Social Psych Exam 2

• Social cognition is how we think and interpret the world around us
• Automatic thinking is when we don't think about what we are doing, we just do it
• Controlled thinking is deliberate and effortful thinking
• Schema is the current understanding of things and how they work
• Schema is a large part of automatic thinking
• Schemas impact what we notice, what we remember, and how we interpret
• Schemas come from experience and can vary by culture
• Schemas are accessible due to past experience, related to a current goal or is activated by recent experience
• Priming is the process by which a stimulus can influence the way we respond to a second stimulus
• Confirmation bias is when someone is more likely to notice what goes with what you believe - ignore/discredit what does not
• Priming example: when you are expecting a friend, you are more likely to think you heard the doorbell because you are expecting someone
• Mood also impacts what we see, what we remember and how we interpret it
• Belief perseverance is when it's hard to abandon a belief once we have a reason, even if there is contradictory evidence (we don't like to be wrong)
• To combat belief perseverance, make people explain the opposite. Asking them to be objective isn't enough!
• The self-fulfilling prophecy is when our expectations lead us to behave in ways that cause other people to confirm them
• Self fulfilling prophecy: your expectations -> impact your behavior unconsciously -> impacts their behavior unconsciously -> confirming your expectations
• Heuristics are simple rules for making judgements, shortcuts that often work but sometimes lead us astray
• We use heuristics more when we are uncertain or stressed - like schema
• Representativeness heuristic is when you classify something (guess likelihood) based on similarity to prototype (typical example)
• Availability heuristic is the tendency to judge how likely by how easily you can think of an example
• The problem with availability heuristics is that it could be easy because personal experience and/or media coverage don't match reality
• Anchoring and adjustment heuristic is the powerful tendency to start with what is given and make adjustments
• The anchoring and adjustment heuristic tends to work for sellers, charities and for stores "on sale"
• The status quo heuristic is the tendency to judge "old" is better than "new"

  • Even when they are identical
  • Outside our awareness
• Status quo heuristic example: someone will prefer a good they have had before rather than trying something new
• Optimism bias is the tendency to expect things to turn out well and the tendency to overlook risks (for ourselves)
• Overconfidence phenomenon is the tendency to be more confident than justified
• Confirmation bias, optimism bias and incompetence feed into the overconfidence phenomenon
• Planning fallacy is when we overestimate accuracy of our predictions
• Counterfactual thinking is when we imagine what might have happened, but didn't

  Often automatic
• Counterfactual thinking can help explain counterintuitive feelings and can sometimes be helpful in motivating to improve
• Counterfactual thinking can be hurtful if it leads to rumination ("if I had only did this") and can contribute to depression/anxiety
• Negativity bias is the automatic tendency to notice or remember negative info better than positive info
• Behavioral economics studies how economic decisions are influenced by physiological factors that indicate whate we value and how much we value it
• Person perception is our attempts to understand others

  • what they are like
  • why they do what they do
  • predict what they will do next
• why is person perception so important?

  doing this well is the basis of good social interactions
• Thin slicing is drawing conclusions about a person based on skills and personality
• Impression formation is when we observe visible behaviors and artifacts. Then, we infer what we don’t see
• Implicit personality theories is a type of schemes that we use to make assumptions about traits that go together
• Nonverbal communication is the use of body language, gestures, tone of voice and facial facial expressions