Midterm 1: Social Cognition
Human's relationships with social worlds
Humans have an inmate capacity to care about our social worlds. It is built into their nature and starts at the beginning of life.
Baby Eye Movement Study and concept
Babies an hour old were showen pictures of a) a face, b) a scrambled up face or c) nothing. Their heads and eye movements were measured. They moved more when presented with the human face, suggesting that they have a preference for their social worlds from birth.
System 1 Thinking
Automatic, unconcious and little effort thinking.
System 2 thinking
Concious, high effort and slow thinking
Can we react to emotions non-conciously?
People who are coretically blind could guess the emotions of faces they were presented with, unlike gender and shapes. This suggests the low road hypothesis: that there is a route emotions take to the amygdala that bypasses the cortext.
The amygdala
The brain structure that allows us to attribute emotional value/significane to the things around us and gives us the capacity to seperate what you should care/not care about.
Facial electromyography (facial EMG)
There are facial muscles that move as a reaction to negative and positive emotions. Even when the stimulis is unconcious, they tend to move.
Herustics
Shortcuts for easy and fast thinking.
Avaliability herustics
The tendency to make numerical estimates based on how easy it is to bring up examples in your head.
Assertive Memory Study and concept
People were asked to rate how assertive they are after being asked to recount either 6 or 12 times that they have been assertive. Those that rated themselves as more assertive are the ones that were asked to recount 6 examples because it's more difficult to come up with 12 examples instead of 6.
Concept: avaliability herustic.
Anchoring effect
People's numerical estimates are influenced by exposure to previous numbers
Sentencing Study and concept
Those practicing law were asked to sentence people to years in prison after rolling a rigged die that ended up as a)4 or b)6. Those that rolled a 6 consistently gave lover prison sentences.
Concept: anchoring effect.
Priming
The triggering of certain associations in memory biases our sunsequete actions, behaviours and thinking.
Near everything we do is primed.
Status Quo Bias
People's tendency to prefer whatever is happening in the current moment instead of other possibilities.
Investment Study and concept
People were asked to hypothetically invest a sum of money. In this scenario, they already have money invested somewhere. They will often choose to invest their money in the same place where the rest of it has been invested.
Concept: status quo bias
Electric Shock Study and concept
People were given painful electric shocks and told that to stop them, they must press a button. Still, 52% of people did not and continued to get shocked.
Alternatively, people were told that to get shocked, they must press a button. 85% of people chose to not get shocked.
Concept: status quo bias
Decision fatigue
As the day goes on, people get tired from making difficult decisions and become more and more vulnerable to using type 1 thinking and herustics.
Antibiotics Study and concept
The amount of times doctors perscribed anti-biotics to their patients were recorded. Doctors tended to give more antibiotics later on in the day regardless of whether or not they were needed because it is the easy way out to solve the issue.
Concept: decision fatigue
Dispositional attributions
Internal characteristics, something that is innate.
Situational dispositions
Circumstancial, external characteristics
Fundemental attribution error
The tendency for people to attribute people's behaviour to dispositional causes instead of situational ones.
Castro Essay Experiment and concept
People were told to write an essay either supporting or opposing Castro. When others had to judge who is more likely to be a Castro supporter, they point to those who have written the supportive essay even though they knew that the topic of the essay was assigned and not chosen.
Concept: fundemental attribution error
Questionnare Smartness Experiment and concept
People were put in a questioner or an answerer role based on the roll of a dice. The questioner got to ask the answerer any question they liked. An audience was asked to judge who they thought was the smarter one, and they mostly answered the questioner even though they knew that the only reason they were the questioner was because of a dice roll.
Concept: fundemental attribution error
Self-serving attribution
When explaining the behaviours of those they love, people will attribute their good behavior to dispositional causes and their bad behaviour to situational causes.