Social Cognitive Processes: Heuristics and Automaticity

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Social Cognitive Processes Heuristics and
Automaticity
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Social Information

• schemas
• what are schemas
• what do they do for us
• some problems with schemas

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Social Information

• two pieces to the puzzle
• content what we think about
• process how we think about it

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Making Inferences

• four phases of inference processes (Fiske, 2004)
• 1. data collection
• Example previous serious relationship predicts
  marital success
• What data do we need? (Nisbett Ross, 1980)
• married, previous relationship
• divorced, no previous relationship
• married, no previous relationship
• divorced, previous relationship

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Making Inferences

• four phases of inference processes (Fiske, 2004)
• 2. sampling
• only friends and people you know or a larger
  sample?
• pay attention to base rates

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Making Inferences

• four phases of inference processes (Fiske, 2004)
• 3. coding
• separation divorce or ongoing marriage?
• tend to be misled by extreme values (i.e.,
  outliers)
• e.g., a person married and divorced six times

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Making Inferences

• four phases of inference processes (Fiske, 2004)
• 4. combining data
• diagnostic (e.g., previous marriages) vs.
  non-diagnostic (e.g., hobbies, profession)
  information
• improper weighting of information

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Processing Social Information

• two different social goals
• need to be accurate
• need to be decisive

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Processing Social Information

• two different social goals
• need to be accurate
• need to be decisive
• heuristics simple decision rules for processing
  information and making decisions (i.e., rules of
  thumb)

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Heuristics

• look at your answers to the first problem
• homicide (7.9) vs. diabetes (23.3)
• digestive system cancer (47.7) vs. motor vehicle
  accidents (16.5)
• strokes (60.3) vs. all accidents (35.8)
• all cancers (211.4) vs. heart disease (276.4)
• (rates are per 100,000 people 1996)

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Heuristics

• availability heuristic a judgment based on the
  ease with which they can bring something to mind
• If I can think of it, it must be important.

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Heuristics

• availability heuristic
• heart disease 3 vs. 8 risk factors
• Who feels more at risk for heart disease?

(Rothman Schwarz, 1998)
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Heuristics

• look at your answers to the second problem
• a. Linda is a bank teller.
• b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the
  feminist movement.

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Heuristics

• representative heuristic a judgment based on an
  objects (i.e., person, thing) resemblance to a
  particular category
• the more similar the object is to a category, the
  more likely it is to be a member of that category

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Heuristics

• representative heuristic
• ignore the base rate information
• but, it is often a useful heuristic

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Heuristics

• look at your answers to the third problem
• Who is more upset? Mr. Crane or Mr. Tees?

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Heuristics

• simulation heuristic mentally changing some
  aspect of the past as a way of imagining what
  might have been
• the easier it is to imagine how things might have
  been otherwise, the more tragic it seems

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Heuristics

• simulation heuristic
• examined tapes of 41 athletes from 92 Games
• judges rated athletes on scales from agony to
  ecstasy
• bronze medalists happier than silver medalists

(Medvec, Madey, Gilovich, 1995)
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Heuristics

• simulation heuristic
• people mentally undo action easier than inaction
  (Kahneman Miller, 1986)
• e.g., feel worse about saying something
  inappropriate than failing to say something
  appropriate

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Heuristics

• look at your answer to the fourth problem
• Program A or Program B?

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Heuristics

• framing effect how we process information
  depends on how the information is presented (or
  framed)
• gains likely to be risk-averse
• losses likely to be risk-seeking

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Heuristics

• anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic in estimating
  numerical values (e.g., frequencies,
  probabilities), people use a starting point and
  adjust up or down
• e.g., murder trials first consider most or least
  severe punishment (Greenberg, Williams, OBrien,
  1986)

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Automatic or Controlled?

• Thinking is for doing. (Fiske, 1992)
• social cognition is practical
• social interaction goals influence the degree of
  automaticity or control
• decisive or accurate?

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Automaticity

• preconscious automaticity mental action that
  occurs outside of ones conscious awareness
• gold standard of automatic processes
• subliminal priming affects liking (Murphy,
  Monahan, Zajonc, 1995)

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Automaticity
Liking Ratings
0 1 3
Number of Exposures
(Murphy, Monahan, Zajonc, 1995)
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Automaticity

• postconscious automaticity the stimulus
  eliciting an effect is fully conscious, but its
  influence is not

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Automaticity

• postconscious automaticity
• postconscious priming
• What kind of person is Donald? (Higgins, Rholes,
  Jones, 1977)

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Automaticity

• postconscious automaticity
• postconscious priming
• mood effects (e.g., Forgas, 1998)
• students in library found pictures in an envelope
• humorous cartoons or car accidents
• stranger approached and requested some paper
• negative mood more likely to resist the request

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Automaticity

• postconscious automaticity
• postconscious priming
• mood effects (e.g., Forgas, 1998)
• salience effects (e.g., Taylor Fiske, 1975)
• Who is more important to the tone and content of
  the conversation?

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Automaticity
(Taylor Fiske, 1975)
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Controlled Responses

• fully intentional control
• to exercise intent, a person must
• a) have options
• b) make the hard choice (i.e., the non-dominant
  alternative)
• c) pay attention

(Fiske, 1989)
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Controlled Responses

• fully intentional control
• getting out of bed on a cold, dark morning
• a) get up or stay put
• b) make the choice to get up
• c) thinking about what was has to get done

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Dealing with Limitations

• ways to become better thinkers
• statistical reasoning
• e.g., pay attention to the base rates
• law of large numbers
• a large sample size is better (i.e., more
  accurate)
• be critical consumers of information

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Summary

• processing social information is flawed
• two goals accuracy and decisiveness
• heuristics are adaptive but flawed
• most of our mental processing is automatic
• ways of improving the process

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Next Time

• How do we think about other people and their
  behavior?