schemas come true by the way they treat other people
automatic goal pursuit
basing decisions off of goals that have been recently activated or primed
What did the study done by Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan (2007) given different kinds of words and then asked to share or keep coins show us?
the goal of either being kind or behaving neutral had been primed by the words they received before the game, which contributed to their final decision
religious thoughts increase the likelihood that people will act kindly toward other people only if ...
the people are religious to start with
when faced with ambiguous situations people rely on ...
schemas that are accessible in their minds
____ can activate a metaphor that influence judgements about a completely unrelated topic or person
physical sensations
judgmental heuristics
mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently (this sometimes can lead to decisions that are not "the best")
Heuristic means
discover
availability heuristic and an example
making judgments based on how accessible or available info is in our memory; trusting cars more than planes bc plane crashes are heavily reported on
one problem with availability heuristic
what is easiest to remember does not always lead to the best option
What did Schwarz's 1991 study of asking people to think of times they had been assertive show us?
people use the availability heuristic when making judgments about themselves and other people
representative heuristic
judging an event based on how well it matches one's schema/expectations
based rate information
information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population
barnum effect
the tendency to accept certain information as true, such as character assessments or horoscopes, even when the information is so vague as to be worthless ie with personality tests
content of schemas is influenced by ...
the culture in which we live
analytic thinking style
a type of thinking in which in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context (typical for Western cultures)
holistic thinking style
a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other (common for East Asian cultures)
controlled thinking
thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful
counterfactual thinking
mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been
one barrier to improving human thinking is
planning fallacy - the tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a task even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in past
one way to improve human thinking is through
teaching people basic statistical and methodological principles in their everyday lives
people are often blind to truths that ...
dont fit their schemas and sometimes treat others in ways that make their schemas come true
automatic thinking is
non conscious, unintentional, involuntary, effortless
schemas
mental structures that organize one's knowledge about the world
after a while, schemas can start affecting
attention, thoughts, and memory
the function of schemas is to
organize information, direct attention, and influence memory
priming
the process by which recent experiences increases accessibility of schemas, traits, and concepts
steps that have to happen for self-fulfilling prophecy to come true
1. expectations (schemas) affect our behavior in consistent ways
2. the other person responds to our action in a way that is a reasonable response to our behavior
3. this confirms our initial expectation
what study showed the effects of self-fulfilling prophecy
the bloomer study
heuristics
mental shortcuts that allow judgments to be made quickly
anchoring/adjustment and example
a judgment strategy where one adjusts their answer based on a starting value; asking ppl a very random question, then giving them a reference and their answering becoming more confident
simulation heuristic and example
imagining what more normal thing would have happened instead of whatever abnormal thing happened; a second place winner feeling worse than a third place winner
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