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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
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How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds,
Consciously and Unconsciously
 Intuitive Judgments
 The Powers Of Intuition


Automatic
Contolled
 The Limits of Intuition
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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How Do We Perceive Our Social
World?
 Perceiving and Interpreting Events
 Political Perceptions

Experiment of Vallone, Ross, Lepper
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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
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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
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How Do We Explain Our Social
World?
 Inferring Traits
 We often infer that other people’s actions are indicative
of their intentions and dispositions
 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




Actor-observer perspectives
Camera perspective bias
Perspectives change with time
Cultural Differences
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How Do We Explain Our Social
World?
 Why Do We Make the
Attribution Error?
 Cultural Differences
 Dispositional attribution
 Situational attribution
Attributions and Reactions
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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
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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
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