CHAPTER 3- Social Psychology

 How we construct social perceptions as we:

o Judge events, informed by implicit rules that guide our snap judgements, and by our
moods;

o Perceive and recall events through the filters of our own assumptions

o Explain events by sometimes attributing then to the situation, sometimes to the person;

o Expect certain events, thereby sometimes helping bring them about.

 System 1- functions automatically and out of our awareness; intuitive, automatic, unconscious,
and fast way of thinking; also called “intuition” or “gut feeling”. Influences more of our actions
than we realize.

 System 2- our conscious attention and effort; deliberate, controlled, conscious, and slower way
of thinking.

 Priming- is the awakening or activating of certain associations; activating particular associations

in memory. Effects surface when stimuli is presented subliminally.

 Memory system- web of associations

 Embodied cognition- the mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and
social jugements.

 Intuitive management- we should tune into our hunches

 Automatic processing- impulsive, effortless, and without awareness- System 1; “implicit”

thinking that is effortless, habitual, and without awareness; roughly corresponds to intuition.

 Controlled processing- reflective, deliberate, and conscious; “explicit” thinking- System 2

 Schemas- mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and
interpretations

 Emotional reactions- instantaneous, happening before there is time for deliberate thinking.
Eye/ear -> Thalamus (brain’s sensory switchboard) -> Amygdala (emotional control center) ->
Thinking cortex.

 Expertise- people may know intuitively the answer to a problem

 Snap judgement- can beat a chance at guessing when given but a very thin slice of someone.

 Blindsight- having lost a portion of the visual cortex to surgery or stroke, people may be
functionally blind in part of their field of vision.

 Overconfidence phenomenon- the tendency to be more confident than correct; to

overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs
 Confirmation Bias- we are eager to verify our beliefs but less inclined to seek evidence that
might disprove them; tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

 Three techniques to reduce overconfidence bias:

o Prompt feedback

o Estimating probable accuracy

o Get people to think why their judgements might be wrong

 Heuristics- simple efficient thinking strategies; a thinking strategy that enables quick efficient
judgments; enable us to make routine decisions with minimal effort

 Representative Heuristic- to judge something by intuitively comparing it to our mental

representation of a category to use; the tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary
odds, that somone or something belongs to a particular group if resampling (representing) a
typical member. Representativeness (typicalness) usually reflects reality. Snap judgement of
whether someone or something fits a category.

 Availability heuristics- a cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their
availability in memory. If instances of something come readily in mind, we presume it to be a
commonplace. Quick judgements of likelihood of events (how available in memory)

 Probability neglect- we worry about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities

 Counterfactual thinking- mentally simulating what might have been; imagining alternative
scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn’t. Underlies our feelings of luck.

 Illusory correlation- perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger

relationship than actually exists.

 Regression toward the average- the statistical tendency for extreme scoresor extreme behavior
to return toward one’s average

 Belief perseverance- persistence of one’s initial conceptions, such as when the basis of one’s
belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives

 Misinformation effect- Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event, after
witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it.

 Rosy retrospection- they recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced
them

 Misattribution- mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source

 Attribution theory- the theory of how people explain others’ behavior; attributing to internal
dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or external situations

 Dispositional attribution- attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and traits (stable
personality)
 Situational attribution- attributing behavior to the environment (situations)

 Spontaneous trait inference- an effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to

someone’s behavior.

 Fundamental attribution error- the tendency for observers to underestimate situational

influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior. Fundamental
because it colors our explanations in basic and important ways.

 Camera perspective bias

 Self-fulfilling prophecies- a belief that leads to its own fulfillment. Have less than extraordinary
power.

 Experimenter bias- participants sometimes live up to what they believe experimenters expect of
them

 Behavioral confirmation- a type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations

lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations