Social cognition

1
Social cognition

• How we think about the social world

2

• CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT
• It is very difficult to schedule tests without
  conflicting
• with religious observances. This year, TEST 1
  conflicts
• with Yom Kippur. Accordingly, I will make
  special arrangements for those students who want
  to observe. Therefore, I need advance indication
  of how many students to accommodate.
• 1. You MUST email me IF you are Jewish AND you
  are IF you are observant.
• 2. Make the Subject Line of your email PSY 220
  Yom Kippur.
• 3. Make the body of your email YOUR NAME, AND
  STUDENT . No other text is necessary.
• 4. You MUST EMAIL me if you intend to observe.
  The due date to reply is Friday Sept 30, 2005
  12pm. Students who email me will receive notice
  of the alternate date by the end of the day. If
  you do not email me by this date, it will be
  assumed that you will write the test during the
  in-class session.

3
People as everyday theorists Making sense of
our social world
4
Outline

• Schemas and their influence
• -types, why, and which
• -self-fulfilling prophecy
• Mental Strategies and shortcuts
• -Heuristics
• -the availability heuristic
• -the anchoring and adjustment heuristic
• -the representativeness heuristic
• Automatic and Controlled Thinking
• -counterfactual thinking

5
schemas

• What are schemas?
• Mental structures people use to organize their
  knowledge about the world
• Different types of schema
• -self-schemas
• -relational schema
• Their influence

6
Carli (1999)
7

• Then why do we have them?

8
Which schemas?

• Accessibility
• -def the extent to which schemas and concepts
  are at the forefront of peoples minds and are
  likely to be used
• Two kinds chronic or temporarily accessibility
• Priming
• - The process by which recent experiences
  increase a schemas accessibility

9

• Memory test
• Adventurous, self-confident, independent, and
  persistent
• Reckless, conceited, aloof, and stubborn
• Then read a story about DONALD

10
Priming example
11
How people make schemas become true

• self-fulfilling prophecy

12
bloomers study (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968)
13

• -e.g., university students have schemas about
  what potential dating partners are like.
• -e.g., mothers have schemas about what premature
  babies are like, etc.

14
Mental strategies

• Judgmental heuristics
• Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments
  quickly and efficiently

15
Availability heuristic

• we rely on how easily different examples of
  schemas come to mind.
• The availability heuristic is a mental rule of
  thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease
  with which they can bring something to mind

16

• Do people use the AH to make judgments about
  themselves?
• Schwartz et al (1991)

17

• Representative heuristic
• -a mental shortcut whereby people classify
  something by how similar it is to a typical case
• Ex

18

• In company Orange, a computer software firm,
  there are 20
• office staff (administration, secretarial, and
  sales) and 80 programmers/analysts.
• Melissa Jones works for company Orange. She is a
  tall,
• attractive women, age 28, and has worked at
  Orange for
• 5 years. She knows how to touch type,
  communicates well with people, and loves her job
  at Orange. Her hobbies are crossword puzzles,
  painting and dancing.
• What is the likelihood that Melissa Jones is a
  programmer/analyst?
• 0
• 10
• 20
• 30
• 40
• 50
• 60
• 70
• 80

19
The anchoring and adjustment heuristic

• A mental shortcut that involves using a number or
  value as a starting point, and then adjusting
  from this anchor
• The catch people do not often adjust sufficiently

20

• Wilson Nisbett (1980)

21
Automatic vs. Controlled thinking

• Automatic processing
• Controlled processing
• -counterfactual thinking mentally changing some
  aspect of the past

22
Imagine that you get an exam back in class

• How satisfied would you be with this grade?
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Very unsatisfied
Very satisfied