Summary Notes by Charmaine Busch, Exams of Social Psychology

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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

JUNE 1, 2014

UNISA Charmaine Busch

lOMoARcPSD| unchanged in the face of contradictory information.  Evidence suggests that schemas can be self-fulfilling – they both shape and refle social world.

REASONING BY METAPHOR: HOW SOCIAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOU

SU 2.2. HEURISTICS: HOW WE REDUCE OUR EFFORT SOCIAL

AVAILABILITY: “IF I CAN RETRIEVE INSTANCES, THEY MUST BE FREQ

lOMoARcPSD|  Schemas help us make sense of the social world and process information efficie they can also lock us into acting in ways that create the world we expect.  Metaphor: A linguistic device that relates or draws a comparison between one a thought and another dissimilar concept.  Because metaphors can activate different kinds of social knowledge, they can in how we interpret events.  Social cognition: The manner in which we interpret, analyse, remember, and us information about the social world.  Heuristics: Simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in and seemingly effortless manner.  Affect: our current feelings and moods.  When we are subjected to more information than what we are capable of proces one time, this results in information overload.  Processing capacity can be diminished by stress levels.  We rely on heuristics because they allow us to do more, with less effort.

REPRESENTATIVENESS: JUDGING BY RESEMBLANCE

 Prototype: Summary of the common attributes possessed by members of a categ  Representativeness heuristic: A strategy for making judgements based on the ex which current stimuli or events resemble other stimuli or categories.  Decisions based on the representative heuristic can be wrong, because they ten ignore base rates.  Base rates: the frequency with which given events or patterns occur in the total population.  Cultural groups differ in the extent to which they rely on the representative heu expect “like to go with like” in terms of causes and effects.  Compared to North Americans, Asians rely less on the representative heuristic.

ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT: WHERE YOU BEGIN MAKES A DIFFER

SU 2.3. AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSING TWO B

AUTOMATIC PROCESSING AND AUTOMATIC SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

 Use of availability heuristic can cause us to overestimate the likelihood of event dramatic but rare because they are easy to bring to mind.  When using the availability heuristic, the amount of information we can recall is influential.  If the judgement involves emotions or feelings, we tend to rely on the “ease” rul whereas if the judgement involves facts or if the task is inherently difficult, we t rely more on the “amount” rule.  Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: A heuristic that involves the tendency to us number, value, or personal experience as a starting point to which we then mak adjustments. An example is when a seller sets the price higher than he expects t a buyer bids lower than he is willing to pay.  We have a tendency to let initial anchors influence our judgements.  Although we make adjustments to anchors, these adjustments are often not suff overcome the initial impact of the anchors.  The tendency to make insufficient judgements is greater when people are in a st which they are less capable of engaging in effortful thought.

STATUS QUO HEURISTIC: “WHAT IS, IS GOOD”

 When people are asked to make judgements and choices, they seem to act as th believe the status quo is good. For example, the brand that has been on the mar longer is better than the newer brand.  Social thought can occur in either of two different ways: in a systematic, logical highly effortful manner (controlled processing), or in a fast, relatively effortless, intuitive manner (automatic processing). Both may occur together.  Research suggests that people have two different neural systems for processing information – one that operates in an automatic manner, and one that operates systematic and controlled manner.  Automatic processing: This occurs when, after extensive experience with a task of information, we reach the stage where we can perform

the task or process th information in a seemingly effortless, automatic, and nonconscious manner.

temporarily.

SITUATION-SPECIFIC SOURCES OF ERROR IN SOCIAL COGNITION: CO

WHEN OPTIMISM AFFECTS OUR ABILITY TO PLAN

EFFECTIVELY

 Planning fallacy: The tendency to make optimistic predictions concerning ho a given task will take for completion.  When we make predictions about how long it will take to complete a task, we planning or narrative mode of thought in which we focus primarily on the fut how we will perform the task. As a result, we are unable to remember how lo similar tasks previously took.  When we do take into account past experiences in which tasks took longer th expected, we tend to attribute such outcomes to factors outside our control.  Our estimates of when we will complete a task are also influenced by our hop desires: we want to finish at a certain time, so we predict that we will.  Power leads us to focus too narrowly on task completion, rather than the ste involved in getting there, which can lead us to seriously underestimate how l will take to finish tasks.  Counterfactual thinking: The tendency to imagine other outcomes in a situation the ones that actually occurred (“what might have been”).  Counterfactual thoughts seem to occur automatically in many situations.  Studies show that anything that reduces our information-processing capacity str the impact of counterfactual thoughts on our judgements and behaviour.  Counterfactual thinking can influence our social thought.  Depending on its focus, imagining counterfactuals for outcomes we receive can either boosts to, or reductions in, our current moods. If individuals imagine upw counterfactuals, the result may be dissatisfaction and envy. If individuals compa current outcomes with less favourable ones, they may experience positive feelin satisfaction and hopefulness.  We often use counterfactual thinking to mitigate the bitterness of disappointme  Sometimes, engaging in counterfactual thought can enhance performance on im tasks.  Thought suppression: Efforts to keep thoughts out of our consciousness. This involves two components: a monitoring process, acting also as an early warning and an operating process, which includes an active prevention system. The two are effective, except

SU 2.5. AFFECT AND COGNITION: HOW FEELINGS SHAPE TH  Magical thinking: Thinking involving assumptions that don’t hold up to rational scrutiny – for example, the belief that things that resemble one another share fundamental properties.  One principle of magical thinking assumes that one’s thoughts can influence the world in a manner not governed by the laws of physics.  Our thinking about many situations is frequently influenced by magical thinking  Terror management: Our efforts to come to terms with the certainty of our own and its unsettling implications.  Some researchers believe that when we come face to face with the certainty of deaths, we try to manage the strong reactions this produces, and one way of doi to engage in thinking that is largely outside of what we consider to be rational t

THE INFLUENCE OF AFFECT ON COGNITION

 Our current moods can influence our perceptions of the world around us. When experiencing positive affect, we tend to perceive almost everything in more posi terms.  We are more likely to judge statements as true if we encounter them while in a mood.  Positive moods encourage people to feel that they understand the world better.  Positive moods can also result in less accurate judgements.  Mood congruence effects: The fact that we are more likely to store or remembe positive information when in a positive mood and negative information when in negative mood.  Mood dependent memory: The fact that what we remember while in a given mo may be determined, in part, by what we learned when previously in that mood.  Current moods serve as a kind of retrieval cue, prompting recall of information consistent with your moods.  Being in a happy mood can increase creativity. Positive moods facilitate creativi when they are relatively high in arousal (happiness) rather than low (relaxation)  People experiencing positive affect are more likely than people experiencing ne affect to engage in heuristic thought in dealing with current problems or decisio  Our current moods often influence our interpretations of the motives behind peo behaviour.

THE INFLUENCE OF COGNITION ON AFFECT

 Schachter’s two-factor theory of emotion: This theory suggests that when we d know our own feelings or attitudes directly, we infer their nature from the exter

SU 3.1. NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: THE UNSPOKEN LAN 3: SOCIAL PERCEPTION: PERCEIVING AND UNDERSTANDING OTHERS  Social perception: The process through which we seek to know and understand people.  Nonverbal communication: Communication between individuals that does not in the content of spoken language. It relies instead on an unspoken language of fa expressions, eye contact, and body language.  Attribution: The process through which we seek to identify the causes of others’ behaviour and so gain a knowledge of their stable traits and dispositions.  Impression formation: The process through which we form impressions of other  Impression management (self-presentation): Efforts by individuals to produce favourable first impressions on others.  Both our own and other people’s social actions can be affected by temporary fac causes. This includes changing moods, shifting emotions, fatigue, illness, drugs, menstrual cycle, etc.  Non-verbal cues can give us clues as to how people are feeling, because non-ver are relatively irrepressible.  Women might have better nonverbal skills, specifically regarding others’ appear than men.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: THE BASIC CHANNELS

 Our feelings are usually revealed through 5 basic channels: facial expressions, e body movements, posture, and touching. FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AS CLUES TO OTHERS’ EMOTIONS  We can learn much about others’ current moods from their facial expressi  Five basic emotions are represented clearly, and from a very early age: an happiness, sadness, and disgust.  Emotions occur in many combinations, and each of these reactions can va greatly in strength.  Most research confirms that facial expressions are fairly

universal.

 Paralingual cues: Changes in the tone or inflection of others’ voices.  Subtle cues relating to others’ body chemistry can be revealing.

ARE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AN ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT SOURCE OF

DECEPTION: RECOGNIZING IT THROUGH NONVERBAL CUES, AND IT

 Changes in women’s internal chemistry occurring during the menstrual cycle ca transmitted to others through subtle olfactory cues.  Facial expressions are a uniquely crucial source of information about others.  It is almost impossible to ignore facial expressions.  To the extent a person’s neutral facial expression resembles a particular emotio expression, they are seen as showing this emotion, even when in fact they are n experiencing any strong emotion.  Male faces are seen as resembling angry expressions to a greater extent than fe and black and Korean faces are seen as resembling expressions of happiness or to a greater extent than white faces.  We tend to perceive more in others’ faces than is really there.  Facial expressions are not only external signs of internal states, they can also tr influence internal emotional experiences.  The view that facial expressions can actually trigger emotions is known as the f feedback hypothesis.

THE FACIAL FEEDBACK HYPOTHESIS

 The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that there is a close link between the fa expressions we show and our internal feelings, and that this relationship works ways: the expressions we show reflect our internal feelings/emotions, but these expressions also feed back into our brains and influence our subjective experien emotion.  Most people tell at least one lie every day, and use deception in almost 20% of t social interactions.  The majority of strangers lie to each other at least once during a brief first enco  People lie to avoid hurting others feelings, conceal their real feelings/reactions, avoid punishment for misdeeds.  We tend to perceive others as truthful, and do only a little better than chance in determining whether they are lying.  Our desire to be polite makes us reluctant to discover deception.  We don’t always pay attention to nonverbal cues that might reveal deception.  We tend to assume that if people are truthful in one situation, they will be truth others.  Microexpressions: fleeting facial expressions lasting only a few tenths