Unit 2

• Cognitive psychology 


  The branch of psychology dedicated to studying how people think.
• Social Cognition


  An understanding of how our knowledge about our social worlds develop through experience, and influence of these knowledge structures on memory, information processing, attitudes, and judgement
• Framing effects

  • The same information presented in different ways will be interpreted differently
• Risky choice framing

  • treat risks differently if framed as loss or gain
• Attribute framing

  • the difference between the attitudes or judgments obtained from the numerically equivalent positive and negative labels
  • Ex. (Meat labeled as 70% lean vs. 30% fat)
  • Numerically there are the same thing
• Priming effects

  • Thinking of one concept primes concepts associated with it
  • Spreading activation
  • Method of operationalization
  • After priming a concept, measure:
  • Timing of response
  • Interpretation of ambiguous stimuli
  • Changes in behavior of free responses
• Automatic Cognition vs. Controlled Cognition

  • Intuitive vs. Rational
  • Unconscious vs. Conscious
  • Uncontrollable vs. Intentional
• Priming and Social Perception

  • Priming affects social perception too
  • Donald experiment
  • Positive condition: words like adventurous
  • Negative condition: words like reckless
• Algorithms

  • Systematic procedures
  • Step 1, Step 2,.....
• Heuristics

  • Mental shortcuts
  • Make a difficult problem easier-less effort, quicker, efficient
  • Can lead to biases-systematic errors
• Heuristics pt.2

  • Shortcuts: Simplify complex problems by basing our judgement on one more simple factor
  • 3 heuristics for intro to social psych
  • The representativeness heuristic-similarity to prototype
  • The availability heuristic-ease of retrieval
  • The fluency heuristic-ease of processing
• Prototype

  • "typical" category member
  • Objects are placed in a particular category if they resemble prototypical members of that category
• Representativeness Heuristics

  • Mental shortcut taken: Make the judgement based on the level of similarity to prototype
  • The Linda problem is an illustration of the conjunction fallacy- an error that gets made due to the representativeness heuristic
  • Base-rate neglect is another error that gets made due to the representativeness heuristic
• Conjunction Fallacy: A widespread error of judgement according to which a combination of two or more attributes is judged to be more probable or likely than either attribute on its own.
• The Availability Heuristic

  • Seem to base our judgement of the risk level on the ease of retrieval from memory
  • Ex. Plane crashes make people afraid of flying
• The Fluency Heuristic

  • Generally, the easier we can process something, we perceive it as "better" or "more"
  • Ex. someone being asked what they would like to eat for lunch
• Mere Exposure effect: The more we've been exposed to people/things. the more we like them
• ABC's of Attitudes

  • A: Attitude- relatively enduring evaluation of something
  • B: Behavior- actions( we usually use to infer internal thoughts)
  • C: Cognition- thoughts
• Theory of planned behavior: what influences our behavior

  • Attitude toward the behavior (how do I feel about the behavior, and how strongly?)
  • Subjective norms (how will other people perceive/respond?)
  • Perceived behavioral control (can I actually perform the behavior? Do I have control in this situation?)
• Operationalization of Attitudes

  • Self‐report – “Explicit” Attitudes
  • Such as Likert scales
  • All the problems of self‐report
  • Requires honesty & self‐awareness
  • Wording & order effects
  • Behavioral observation – “Implicit” Attitudes
  • For example:
  • Response latency (speed of response) = strength of attitude
  • Physiological measures = strength of attitude
  • Nonverbal measures (e.g., facial expression, head nodding)
• Somethings that causes Attitudes to form


  • Direct Experience
  • Observational learning
  • Seeking out new infomation
• Confirmation Bias(Also known as Motivated Reasoning)


  The tendency to seek out and interpret new info that only benefits our current beliefs and expectations
• Reconstructive Memory Bias


  We remember things that match our current beliefs better than those that don't.
• • Behaviors have a strong influence on attitudes
• Cognitive Dissonance


  Feelings of discomfort about self-inconsistencies
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory


  Inconsistency between thoughts or behaviors causes dissonance that must be alleviated
• Rationalization

  • after engaging in behavior, changeaffect & cognitions to fit
  • Effort Justification
  • Groups that require higher effort and more self-sacrifice can produce greater loyalty-perhaps because of effort justification
• The Festinger & Carlsmith experiment

  • A foundational study establishing attitude change as a form of dissonance reduction
  • All subjects completed along boring task(peg turning)
  • All subjects were asked to lie to the next participant tell them the task was enjoyable. All agreed to do so
  • Results
  • The people who were paid higher told the truth about the experiment
  • The people who were paid less actually lied about the task and said they would do it again
• Factors Eliciting Dissonance

  • Negative consequences that were foreseeable
  • "Insufficient justification"-behavior feels freely chosen, and don't recognize that the situation caused our behavior
  • Inconsistency with core values & beliefs
  • Self-affirmation can alleviate dissonance
• Self-Perception Theory

  • People infer their own attitudes by observing their ownbehavior
  • “Why did I do that? I must feel/believe _____.”
  • Rational process ‐ don’t need the idea of dissonance to explain why behavior  attitude
  • But self‐inconsistency does produce an emotional response (= dissonance), at least sometimes
  • Self‐perception theory may apply more than cognitive dissonance theory when behavior conflicts with non‐core‐beliefs
• The Overjustification effect: Providing an extrinsic motivation decreases intrinsic motivation


  • Can be interpreted with self‐perception theory:
  • “Why did I do that?” observe my behavior in the situation, and decide that I did it because of the external reward, not because I intrinsically enjoy it
  • Make an external attribution for own behavior vs. internal attribution
  • Overjustification can be a problem for long‐term motivation
  • Reward can increase behavior while the reward is given, but when the external reward is taken away, the behavior goes away too
• Types of Motivation

  • Extrinsic: Outside factor is motivating
  • Intrinsic: You're motivated for your own benefit
• Routes to persuasion


  • Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM)
  • Remember from social cognition:
  • Controlled cognition vs. Automatic cognition
  • Like algorithms vs. heuristics
  • Central route vs. Peripheral route to persuasion
  • Centrally/thoughtfully/systematically persuaded
  • Peripherally/spontaneously/heuristically persuaded
• Central Route to Persuasion- Thoughtful


  • How?
  • Logic & evidence
  • High quality argument
  • When?
  • Personal relevance & knowledge
  • Have capability to think carefully
• Peripheral Route to Persuasion- Automatic

  • When?
  • Less personal relevance-Trivial/unimportant decision
  • Less capable of thinking carefully(even if important)
  • How?-Shortcuts
  • Emotion-positive affect or fear appeals
  • "Shiny" people as sources
  • Amount of argument(vs. quality of argument)
  • Following the crowd("social proof")
• Embodied cognition is an approach to cognition that has roots in motor behavior
• Facial feedback hypothesis


  The theory that facial expression can activate and regulate emotions by influencing the processing of emotional stimuli
• Overjustification Effect: Tendency to become less intrinsically motivated to partake in an activity that we used to enjoy when offered an external incentive such as money or a reward.
• Effort Justification:  The tendency people have to defend or justify the amount of effort they put in by placing higher value on the goal achieved.
• Which persuation route to take

  • Source,message, & audience
  • Source characteristics(who)
  • Message characteristics(what/now)
  • Audience/receiver characteristics(to whom)