Please respond to
all
of the following:
- What are some of the mental processes that help us function smoothly in our environment?
- What are some of the mental processes that hurt our functioning?
- In what ways has the research found these two types of processes overlap?
–For example, is it helpful or hurtful to make quick decisions with guns in our hands?
–Or, is it helpful or hurtful to react to people in the spur of the moment?
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Three or four paragraph response, you can reference the Power point sources and/or the textbook.
Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S. R. (2018).
Social Psychology
(10th ed.). Pearson.
PSYC 2160: Social Psychology Social Psychology Elliot Aronson University of California, Santa Cruz Timothy D. Wilson University of Virginia Robin M. Akert Wellesley College Slides prepared by Travis Langley, Henderson State University (Additional slides prepared by Weylin Sternglanz and Amanda Mahaffey, Nova Southeastern University) 7th edition * Chapter 3 Social Cognition: How We Think about the Social World “The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to become conscious of none.” –Thomas Carlyle * Social Cognition: How We Think about the Social World Social Cognition How people think about themselves and the social world, or more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions The study of social cognition is a central topic in social psychology The assumption is that people are generally trying to form accurate impressions of the world and do so much of the time Because of the nature of social thinking, however, people sometimes form erroneous impressions Two Kinds of Social Cognition Quick and automatic “without thinking,” without consciously deliberating on one’s own thoughts, perceptions, assumptions. Controlled thinking that is effortful and deliberate, pausing to think about self and environment, carefully selecting the right course of action. On Automatic Pilot: Low-Effort Thinking People often size up a new situation very quickly they figure out who is there, what is happening, and what might happen next Often these quick conclusions are correct You can tell the difference between a college classroom and a frat party without having to think about it Imagine a different approach: Every time you encounter a new situation you stop and think about it slowly and deliberately, like Rodin’s statue “The Thinker .” Imagine driving down the road and stopping repeatedly to analyze every twist and turn Imagine you meet a new person and excuse yourself for 15 minutes to analyze what you learned from them Automatic Thinking Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless We form impressions of people quickly and effortlessly and navigate new roads without much conscious analysis of what we are doing We engage in an automatic analysis of our environments, based on past experiences and knowledge of the world People as Everyday Theorists: Automatic Thinking with Schemas Schemas Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember The term schema encompasses our knowledge about many things: Other people Ourselves Social roles (e.g., what a librarian or engineer is like) Specific events (e.g., what usually happens when people eat a meal in a restaurant) In each case, our schemas contain our basic knowledge and impressions that we use to organize what we know about the social world and interpret new situations Stereotypes About Race and Weapons When applied to members of a social group such as a fraternity or gender or race, schemas are commonly referred to as stereotypes Stereotypes can be applied rapidly and automatically when we encounter other people Payne and colleagues (2001) rapidly showed college students pairs of pictures Participants were told to pay attention to press one key if certain pictures showed a tool and another key if it was a gun People were significantly more likely to misidentify a tool as a gun when it was preceded by a black face than when it was preceded by a white face Stereotypes About Race and Weapons Stereotypes About Race and Weapons Correll, Park, and Judd, 2002 Another line of research involved awarding video game players points for shooting characters holding weapons but subtracting points for shooting characters holding tools Results showed they made the most errors, shooting an unarmed person, when a black person was not holding a gun When the men in the picture were white, participants made about the same number of errors whether the men were armed or unarmed Police officers generally hold the same shooter bias as other research participants The Function of Schemas Schemas are typically very useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and to fill in the gaps of our knowledge Schemas are particularly important when we encounter information that can be interpreted in a number of ways, because they help us reduce ambiguity Students told that a speaker is warm will interpret his lecture more favorably even though people who were told he is a cold person do not receive his lecture as favorably, even though both groups hear the same lecture Schemas as Memory Guides Schemas also help people fill in the blanks when they are trying to remember things We don’t remember exactly as if our minds were cameras Instead, we remember some information that was there (particularly information our schemas lead us to pay attention to), and we remember other information that was never there but that we have unknowingly added Examples: Ask people what is the most famous line of dialogue in the classic movie Casablanca, and they will probably say, “Play it again, Sam.” Ask them what is the most famous line from the original Star Trek TV series, and they will probably say, “Beam me up, Scotty.” Here is a piece of trivia that might surprise you: Both of these lines are reconstructions. The characters never said them Schemas as Memory Guides Memory reconstructions tend to be consistent with one’s schemas People who read a story about a marriage proposal can later insert incorrect details that had not been in the story (e.g., future plans, roses) but were consistent with a marriage proposal schema The fact that people filled in the blanks in their memory with schema-consistent details suggests that schemas become stronger and more resistant to change over time Which Schemas are Applied?: Accessibility and Priming Accessibility The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to be used when we are making judgments about the social world. Priming The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept Accessibility Something can become accessible for three reasons: Some schemas are chronically accessible due to past experience these schemas are constantly active and ready to use to interpret ambiguous situations Something can become accessible because it is related to a current goal Schemas can become temporarily accessible because of our recent experiences Priming Suppose you read about a man named Donald whose actions are ambiguous, interpretable in either a positive or negative manner People who previously memorize words like adventurous tend to form positive impressions of him People primed with words like reckless and stubborn form negative impressions Priming is a good example of automatic thinking because it occurs quickly, unintentionally, and unconsciously Priming Making Our Schemas Come True: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Teachers led to believe particular students will bloom Create a warmer emotional climate for those students, giving them more personal attention, encouragement, and support Give “bloomers” more challenging material Give “bloomers” more and better feedback Give “bloomers” more opportunities to respond in class and give them longer to respond Mental Strategies and Shortcuts When deciding which job to accept, what car to buy, or whom to marry, we usually do not conduct a thorough search of every option Mental shortcuts are efficient, however, and usually lead to good decisions in a reasonable amount of time What shortcuts do people use? One way is to use schemas to understand new situations When making specific kinds of judgments and decisions, however, we do not always have a ready-made schema to apply At other times, there are too many schemas that could apply, and it is not clear which one to use. What do we do? Mental Strategies and Shortcuts Judgmental Heuristics Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently Heuristics do not guarantee that people will make accurate inferences about the world Sometimes heuristics are inadequate for the job at hand or are misapplied, leading to faulty judgments people use heuristics for a reason: Most of the time, they are highly functional and serve us well How Easily Does It Come to Mind? The Availability Heuristic Availability Heuristic A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind Example: When physicians are diagnosing diseases, it might seem straightforward for them to observe people’s symptoms and figure out what disease, if any, they have. Sometimes, though, symptoms might be a sign of several different disorders. Do doctors use the availability heuristic, whereby they are more likely to consider diagnoses that come to mind easily? Several studies of medical diagnoses suggest that the answer is yes. How Easily Does It Come to Mind? The Availability Heuristic Do people use the availability heuristic to make judgments about themselves? Researchers had people remember examples of their own past assertive behaviors People asked to think of six examples rated themselves as relatively assertive because it was easy to think of this many examples (“Hey, this is easy—I guess I’m a pretty assertive person”). People asked to think of twelve examples rated themselves as relatively unassertive because it was difficult to think of this many examples (“Hmm, this is hard—I must not be a very assertive person”). How Similar Is A to B? The Representativeness Heuristic Representativeness Heuristic A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case Base Rate Information Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population Taking Things at Face Value: Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic A mental shortcut whereby people use a number or value as a starting point and then adjust insufficiently from this anchor Suppose you’re a judge sentencing a felon after your friend had his 75th birthday. Without realizing why the number 75 came to your mind, you might think, “75 is too high. I’ll sentence this person to 60 years.” What if your granddaughter just had her 5th birthday? You might impose a lower sentence. This is, in fact, the kind of thinking judges showed in a recent study. The Power of Unconscious Thinking Part of the definition of automatic thinking is that it occurs unconsciously Although unconscious processes can sometimes lead to tragic errors, unconscious thinking is frequently critical to navigating our way through the world Have you ever been chatting with someone at a party and suddenly realized that someone across the room had mentioned your name? The only way this could happen is if, while you were engrossed in conversation, you were unconsciously monitoring other conversations to see if something important came up (such as your name). This so-called "cocktail party" effect has been demonstrated under controlled experimental conditions. The Power of Unconscious Thinking There is even evidence that our unconscious minds can do better at some tasks than our conscious minds can do Suppose you were shopping for an apartment and after looking at several places you narrowed your choice to four possibilities Each one has pros and cons, making it difficult to decide which apartment to rent. How should you go about making up your mind?