PSY210 Social Psych Exam 1

Distinguish between automatic processing and controlled processing

(A) unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings, or situational -emotional -takes over before conscious thought (C)The carrying out of a cognitive task with a deliberate allocation of cognitive resources. Typically, controlled processing occurs on difficult and/or unfamiliar tasks requiring attention and is under conscious control -occurs after automatic processing -not as emotional -can result in incompatible attitudes in the same person toward members of outgroups -a person may be just as prejudice as the one who expresses it explicitly but may not be aware of their feelings -ex: white people take longer to classify black faces wit pleasant stimuli than to classify white faces with pleasant stimuli (also true for those who showed no overt prejudices)

Distinguish between basic science and applied science

(BASIC)Science concerned with trying to understand some phenomenon in its own right, with a view toward using that understanding to build valid theories about the nature of some aspect of the world. -ex: social psychologists who study the obedience of people to an authority figure in the laboratory -can give rise to theories that can lead to interventions (APP)science concerned with solving some real-world problem of importance -ex: study of how to make preteens less susceptible to cigarette advertising -can produce results that feed back into basic science

Describe schemas and compare top- down processing and bottom-up processing

Top Down: "theory-driven" mental processing, in which one filters and interprets new information in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations. -actively construed -stored information is stored in coherent configurations, or schemas Bottom Up: "Data-driven" mental processing, in which one takes in and forms conclusions on the basis of the stimuli encountered in one's experience -taking relevant stimuli from the outside world -ex: text on a page -passively recorded

Explain what determines whether a schema is activated and if it is applied

most of the time there is more than one schema for a person -ex: waitress, republican, triathlete different schemas: -recent activation -frequent activation and chronic accessibility -consciousness of activation -similarity, or feature matching -misleading similarities -expectations

Describe cross- cultural differences in causal attribution

most of the world's people tend to pay more attention to social situations and the people who are involved in them than do westerners -situations: background-northamerican, salient-rest of the world -americans better at absolute judgement (ignore context) -japanese better at the relative judgement (pay attention to context)

Describe illusory correlations

perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists -when availability and representative heuristics work in tandem -ex: a paranoid individual drawing a person with large eyes will be particularly noteworthy and memorable -can be reduced with training

Describe self- presentation and generate examples of self- presentation strategies, self monitoring

presenting the person that we would like others to believe we are -actively create in our social interactions -shaped by the perceptions of other people -shaped by perceptions we want others to have of us -aka impression management -Goffman: naturalistic observations -response cries -dramaturgic perspective -self-monitoring

Define self-regulation and distinguish between automatic and deliberate (controlled) forms

processes that people use to initiate, alter, and control their behavior in the pursuit of goals, including the ability to resist short-term awards that thwart the attainment of long-term goals -resisting temptation, delaying gratification (automatic) -If you have a VERY strong goal, seeing temptations may help you self-control -Use temptation as a reminder of your goal -These strategies influence behavior as well as thoughts (controlled) -Self-presentation/ Impression management Presenting the person that we would like others to believe we are -Attempt to control how other people will view us

Explain how social class relates to causal attribution

within a particular culture or ethnicity, people from different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum arrive at very different causal explanations for events -study found that lower class or working class individuals resemble individuals from interdependent cultures in their attributional tendencies -lower and working class individuals were more likely to invoke situational causes -higher class more likely to invoke dispositional causes -lower social class individuals live in worlds where attention to other people is more necessary for effective functioning that it is for higher-social class ppl

Distinguish between internal validity, external validity, and reliability

(EX)Degree to which results of an experiment can be applied to real-life situations. -sometimes not always essential, sometimes experiments can have no real world application but still have external validity example: Milgrim obedience study (INT)in experimental research, confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produced the results -essential in any experiment -experimental situation held constant with all other aspects -random assignment essential -experimental set up seem plausible & realistic to participants (REL)the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting -ex: taking IQ test twice and getting the same score -measured between 0-1

Distinguish between hypotheses and theories

(H)A prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances (T)A body of related propositions intended to describe some aspect of the world -have support by empirical data -have led to greater understanding of natural phenomena

Describe factors that contribute to self- esteem

(HIGH) may foster narcissism, if so can be violent and short tempered -leads to positive future outcomes if it is not narcissistic -different types of high self esteem (LOW) 1) overly sensitive to criticism, afraid to make mistakes 2) overly critical of self & others 3) blames others 4) fear of competition 5) jealous or possessive -leads to negative future outcomes

Distinguish between in dependent (individualistic) and interdependent (collectivistic) cultures; explain how these cultural differences relate to the ways people think, feel, and behave

(I)cultures in which people tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection and organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people and having attributes that exist in the absences of any connection to others ex: united states, canada, Australia -concept of self distinct from others -can act on ones own -conviction that rules governing behavior should apply to everyone -need for individual distinctiveness -pref. for egalitarianism and achieved status based on accomplishments (C)cultures in which people tend to define themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group and placing less importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives ex: Middle east, Latin american countries, east asians -concept of self linked to others -preference for collective action -desire for harmonious relationships -acceptance of hierarchy and ascribed status based on age, group membership, etc. -preference for rules that take context and particular relationships into account

Describe self-narratives and self-schemas

(NAR)-Or "autobiographical memory" •Develop one's personal identity •Achieve a more accurate understanding of self -Emerge at 2 to 2.5 years -Definitions for narrated self •Past event •Child as protagonist •First person •Conversational -Co-narrated with others -Story Telling -we tell these self narratives to important people in our lives (parent or best friend) -tell them to integrate goals, make sense of conflict, explain how we change over time -westerners recall events from first person -easterners recall events from third person (SCHEM)Cognitive structures, derived from past experience, that represent a person's beliefs and feelings about the self in particular domains -remember things that support the idea of who they are (conscientious, remember more things in which they were) -organizing function -schema relevant traits that you hold in high regard (intellectual curiosity) tend to process information in those areas more quickly *Furthermore, schemas are applied to the self. Each person builds up a view of the self, a self-schema or series of self-schemas that structure the processing of self-relevant information and guide behavior. * Self-schemas are generally (a) larger and more complex than other schemas, (b) richer in their network of associations and relationships among components, (c) more frequently activated in daily information processing, and (d) loaded with emotion *The self-schema does not contain all information about the person. Rather, it emphasizes personally significant information about the self.

Define self-esteem and distinguish between trait self- esteem and state self- esteem

(TRAIT) persons enduring level of self regard across time -fairly stable (STATE) the dynamic changeable self-evaluations that are experienced as momentary feelings about the self -rises and falls according to transient moods and specific construal processes that arise in diff. situations (ex: mood shifts self-esteem)

Explain what the Milgram Experiment and the Good Samaritan Study reveal about the power of the situation

- teacher (participant) was asked to make the student (confederate) learn a list of words and administer an electric shock whenever the student made a mistake - greater proximity between teacher and student increased likelihood of shocking - less likely to deliver shock if received orders by telephone, location was moved from Yale to warehouse, an assistant teacher refused to obey

Describe situationism and its relationship to one's sense of self

-Aspects of the self may change depending on the situation -This notion that the social self changes across different contexts is consistent with the principle of situationism -Social context -Sense of self may shift dramatically depending on with whom we are interacting -We may feel different about the self when interacting with authority figures than when interacting with subordinates

Discuss what aspects of self- esteem, besides high versus low level, relate to behavior and outcomes

-Downward social comparisons may boost self-esteem by making us feel better about the self- e.g., compare to worst -Upward social comparisons may motivate self-improvement- e.g., compare to best

Explain how firsthand information about the world can be misleading, pluralistic ignorance, self-fulfilling prophecy

-FH can also be deceptive: -inattentive info about events -misconstrue events -unrepresentative (meet one person and you think everyone who shares similarities to them are like that) -some FH info we get is from other peoples behavior, but their behavior may not be genuine as they are trying to make a first impression (pluralistic ignorance) -pluralistic ignorance common in situations where "toughness" is valued -gangs -different ethnicities worried that someone from ethnicity other than theirs would not want to talk to them (stops people from becoming friends)

Describe the procedures used to maintain the ethicality of social psychological research

-Research conducted at universities must be approved by an institutional review board (IRB) -Informed consent -A person's signed agreement to participate in a procedure or research study after learning all the relevant aspects

Explain how secondhand information about the world can be misleading

-SH info would be gossip, news, biographies, textbooks, etc. -many of our judgments based on SH info factors that play a part in reliability of SH info: -Ideological Distortions -Distortions in the service of entertainment: overemphasis on Bad News -Effects of the Bad-news bias -Differential attention to Positive and Negative Information

Describe the evolutionary perspective on social behavior

-controversial -gives people excuse to views different races as subset of species -view that men and women different is objectionable to some -can lead people to incorrectly believe that biology is destiny

Explain how family and other socialization agents contribute to one's sense of self

-parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers -above teach children what is socially appropriate and valued attitudes and behavior -directly: tell them specifically ex: "say thank you" -indirectly: modeling -shape our sense of self

Compare the intuitive system and the rational system

-intuitive -rational Intuitive: -operates quickly and automatically -based on associations -performs many operations simultaneously (parallel) -always produces an answer to problem -can sometimes produce a response that "seems right" and can do so with such speed that the rational system in never engaged (heuristic) Rational: -slower -more controlled -based on rules and deduction -performs operations one at a time (serially) -intuitive decision sometimes overruled by rational they can at times agree, and at times, disagree

Explain how culture and gender contribute to one's sense of self

-westerners concerned with the individual -weaved into the constitution -currently childrens books about strong self worth -american parents want to raise independent, confident children -independent cultures value higher levels of self esteem (interdependent opposite) -non-westerners more concerned with other ways to feel good about themselves (self improvement and collective goals) -situationist hypothesis: westerners create social interactions that enhance self-esteem (americans more often appraised than japanese)

Describe five types of research methods social psychologists use

1. Natural Experiments 2. Archival Research 3. Deception research 4. Correlational Research 5. Experimental Research

Describe the actor- observer difference in causal attribution and the causes of this difference

A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor (who is relatively disposed to make situational attributions) or the observer (who is relatively disposed to make dispositional attributions) -ex: married couples fight over attributional differences Man: It was traffic, woman: you just don't care -has no single cause Process: -assumption about what needs explaining can vary for actors and observers -perceptual salience of the actor and the surrounding situation is different for the actor and the observer (actor is oriented outward, toward situational opportunities), (observers are focused on the actor and the actors behavior) -actors and observers differ in the amount and kind of info they have about the actor and the actor's behavior (actors know what intentions influenced them, observers can only guess)

Define the representativeness heuristic and describe examples, including base- rate neglect, the planning fallacy, and the resemblance between cause and effect

A mental shortcut. We take one trait of something or someone, and compare it to something or someone similar, and then we assume that the new object behaves the same way as or shares additional traits with the familiar or compared object Judgment can be flawed if we pick out the wrong trait -can be between individuals, group prototypes or between cause and effect base-rate neglect -tendency for people to ignore or utilize base-rate information when assessing whether someone belongs to a particular category Two circumstances that encourage base rate information: 1) whether the base-rate info has some causal significance to the task at hand 2) circumstances that encourage an outside perspective planning fallacy The tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project -paradox -people's overly optimistic assessments about their ability to finish a current project exist side by side with their knowledge that they amount of time needed in the past has typically exceeded their original estimates -optimistic forecasts caused by approaching task from exclusively inside perspective -ex: inside perspective: "what steps are required to complete this project?" doesn't take into account informative outside perspective: "how often do I get such things done on time?" cause and effect people are predisposed to look for an accept causal relationships in which like does with like -big effects = big causes -complicated effects = complicated causes -validated by every day experience -sometimes small causes create big effects ex: AID's-> tiny virus, detrimental effect -ex: astrology represents a portion of the persons personality

Describe explanatory style and the outcomes with which it is associated

A person's habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific. -internal/external: yourself or other circumstances -stable/unstable: present again in the future or not -global/specific: is something that influences other areas of their lives or just one -less prone to despair: external/unstable/specific

Explain the concept of ego-depletion

A state, produced by acts of self-control, in which people lack the energy or resources to engage in further acts of self-control -can be exhausting psychologically ways around exhaustion: -incentives (money) -sugar

Describe self- discrepancy theory

A theory that behavior is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and ought selves, Falling short of these standards produces specific emotions--dejection-related emotions for actual-ideal discrepancies, and agitation-related emotions for actual-ought discrepancies

Define channel factors

Certain situational circumstances that appear unimportant on the surface but that can have great consequences for behavior, either facilitating or blocking it or guiding behavior in a particular direction. helps determine which path will be likely taken vs. another path

Describe the covariation principle, including the three types of covariation used

Covariation Principle: The idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that co-occur with the behavior -try to identify the cause that seems always present when the effect or phenomenon occurs and always seems to be absent when the effect does not occur 1) Consensus: What most people would do in a given situation--that is, whether most people would behave the same way or few or no other people would behave that way Attribution/Consensus: -external attribution is likely if the behavior is HIGH in consensus (everyone raves about the class) -internal attribution is likely if the behavior is LOW in consensus (hardly anyone raves about the class) 2) Distinctiveness: What an individual does in different situations--that is, whether the behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in all situations Attribution/Consensus -external attribution is likely if the behavior is HIGH distinctiveness (your friend does not rave about many other classes) -internal attribution is likely if the behavior is LOW in distinctiveness (your friend raves about all classes) 3) Consistency: What an individual does in a given situation on different occasions--that is, whether next time under the same circumstances, the person would behave the same or differently Attribution/Consensus -external attribution is likely if the behavior is HIGH in consistency (your friend frequently raves about the class) -internal attribution is likely if the behavior is HIGH in consistency (your friend has raved about the class on many occasions)

Compare the discounting principle and the augmentation principle

Discounting: The idea that we should assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if there are other plausible causes that might have produced it. -ex: The large amount of possibilities that someone would like someone, like money, security, house makes it seem like love isn't the real cause of the relationship. -multiple causes = not personality -most people would behave the same way in the same situation -can be difficult to know what to conclude about someone who behaves "in role" but easy to figure out what to think about someone who acts "out of role" -ex: someone who acts outgoing when he should be subdued is assumed to be a TRUE extravert; someone who acts withdrawn when he should be outgoing is assumed to be a TRUE introvert Augmentation: the idea that we should assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if there are other causes present that normally would produce the opposite outcome -ex: if someone advocates a position despite being threatened with torture for doing so, we can safely conclude that the person truly believes in that position -can be difficult to know what to conclude about someone who behaves "in role" but easy to figure out what to think about someone who acts "out of role" -ex: someone who acts outgoing when he should be subdued is assumed to be a TRUE extravert; someone who acts withdrawn when he should be outgoing is assumed to be a TRUE introvert

Describe social comparison theory

Festinger suggested that people compare themselves to others because, for many domains and attributes, there is no objective yardstick with which to evaluate the self, so we compare ourselves to others to gain this information. -to get an accurate send of how good you are at something you must compare yourself with people who have approx. your level of skill

Describe the key features of experimental research

In social psychology, research that randomly assigns people to different conditions, or situations, and that enables researchers to make strong inferences about how these different conditions affect people's behavior

Define causal attribution and describe the goals of attribution theory

Linking an instance of behavior to a cause, such as inferring that a personality trait was responsible for a behavior -central to much of social life -crucial to understand everyday social behavior -we all make causal attributions many times a day -affect our thoughts, feelings, and future behaviors

Define schemas and describe their relationship to social behavior

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 -what kind of behavior to expect when dealing with a minister, sales clerk, professor, panhandler -lead us to have certain expectations

Describe the hindsight bias and explain its relevance to social psychology

People's tendency to be overconfident about whether they could have predicted a given outcome

Describe the key features of correlational research

Research that does not involve random assignment to different situations, or conditions, and that psychologists conduct just to see whether there is a relationship between the variables -can be very helpful in alerting investigators to various possibilities for valid causal hypotheses about the nature of the world -best option when experimental studies would be difficult or unethical -don't tell direction of causality -don't tell if third variable driving results

Define the fundamental attribution error

The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions or traits on behavior -one should look for situational factors that might be affecting someone's behavior before assuming that the person has dispositions that match that behavior

Describe the self- verification motive, SEM model

The process by which people try to bring others to treat them in a manner that confirms their self-conceptions. (SEM) -Self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model -People are motivated to view themselves favorably, and do so through 2 processes: 1) Reflection: we flatter ourselves by association with others' accomplishments 2) Comparison: assessing how our ability or performance stacks up to that of others

Explain the importance of replication

The reproducing of the results of a scientific study - Scientific controversy is sometimes generated by failures to replicate and by accusations of incompetence on the part of investigators

Describe the fundamental attribution error and the causes of this bias

The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others -see peoples actions as a reflection of the kind of people they are rather than as a result of the situation they find themselves in -called "fundamental" both because the problem people are trying to solve (figuring out what someone is like from a sample of behavior) is so basic and essential and because the tendency to think dispositionally (to attribute behavior to the person while ignoring important situational factors) is so common and pervasive Cause: -motivational influence and the belief in a just world -people are often more salient than situations -attribution and cognition -Salient situations

Describe the influence of schemas on attention, memory, construal, and behavior

affect judgments in many ways: by directing our attention, structuring our memories, and influencing our construals -sometimes lead us to mischaracterize the world attention -selective -cannot focus on everything -pay attention to what we consider most important and ignore the rest -ex: group asked to watch a video and count how many times a team passed a basketball, midway through the video a person in a gorilla suit walked through them playing, hardly anyone noticed memory -schemas influence memory -most likely to remember those stimuli that most captured our attention -important for judgement and subsequent action -many judgements not made immediately, made later based on info retrieved from memory -ex: two groups asked to watch a video of a woman, one group told woman was a librarian, other group told she was a waitress, the video contained equal amount of stereotypes for both labels, those that were told she was a waitress remembered more "waitress-like" behavior and the same for those told she was a librarian -schemas affect encoding info and retrieval of info -effect on encoding is typically much stronger construal -affect the way we interpret, or construe, information -information already stored in the brain can influence how people construe new information -mostly occurs when stimulus is ambiguous -in such cases, we must rely more heavily on top-down processes to compensate for the inadequacies of the info obtained from the bottom up behavior -schemas influence behavior -studies have shown that certain types of behavior are elicited automatically when people are exposed to stimuli in the environment that bring to mind a particular schema -ex: activating the concept of the elderly for some of the participants in an experiment made them walk more slowly down the hall because the "slow" trait is associated with the elderly -people think of themselves as more intelligent (and act that way) when viewing themselves through the lens on a professor than they do when viewing themselves through the lens of a fashion model -the activation of SPECIFIC MEMBERS of a stereotyped group, tends to yield behavior that contrasts with the stereotype in question ex: einstein makes people feel unintelligent (high standard), claudia schiffer makes people feel smart (low standard)

Theory of mind

an awareness that other people's behavior may be influenced by beliefs, desires, and emotions that differ from one's own -recognize before age two -by age 3-4 children recognize other people's beliefs are false -autism negatively affects ability to recognize theory of mind -comes prewired

Describe situational construals

environmental stimuli that affect a person's behavior. people influenced by these (construal) people's interpretation and inference about the stimuli or situations they confront ex: freedom fighters v. terrorists, migrant workers v. illegal aliens

Describe the snap judgments people make about others and consider whether these judgments are accurate

fairest summary of current research in people's snap judgements about facial appearance may hold a kernel of truth, but it is a very small kernel -snap judgements do predict more considered consensus opinions very well -(how well other people rate them on a non snap way)

Describe the self-enhancement motive

refers to peoples desire to maintain, increase or protect their self-esteem or self views -various strategies used to protect

Distinguish between social psychology and related fields

sociology is the study of behavior of people. They study institutions, subgroups, bureaucracies, mass movements, and changes in demographic characteristics of populations. Social psych will sometimes do sociological work Sociologist might study how economic or gov't policy influence marriage and divorce rates in a population, whereas social psych would be more likely to study why individuals fall in love, get married and sometimes get divorced

Define social psychology and describe its value for our society

the branch of psychology that studies persons and their relationships with others and with groups and with society as a whole

Define framing effects and describe examples, including spin framing, positive and negative framing, and temporal framing

the influence on judgement resulting from the way information is presented, including the order of presentation or how it is worded -order effects form of pure framing effect spin framing Using better words -frame buying decision in terms favorable to the product being advertised -Ex: Defense department instead of War department positive and negative framing How information is framed has power. If you emphasize losses, people are going to pay more attention to that and be more threatened. -mixed nature of things means that it can be framed as good or bad -ex: a piece of meat described as 75 percent lean is considered more appealing than one described as having 25 percent fat. condoms 90% success rate vs 10% failure rate. -positive framing: go from negative view to positive -negative framing: go from positive view to negative -negative framing-> more attraction-> stronger response Temporal Phrasing actions from a certain time perspective: past, present, future -actions and events come framed within a particular time perspective -construal level theory

Describe two order effects

the order in which items are presented can have a powerful influence on judgement ex: how happy are you with life in general, then; how many dates have you gone on in the past month -depending on the order of those questions will change the answers to them primacy effect: This is the tendency for the first items presented in a series to be remembered better or more easily, or for them to be more influential than those presented later in the series. -ex: intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn -remember the first two words better and have already made a judgement of a person off of them; more favorable -result from tendency to pay attention to stimuli presented early on -when stubborn follows positive traits in is interpreted charitably recency effect: tendency to remember information at the end of a body of information better than the information at the beginning of it -people forget the beginning if it is a long session, and only remember the last portion

Define the availability heuristic and describe examples, including assessments of risk, contributions to joint projects, and fluency

the process whereby judgments of FREQUENCY or probability are based on the ease with which pertinent instances are brought to mind -if examples can be quickly brought to mind, there must be good reason for that -reasonably accurate guide to overall frequency and probability -ex: recalling german military aggression vs. swiss military aggression, remember german because it has happened more often than swiss -not infallible; sometimes some things are just more memorable, and has nothing to do with it's frequency -doesn't pertain to the frequency you have recalled them, just the frequency they have occurred Risk -the ease of generating examples seems to guide people's judgements over the amount of examples they retrieve Joint projects -people tend to overestimate their own contributions -because we devote so much energy and attention to our own contributions-> more available to use -holds for positive and negative outcomes (meaning people aren't just trying to make themselves look better) Fluency -the feeling of ease associated with processing info -a clear image is easy to process: broccoli -an irregular word (ex: imbroglio) is hard to process (disfluent) -influences the perceived difficulty of a task that is being described -ex: when the font of a recipe is hard to read people assume the recipe itself is difficult to make -disfluency makes people slow down, be careful

Describe Kurt Lewin's theory of the field of forces

the role of social situation in guiding behavior, the power of the situation. the main situational influences on our behavior, influences we often misjudge or fail to see altogether, are the actions and presense of other people -we rely on other people for clues about what emotions to feel in various situations and even to define who we are as individuals

Define the self- serving attributional bias

the tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances, but to attribute success and other good events to oneself -external attributions for failures: "the professor is a sadist" -internal attributions for successes: "I'm smart" -when we succeed it's usually due to our efforts, and failures are sometimes happen despite our efforts->makes us look elsewhere -shouldn't be too quick to accuse others of making self-serving attributions just to make themselves feel good

Describe the confirmation bias

the tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it -can lead to false beliefs because a person can find supportive evidence for almost anything -to truly test a proposition, we must seek out the evidence against it as well as the evidence for it -sometimes unknowingly ask a question in a way that will give us the answer we want -feel no particular motivation to confirm a particular outcome -proposition ex: a plant needs frequent watering

Describe the connection between counterfactual thoughts and causal attributions and explain the consequences of counterfactual thinking.

thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had been done differently -thoughts counter to the facts -"if only I had studied harder" -attributions influenced not only by what happened, but by what almost happened as well Consequences:... Emotional amplification -An increase in an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening --"I just missed my flight! It left two minutes ago" or Another determinant of how easy it is to imagine an alternative outcome is whether it resulted from a routine action or a departure from the norm/exception