Introduction to Psychology Class 21: Social Psychology 1 Myers: , , Aug 3, 2001

:28 Study this picture for 15 seconds…

 What color was the jacket?  What color was the briefcase?  What was the date?  What was the time?  What kind of gun was it?  What color was her shirt?  Did she/he have a facial scar?

EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY  Weapons Focus Effect  Cross-Race Identification Bias  Eyewitness suggestibility  Children’s eyewitness recall  Misinformation Effect 1. Recovered memories 2. False memories

1. Some people have the experience of driving or riding in a car or bus or subway and suddenly realizing that they don't remember what has happened during all or part of the trip. 2.Some people find that sometimes they are listening to someone talk and they suddenly realize that they did not hear part or all of what was said. 3.Some people have the experience of finding themselves in a place and having no idea how they got there. 4.Some people have the experience of finding themselves dressed in clothes that they don't remember putting on. 5.Some people have the experience of finding new things among their belongings that they do not remember buying. 6.Some people sometimes find that in certain situations they are able to do things with amazing case and spontaneity that would usually be difficult for them (for example, sports, work, social situations, etc.). 7.Some people sometimes find that they cannot remember whether they have done something or have just thought about doing that this (for example, not knowing whether they have just mailed a letter or have just thought about mailing it). 8.Some people find evidence that they have done things that they do not remember doing. 9.Some people sometimes find writings, drawings, or notes among their belongings that they must have done but cannot remember doing. 10.Some people sometimes find that they hear voices inside their head that tell them to do things or comment on things that they are doing. SUGGESTIBILITY AND THE DISSOCIATIVE EXPERIENCES SCALE

MEMORY RECONSTRUCTION  The study by Loftus & Palmer

FALSE CONFESSIONS  Leading questions  Suggestibility  Coercion  Compliance and/or Internalization After hours of interrogation, Michael Crowe confesses to a murder he did not commit.

ATTORNEY GENERAL’S GUIDELINES  The 911 call: “What can you tell me about the car?”  Scene of the crime: Non- biased and thorough investigation, separate the witnesses  Interrogation: Open-ended questions, documentation, volunteer no information, encourage details, discourage guessing  Mugshots: “The perpetrator may or may not be in here”, present serially as opposed to all at once  Line-ups: Assess certainty/confidence

ATTRIBUTION THEORY Attributions are explanations we come up with for the behavior of others  Dispositional attribution (internal)  Reason for action: within the person  Abilities, traits, personal effort  Situational attribution (external)  Reason for action: outside person’s control  Luck, accident, actions of others, environment

FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR Fundamental Attribution Error is the tendency to make dispositional attributions about and underestimate the impact of the situation when explaining the behavior of others

FAE: GAME SHOW STUDY  Either assigned to being a:  Questioner  Contestant  Audience member  “Make up challenging questions from your own knowledge.”  After show: Rate “general knowledge levels”

FAE: CULTURAL DIFFERENCES  Is the fundamental attribution error truly “fundamental”?  Independent versus interdependent cultures

ACTOR-OBSERVER BIAS The tendency to make dispositional attributions when explaining the behavior of others and situational attributions when explaining our own behavior.

HEURISTIC  A mental short-cut  A rule of thumb  Used to make decisions and form judgments  Contrast with an algorithm

QUESTION Which is more common: words that start with the letter k or words that contain k as the third letter?

AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC  Tendency to make judgments based on how easily information comes to mind  “Mom calls every time I think of her!”  Airplane crashes and the fear of flying

ANOTHER QUESTION A stranger tells you about a person who is “short, slim, and likes to read poetry”, and then asks you to guess whether this person is more likely to be a professor of classics at an Ivy League university of a truck driver. Which would be the better guess?

HEURISTICS IN PLAY…  Representativeness heuristic: The tendency to make judgments about something according to how similar it is to a prototype - Short, slim, likes poetry fits a prototype  Base rate fallacy: The tendency to ignore base rate information when making judgments - Number of truck drivers versus number of Ivy League professors in classics

FRAMING  Participants read either:  10% of people will die while undergoing surgery  90% of people survive while undergoing surgery  Then rated perceived risk

CONFIRMATION BIAS  The tendency to seek, interpret, and create information in ways that verify existing beliefs  Examples: Freud, hypochondriacs

STUDY  Subjects given some background  High Expectations: High SES, educated parents  Low Expectations: Low SES, uneducated parents  View or not view confederate taking test  Mixed/okay performance shown  Partcipants then rate academic potential of test taker

BELIEF PERSEVERANCE  The tendency to hold on to initial beliefs despite evidence to the contrary  We see (and keep seeing) what we want to see  Example: Do Aliens Exist?

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESY  The process by which expectations about a person eventually lead that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations  Rosenthal study  Randomly assigned students to a group of “bloomers” and told the teacher  “Bloomers” increased in IQ test performance by end of school year