Unit 5 Social Cognition Bold terms from the reading Make sure you have done the reading well from Chapter 5 My suggestion is to make flashcards out of all the bold terms as you read each day or just make a separate list of the bold terms and make sure that you can define each bold term offer examples of each bold term etc From the lectures Be able to define SOCIAL COGNITION the process by which people think about and make sense of their social environ ment how people think about people Know what is meant by the fact that people tend to be COGNITIVE MI SERS i e people s tendency to want to CONSERVE mental effort reluc tance to do extra thinking people have reluctance to do much extra thinking conserving mental effort is an important goal because while we have great capacity to think it is limited our social en vironments are complex Understand and list some of the hallmarks of AUTOMATIC versus CON TROLLED thinking Be able to identify some examples of both kinds of thinking if you are given examples on the exam controlled conscious processing requires time and effort can perform compli cated operations of reasoning and follow logical rules and relies on conscious control automatic processing quick requires little effort and can not perform the com plex operations of reasoning so it relies on shortcuts Know what the 4 most important distinguishing characteristics of auto matic versus controlled thinking are according to Bargh Intention control effort and efficiency distinguish the two systems know whether automatic and controlled thinking is high or low on each of these Automatic low on intention low on control low on effort high on efficiency controlled high on intention high on control high on effort low on efficiency Understand what participants have to do when they are asked to com plete the STROOP task Be able to describe what the AUTOMATIC re sponse is while completing the Stroop task and what the CONTROLLED system has to do Stroop task asks a person to read off the names of colors that are written in differ ent colors The automatic system will read off the color that the word is written in and the controlled system will read off the word that is written Be able to define Heuristics Heuristics are mental shortcuts that provide quick estimates for judgements and decisions the rules of thumb List some reasons that people use heuristics they are fast the require little effort we live in a world of unlimited information with many demands on our processing resources and heuristics sometimes provide the correct answers or answers that are good enough Be able to define the anchoring and adjustment heuristic Think very critically about it you ll have to be able to identify examples of this heuristic using a starting point to estimate how frequent or likely an event is and then mak ing adjustments up and down from this starting point prevention vs cure wheel of fortune study experimenter spins a rigged wheel of numbers 10 or 65 then asked the percentage of African countries that are members of the united nations when a 10 was rolled the estimated percentage of countries was lower than when a 65 was rolled car salesman pre mark up the price of cars so that they can bargain Be able to define the representativeness heuristic Think very critically about it you ll have to be able to identify examples of this heuristic The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles a typical case Know what is meant by base rate neglect or the base rate fallacy Know what heuristic leads to the base rate fallacy or base rate neglect What heuristic leads to base rate neglect or the base rate fallacy base rate how many are out there Be able to define the availability heuristic Think very critically about it you ll have to be able to identify examples of this heuristic Note that the differences between availability the EASE with which lots of differ ent relevant instances or examples of something come to mind and representativeness the degree to which something resembles the typ ical case are subtle the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event the the ease with which relevant instances come to mind which can be influenced by how vivid events are If it s easy to think about an example of something we assume that it is more common and more likely to happen Grandpa smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and lived to be 100 Smoking is not unhealthy I m more likely to die in a plane crash than a car crash list of names equal number of males and female but its seems like there are more males because they were more famous so they were easier to recall percent of housework men say they do 50 and women say they do 75 over lap Be able to identify examples of the expectancy confirmation bias and define it People have expectations about people and things teachers treat gifted kids better horoscope experiment Be able to identify which takes more work and which is easier updat ing our expectancies vs ignoring information that is inconsistent with our expectancies Be able to identify examples of people engaging in each approach People tend to confirm their expectations Notice information that is con sistent ignore information that is not because updating our expectations takes work C R Snyder and R J Shenkel March 1975 If you are given the names and date be able to identify the findings of this study and know what bias it demonstrates C R Snyder and R J Shenkel March 1975 College students received the exact same vaguely worded horoscope about their characters and were told they were individu alized horoscopes They were all very impressed with how accurate it sounded If you ex pect something to be true you look for the information that confirms this belief and ig nore the information that does not Know the findings of the teacher gifted student study and what bias it demonstrates Teachers were led to believe that some of their students were gifted and others challenged In reality this was not really the case Teachers behaved toward stu dents in ways that led them to confirm expectations students reacted to teachers behav ior Teachers may have simply not updated their expectations and may have even acted to confirm those expectations Self fulfilling prophecy Know what the egocentric bias is and know which heuristic possibly leads to this bias Be able to identify examples The availability heuristic produces the egocentric bias people overestimate the frequency
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