Psych 350 9 19 14 Ch 4 Social Cognition What is social cognition o How we interpret analyze remember and use information about the social world o All of the information in our environment is too much to process So we operate on automatic pilot which increases efficiency Helps us prevent from getting bogged down Past experience provides a filter to help us interpret and evaluate new people and events Advantage efficiency o It is a lot easier to allow previous experiences to shape new perceptions than each experience to do it individually Disadvantage errors o A lot of times it is incorrect Social Cognition o We generally do not use all of available information People Heuristics o Many facts impact our cognitions The social part Influences Heuristics o Simple rules for making decisions in a rapid manner They are mental shortcuts that allow people to conserve their mental resources They usually work well enough we know how they work by observing the errors that they can produce o Two basic heuristics Representativeness Ex Linda is 31 years old single outspoken very bright She majored in philosophy at Yale As a student she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti nuclear demonstrations Linda is most likely to be o A a librarian o B a librarian involved in the feminist movement The majority choose B as the answer because they go off the personality information o No correct answer Representativeness heuristic Availability o A shortcut in which people judge things by how closely they resemble a prototype or a generic example people do not process the statistical likelihood of the match Ex Are there more words in the English language that start with K or for which K is the third letter letter o There are twice as many words with K as the 3rd letter than as the 1st But we think there are more with K as the 1st letter because it is easier to think of those they are more available Influences Ex Which in each pair causes more deaths per year Takes less cognitive work Ex Which in each pair causes more deaths per year o A stomach cancer o B motor vehicle accidents o A Tuberculosis o B Fire and flames Making judgments about the frequency or likelihood of an event based on the ease with which evidence or examples come to mind Actual frequency certainly influences how easily evidence comes to mind but other factors play a role as well Vividness Refers to the degree to which events are easily imagined and emotional o They are more vivid in the mind o This leads them to be more available and to be over weighted in judgment o Vivid stories sell newspapers also impacting their availability o Ex Hours after their marriage he stepped away from his new wife to complete his last will and testament Knowing it would not be long before capture imprisonment ridicule and death the newly wed couple took their own lives less than 2 days after their marriage It sounds sad at first but once we find out the story is about Hitler our perception changes o Sunk Cost Continuing to invest when it is clear the outcome is no longer desirable lost Good money after bad money Ex The longer the commitment in a relationship the harder it is to leave the o Framing relationship Changing preference without changing the objective information Ex 95 fat free compared to 5 free o The information is the same but it is presented in a way that is more Attraction effect appealing Choices closely matched in how preferable they are o The addition of an undesirable option sways decision towards the option it is most similar o Therefore the other cake would be more desirable than the doughnuts Compromise effect Options that require a tradeoff of one feature and another o Quality and price o Restaurants and wine No one wants to look really cheap and buy the cheapest priced wine or spend to much and buy the most expensive wine so restaurants put the wine that doesn t really sell as the middle wine o Defaults The pre existing or already chosen option is usually left unchanged If you leave something as the default it greatly increases the response o Ex The Fine Print and having I DO NOT accept as the default option 9 22 14 What information do we use o We are cognitive misers who are willing to take shortcuts to understand the social world Heuristics Categories schemas Use information we already have Schemas expectations o Mental representations of knowledge that include your preconceptions theories and o We have schemas for all sorts of things o People are categorizing machines o Mental structures that help organize knowledge about the social world and guide the selection interpretation and recall of information Makes world more predictable know what to expect Schemas applied to group stereotype Schemas also can be applied to specific individuals and to ourselves o Contains two kinds of knowledge Attributes Ex Birds have wings eat worms and fly Relations among attributes Ex Birds can fly because they have wings o Schemas are useful for 2 reasons They tell us what to expect and attend to what is normal They guide memory by filling in gaps what probably happened Thus they are very useful for making judgments quickly In some cases they help memory but our reliance on schemas can interfere with memory o Dictate the concepts that will be primed or most accessible o Influence what you see Memory judgment and perception Can even influence behavior 9 24 14 Magic Card Trick o Confirmation Bias The tendency to notice and search for information that confirms one s beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms one s beliefs The tendency to NOTICE and search for information that confirms one s beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms one s beliefs It is a cognitive phenomenon You can kind of distinguish differences because it is how we function It has nothing to do with what we necessarily want Motivated phenomenon Things where if we believe X then it will make us feel a lot better o Ex Doing well on a test will make you feel awesome o Wason Selection Task Our brain tends to seek out confirmatory information The Wason selection task is MUCH easier when framed in terms of a social contract The mind has evolved to understand social environments and social rules o Motivated confirmation bias Confirmatory information is sought because people want to maintain a certain belief For instance supporters and opponents of the death penalty were found to interpret the same evidence in opposite