Social Psychology Presentation

Social Psychology Processing Info • Lots of options leave us with a paralyzing affect. highlight important info and details to understand better. • We give up hope of making correct choice and blindly do it • Many short cuts for this thinking • Our thinking of social world automatic — only things important or unexpected make us think thoroughly fi Information Overload • We have certain amount of info to focus on before entraining information overload. Can be depleted by stress • Use automatic thinking to stretch capacity. • Heuristics: simple rules for making complex decisions quicker and ef cient Judging By Resemblance Ppl compare others/objects with prototypes to come to conclusions — list of attributes possessed by things in that occupation or category. • The more individual represents group, more likely they are to be part of that group • Doesn’t always work bc we tend to ignore base rates: the rate of which given events or categories occur in the total population. Ex. Judging someones teacher more than manager bc of looks, even tho chances r they’re a manager bc theres way more managers in population than teachers • Whether speci c causes resemble each other and r therefore to produce similar effects of magnitude. fi • Availability/frequency • Desires can in uence our risk taking greater. Ex. If ur nancially struggling ur more likely to consider gambling than saving. Need 4 money increased (desire), so the need for risk more easily came to mind and the major wins that can be assosiated w it. • Amount heuristic: the greater the amount of info we can bring to mind, greater impact on judgements. • If judgement involves emotions or feelings, we look into ease of access heuristic. If more complex or based on facts, we rely on the amount heuristic. • We don’t make these judgements for others or things unknown bc we have less facts about them and therefore need to think about them. We use it for things we assume we know r familiar or nd easy to make judgements about. fi Easier to bring info to mind, greater its impact on subsequent judgements or decisions. We easily bring together dramatic events in our mind. Ignore the facts bc of the easiness the rst thoughts of event r brought to mind fi • fi Judging frequency based on ease it comes to mind or dramatics of a situation. Ex. Texting on phone, many times not texting but remember few situations easily and think u do it very much bc it stands out fl • Anchoring and Adjustment • Grocery stores use this when putting original price meant to be bargained. We start off with how much were willing to pay based on this price then adjust it (pay more or less). So we feel like were getting a bargain when they show original price. • Lawyer case. Lawyers came to face w case. Given three recommendations, based on professional random person and dice of random case recommendations. They ended up being in uenced by these recommendations. On the recommendations they saw w longer trials, they did longer sentence for case. Shorter trials = shorter case. • We many times dont suspect these anchors. • Even tho we make choices adjusted to these anchors, they aren’t strong enough to delete the original impact of said anchors. • Ppl make insuf cient correction of these anchors more when they’re not capable of thinking ex drunk or when busy w other tasks. • This is caused by our laziness to properly adjust our decisions from these anchors. Ie we combat this by making sure to adjust w out thinking of said anchors fl We deal with uncertain situations by starting with details we already know (anchors) and then making adjustments to it. fi • Status quo • We prefer the old to the new. • Like the availability, things encountered more or that are the same as status quo and more “good” to us. • Overtime bad products tend to be removed from market, so choosing old surviving things is better. But bad things also stay on market bc people keep buying them out of habit, not bc they’re good. Sometimes the reason things are old and work are bc were used to them and think they’re good, not actually cause they’re good. • People use length of time a practice or product has been in to determine its goodness. 2.2: Schemas • They’re more or less the beliefs we have about certain situations or contexts. • Schemas are “mental framework that built up containing essential features of a situation” • Help us organize social information, guide our actions and process information relevant to particular contexts. • Once a schema is there, plays part in what we socially notice, what info we remember, and how we use and intemperate that info. fl 2.2.1 Impact of schemas on social cognition • In uence our attention (information we notice), encoding (processes we use to store info in memory), and retrieval of info (how we use the memory to use it in some manner. Ex: making judgements) • Attention: info consistent w schem. More likely 2 b noticed/enter consciousness. We especially rely when cognition overload 2 make easier. • Encoding: info consi w schem gets encoded, info not cons w schem can be encoded to Dif place of memory labelled w certain “tag”. Inconsistents sometimes so unexpected seize our entire attention & forces us to make mental note. • Retrieval: ppl often report info consistent w schemas more than incons. When asked 2 recognize info, ppl recognized info consistent more but actually remember incons more when recalling. 2.2.2: Priming and Unpriming The stronger/better developed schema is, more likely 2 in uence thinking & especially memory • Priming can be activated by seeing smth that made them go on. Ex. Saw cute hello kitty phone case (childish, fun). U get hungry, see 2 buildings: ice cream shop where sundae is and healthy salad shop. Ur going to choose ice cream bc the “fun indused” schema was activated, may even consider it healthy. • Unpriming we can unprime our schemas. If we encounter a situation we need to act on schema, we’ll act once or twice then it’ll be unprimed. Ex. Study, two groups, one test. 1st group asked to answer randomly not correctly. 2nd group asked to answer twice: 1st time correctly, 2nd time randomly I they see test, ur primed to answer correctly. 1st group tho wanted random chose more correct. 2nd group chose correct then when random were less correct than group 1. They got to react to the schema of “correct answering” and then were unprimed, other group not so much. fl • 2.2.3: bad side of schemas • Ex. Teacher gave students iq tests. Two groups. 1 group teacher got Told students very smart and would bloom in a few months. Other group average results. In 8 months researcher came back, group 1 way smarter than group 2. The teachers schema of the students are very smart in uenced teaching and made thing actually come true. fi Schemas allow us 2 understand world better, but are very resistant to change. They have bad side too. They can be self-ful lling Thomas theorem; things u believe to be true can be true in their consequences. What we believe can make us act to make it true. fl • 2.2.4 Automatic Processing w schemas • if someone of a certain schema is here we will expect certain traits and act accordingly. But sometimes we will unconsciously realize such and adjust our behaviours to that person of the schema, not acting on the schema itself but our response to it. • Classroom, quickly shown photos of professor labelled gay or straight. Homophobic people. He came in very hostile, which is against the stereotypical schema for gay man (kind). People with the gay schema were more hostile towards them than straight. They acted on their schemas behaviour not itself. 2.2.5 Bene ts of automatic processing Our automatic thoughts can be more effective than our conscious processes. Ex. Two groups, each shown images of paintings. One group asked to decide heavily which painting to take home, other group went on with their day and then was asked. Asked few weeks later if satis ed w their favourite painting. Group who waited much more satis ed than group 1 • Many times when were asked something we will continue to work on the answer even if we’re distracted. Ex. Asked for someones name forget, then after a while just pops up outta blue fi • fi Always try to see ur decision in the unconscious especially if very biased. Take a break distract urself then decide later and fast. fi •