Chapter 3: Social Beliefs and Judgments Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Priming Activating particular associations in memory Example: Watching a scary movie at home may prime us to interpret furnace noises as a possible intruder Perceiving and interpreting information Embodied Cognition Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Intuitive Judgments The Powers Of Intuition: Our thinking is partly Automatic- impulsive, effortless, and w/o awareness, and Controlled: reflective, deliberate, and conscious The Limits of Intuition Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Intuitive Judgments Schemas are mental concepts or templates that guide our perceptions and interpretations Emotional reactions are often nearly instantaneous, that is, happening before there is time for deliberate thinking; one neural shortcut take information from the sensory organ(eye, ear) to the brain sensory switchboard (the thalamus) and to the brain’s emotional center (the amygdala) before the thinking cortex has time to intervene Given sufficient expertise, people may intuitively know answers to problems

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Overconfidence: Unaware of our errors Confirmation Bias: eager to verify our beliefs, less inclined to disprove them. Remedies for Overconfidence Give prompt feedback to explain why statement is incorrect For planning fallacy, ask one to “unpack a task” – break it down into estimated time requirements for each part Get people to think of one good reason why their judgments might be wrong Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts The Representativeness Heuristic: The tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something belonged o s particular group if resembling a typical member. Availability Heuristic: A cognitive rule they judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace. Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Counterfactual Thinking: Mentally simulating what might have been. The Price is Right Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Illusionary Thinking Illusory Correlation: Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists. Gambling Regression Toward the Average Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously Moods and Judgments Good and bad moods trigger memories of experiences associated with those moods Moods color our interpretations of current experiences A temporary good or bad mood strongly influenced people’s ratings of their videotaped behavior. Those in a bad mood detected far fewer positive behaviors. Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Moods (cont-d) Emotions affect cognitions: Unhappy people tend to be more self-focused and brooding; a depressed mood motivates more thinking –search for information that makes the environment more understandable and more controllable. Happy people are more trusting, more loving and more responsive; Moods pervade our thinking; good mood evokes happy memories; bad mood primes our memory of negative events; our mood colors our judgment

How Do We Perceive Our Social World? Perceiving and Interpreting Events Political Perceptions Experiment of Vallone, Ross, Lepper Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Perceive Our Social World? Belief Perseverance: Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, such as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives. Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Perceive Our Social World? Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our Worlds Restructuring our Past Attitudes Rosy retrospection Underestimate earlier liking Reconstructing our Past Behaviors Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Explaining Our Social World Our judgment of people depends on how we explain their behavior We are motivated to explain, to make sense of the world, to be able to predict future behavior of others, to prepare to whatever may happen, to protect ourselves This is sometimes called illusion of control We try tom explain and understand especially when we experience something negative or unexpected

Cont-d Spouses’ answers to questions about the relationship correlate with marriage satisfaction. Unhappy couples usually offer distress-maintaining explanation for negative acts; When the partner behaves positively, their explanations similarly work either to maintain distress or enhance the relationships. Misattribution: misreading of behavior, e.g. men may attribute a woman’s friendliness as a sexual invitaion.

How Do We Explain Our Social World? Attributing Causality: To the Person or the Situation Misattribution Mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source Attribution theory Theory of how people explain others’ behavior Dispositional attribution Situational attribution Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Explain Our Social World? Inferring Traits We often infer that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions Normal or expected behavior tells us less about a person than does unusual behavior Spontaneous Trait Inference The effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behavior. Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Explain Our Social World? Fundamental Attribution Error Tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior Example: Assuming questioning hosts on game shows are more intelligent than the contestants Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do We Explain Our Social World? Why Do We Make the Attribution Error? Perspective and situational awareness: we observe others from a different perspective that we observe ourselves; when we act, the environment commands our attention; when we watch another person act, the person occupies the center of our attention Actor-observer perspectives Camera perspective bias: In some studies people viewed a person confessing in court. When the camera was focused of the suspect they perceived the confession as genuine. Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

The Fundamental Attribution Error (cont-d) Perspectives change with time: Studies have shown that though people tend initially to infer behavior on the basis of internal traits, when asked at a later date about a third of the subjects tend to regard the situation as affecting the behavior. Cultural differences: Western cultures stress personal responsibility rather than providing situational excuses to our failures. In Asian cultures there is more awareness of situational contexts. We often make inferences and express attitudes that may be based on the Fundamental Attribution Error: We tend to blame people for the misfortune that befalls them.

How Do We Explain Our Social World? Why Do We Make the Attribution Error? Cultural Differences Dispositional attribution Situational attribution Attributions and Reactions Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do Our Social Worlds Matter? Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Belief that leads to its own fulfillment Experimenter bias Teacher Expectations and Student Performance Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.

How Do Our Social Worlds Matter? Getting from Others What We Expect Behavioral confirmation Type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations Copyright 2016 © McGraw-Hill Education. Permission required for reproduction or display.