Social Psychology Chapter 5

Tom is a 41 years old who reads nonfiction books, listens to National Public Radio, and plays tennis in his spare time. Which is more likely?

- (Representativeness Heuristic) He is a truck diver, not a Ivy League professor. People assume he is a Ivy professor based on his activities, but people forget to realize how many more truck driver there are compared to Ivy league professors.

Stable Attributions?

- Ability - When people infer that an event or behavior is due to unchanging, permanent factors. This theory is heavily based on outcomes both positive and negative. Some of the things that influence this pattern are as simple as luck and effort level.

People are especially likely to generate _________ for unexpected behavior

- Attributions

People were scared to swim in the ocean after seeing Jaws. They thought they would get eaten by a great white next time they went swimming. People tend to worry more about drastic deaths that don't occur often then death that do occur often, like cancer for instance. What Heuristic might this example be?

- Availability Heuristic.

The actor/observer bias can produce many misunderstandings and disagreements. How so?

- Common for both sides to see themselves as responding to what the other does. "He started it!" is a common complaint.

Being Rational requires?

- Costly High order cognitive processes.

Stable vs. Unstable?

- Do you expect the person to behave that way consistently?

Unstable Attributions?

- Effort - it can change

Kelly's Covariation Model: - Consensus

- Example: Do multiple people behave the same way in the same situation? If the answer is yes, then consensus is high. If the answer is no, then consensus is low. Think about you and your friend in the restaurant. Are other people in the restaurant also eating three stacks of pancakes? You look around and see that everyone who has pancakes has three stacks, just like your friend. So, consensus is high for your friend's behavior.

You are at Standard and yelling your ass off at the bartender because he's a F****** D*** and is taking forever to serve you a drink. What attribution might this be?

- External (Actor) - Attributing your own behavior to the situation

Mental shortcuts that provide quick estimates about the likelihood of uncertain events?

- Heuristics

Kelly's Covariation Model - External attribution likely if?

- High consistency, high distinctiveness, high consensus.

Kelly's Covariation Model - Internal attribution likely if?

- High consistency, low distinctiveness, low consensus.

Kelly's Covariation Model: - Consistency

- How often does the behavior occur across time in this exact situation? For instance, does your friend always eat three stacks of pancakes when he eats breakfast at this restaurant? You two ate there last week, and he ate three stacks of pancakes then, too. So, consistency is high for the behavior.

Kelly's Covariation Model: - Distinctiveness

- How unique is the behavior of someone in a particular situation. Does a person behave the same way in all situations. - Does this person behave the same way in all situations? For instance, does your friend always eat three stacks of pancakes when he has breakfast, no matter where he is? You've seen him eat pancakes at a friend's house, where he only ate one stack. So, distinctiveness is high for your friend's behavior because it is distinct from normal behavior in any other location.

Watching a drunk ass frat kid trying to swoop in on a chick whiles shes dancing with her girlfriends. You see he is trying too hard and also notice that he looks like a damn idiot. What attribution might this be?

- Internal - Observers tend to attribute actors' behavior to the actors (internal).

Representativeness Heuristic?

- Judging the likelihood of something based on how well it matches a certain population - Usually an efficient and fairly accurate heuristic - Related to the base rate fallacy.

Simulation?

- Judging the likelihood or frequency of an event based on how easily you can imagine it (or mentally simulate) it.

Availability Heuristic?

- Judging things based on information currently available in memory. - Influenced by recent events. - Influenced by vivid cases E.g.: Fear of sharks.

Imagine that you and your friend are eating breakfast together at a restaurant. Your friend has ordered three stacks of pancakes and is ready to dig in. The question is, why is your friend eating three stacks of pancakes?

- Kelly's Covariation Model

Attribution - External

- Likely if there is high consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus (situational) - Situation - Students can make _______ attributions (student thought the test was too difficult).

Attribution - Internal

- Likely if there is high consistency, low distinctiveness, and low consensus. - Personality, mood, ability - When students perform poorly in the classroom, teachers make_____ attributions ( the student failed because he didn't study hard enough)

People are biased Unmotivated?

- Limited Process Capacity

External and Unstable

- Luck - If you attribute someone's success or failure to luck, there is very little credit or blame due to the person, nor is there any reason to expect the same result next time

Heurisitcs

- Mental shortcut - General rule that is usually correct - Heuristics allow for quick answers, but they can lead us astray... - What are the chances that I get pulled over if I'm going 20 over the speed limit? - What is the likelihood of getting a high paying job right after college?

People are ______ rational, unbiased information processors?

- NOT

Castro speech experiment?

- Participants read pro-Castro VS anti-Castro essays; some told that the people chose what kind of essay to write, others told that people were assigned what kind of essay to write (DV: How pro-Castro was the essay writer?)

Cognitive Misers?

- People reluctance to do much extra thinking. - Often take quick and easy answers rather than thinking long and hard about things.

Self Serving Bias?

- People want to take credit for success but deny blame for failure.

Self-Serving Attribution Bias?

- People's tendency to make internal attributions for their own success and external attributions for their own failure.

Priming?

- Planting or activating an idea in someone's mind. William James describes this as the "wakening of associations."

Relating different words together like Nurse which then leads to doctors, or baby which then related to cradle. what is this called?

- Priming

What does Covariation mean?

- Refers to your ability to observe how two or more variables change in relation to each other.

When we focus on whether a description is representative of a category's members, we often ignore useful base rate information. I.e., we commit base-rate neglect

- Representativeness Heuristic

This attribution is especially strong when people are explaining their success and failures to others. This implies that they care more about what others think of them than about how someone thinks of themselves. In other words, this is an important feature of self presentation.

- Self Serving Bias.

People are biased Motivated?

- Self enhancement

An athlete at the Olympics one a silver and the other participant won a bronze medal. You would think the silver medalist would be more happier than the bronze but its actually the opposite. The bronze winner is happier because je or she barely made it on the podium to where the silver medalist is thinking about how close he or she was to the gold medal. What Heuristic is this?

- Simulation Heuristic.

External and Stable

- Task Difficulty - People are likely to get the same result because the crucial cause lies in the task, not in the person doing it.

Conjunction Rule?

- The probability of the conjunction of two events cannot be larger than the probability of either of its constituent events.

Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic?

- The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by using a starting point (called an anchor) and then making adjustments up or down.

Fundamental Attribution Error

- The tendency to make internal attributions for other people's behavior, even when plausible situational explanations exist - subtype of the actor-observer bias - Also called correspondence bias - Several explanations for this

Actor-Observer Bias?

- The tendency to make internal attributions for others' behaviors, but external attributions for one's own behaviors

Embodied Cognition?

- Thinking is influenced by aspects of the body - e.g., interpersonal warmth, also power posing

Fundamental Attribution Error - Kelly's Covariation Model

- Whether we will make internal attributions for others' behavior depends on: - Consistency - Distinctiveness - Consensus - It also explains what information we gather through perception, and how it's used to form a judgment about someone's behavior.

Social Cognition

The process by which people think about and makes sense of social environments

Attribution

The process of explaining why a person engaged in a certain behavior