Naïve scientists
Making sense of the world
• People are constantly trying to make
sense of our social world
• How we make both trivial and important
decisions depends upon how we make
sense of our social world
• Most of us end up “knowing” a lot of
things that are not true, but because of
selective attention and selective memory,
it seems to be true
Kelly’s Attribution Questions Ex.
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•
Kelley’s view of social cognition—people attempt to
function as naïve scientists
In explaining other people’s behavior, people look
for 3 pieces of information
1. The consistency of the person’s action
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•
Has this person exhibited this particular behavior before in
this situation.
Does he/she always behave in this manner in this situation?
2. Consensus
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Is this behavior common among others.
Do others behave in the same way in the same situation?
3. The distinctiveness of the action
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Has this person exhibited this behavior in other situations.
Is he/she the only one to behave in this manner? Is this
behavior distinct to this situation?
Kelley’s Attribution Questions
Event: Jan borrowed your CD and hasn’t returned it.
Attribution: Jan is a forgetful person. (Internal attribution)
1. Consistency of the person’s action
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2.
Has Jan been forgetful in this situation before? (borrowed other
things and not returned them)
Nomay be one incident; not necessarily that Jan is forgetful.
Consensus
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3.
Do others not return items that you lend to them?
NoBehavior is limited to Jan; she does seem to have a pattern of
forgetfulness.
If others also don’t return borrowed items, is there something that
you may be doing unintentionally that makes it seem like returning
them isn’t important? (I.e. saying, “Don’t worry about it” or “Return it
whenever you’re done.”)
Distinctiveness of the action
–
–
Has Jan been forgetful in other situations? (forgotten other things
like important dates)
NoJan has not returned borrowed items in the past, but
remembers other things, therefore, she’s not a forgetful person.
Overgeneralization. What is it about borrowing items that may lead
to her forgetting?
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We are capable of rational
behavior
•
Rational thought requires at least 2
conditions
1. The thinker has access to accurate, useful
information
2. The thinker has the mental resources needed to
process life’s data
–
–
These conditions almost never hold in everyday
life
It is impossible to think deeply about and
analyze every piece of information that comes
our way and about each decision that must be
made and if we did it would result in many other
decisions being postponed
The effects of context on social judgment
• The way things are presented and described
Four aspects of the social context:
1. Comparison of alternatives
2. Thoughts primed by the situation
3. How decisions are framed or posed
4. The way information is presented
Cognitive misers
• We try to conserve our cognitive energy
• Given our limited capacity to process
information, we adopt strategies to simplify
complex problems
• We ignore some information to reduce our
cognitive load
• These shortcuts can lead to biases in our
thinking and prejudices that obscure the truth
• If we recognize our cognitive limitations we
won’t be doomed to distort, but rather can begin
to think better and make smarter decisions
1. Reference points & contrast effects
• Contrast effects
–An object can appear better or worse, depending on
what it is compared to
•I.e. house shopping with real estate agent and shown run
down house first and then an average-looking house
•Rating the attractiveness of a potential blind date before and
after watching an episode of Charlie’s Angels
•A used-car dealer placing a clunker on the lot to improve the
appearance of nearby cars
•The context they set can influence us to make decisions we
wouldn’t otherwise make
• Decoy
•
All judgment is relative; how we think about a
person or thing is dependent on the
surrounding context
–An alternative that is clearly inferior to other possible
selections, but serves the purpose of making one of
the others—the one it’s most similar to—look better by
comparison
•The run down house
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3. Framing the decision
2. Priming and construct accessibility
• Construct accessibility
–How we interpret social events usually depends on what we are
currently thinking about, as well as beliefs and categories we
typically use to make sense of things
–Our interpretation can also depend on what happens to be
prominent in the situation
• Framing
–Whether a problem or decision is presented in such
a way that it appears to represent the potential for a
loss or a gain
–I.e. potential outbreak epidemic expected to kill 600
people—choose program A (200 saved) or B (1/3
chance of 600 saved and 2/3 chance of none saved).
72% favored A. Framed differently--program A (400
will die) or B (1/3 chance no one will die and 2/3
chance 600 will die) 78% chose B.
–People dislike losses and seek to avoid them.
• Priming
–a procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been
recently encountered or frequently activated are more likely to
come to mind and therefore to be used in interpreting social
events
–What is prominent in the situation can be induced through
priming
–I.e. asking subjects to remember positive or negative traits and
5 minutes later were asked to read an ambiguous paragraph
about fictitious Donald and describe him in their own words and
how desirable he was. He was perceived consistent with the
positive or negative traits that had been read previously.
4. Ordering of information
•
Ordering of information
– The manner in which information is
arranged and distributed can influence the
way we organize and interpret the social
world
•
2 characteristics of the way information
is presented and the effects on social
judgment
a. What comes first (primacy effect)
b. How much information is given (dilution
effect)
•Risk aversion
–I.e. homeowners more likely to invest money to
insulate homes if framed as money losing every day
vs. money saving each year
a. Primacy effect and impression
formation
•
Primacy effect (First impressions)
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The things we learn first about a person have a decisive
impact on our judgment of that person
Asch experiment to rate the person described in the
sentence (intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical,
stubborn, and envious vs. opposite order from end to
beginning)
Two explanations:
1. Attention decrement
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2.
Later items in a list receive less attention as the observers
tire and their minds start to wander these items have
less impact on judgment
Interpretive set
•
The first items create an initial impression that is then
used to interpret subsequent information, either through
the discounting of incongruent facts or by subtle changes
in the meaning of the words further down the list.
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b. Amount of information
• More information tends to create a dilution
effect
• Dilution effect
– The tendency for neutral or irrelevant information
to weaken a judgment or impression
– I.e. which student has the higher GPA
• Tim hours studying…
• Tom hours studying + multiple siblings, visits g’parents,
blind date, shoots pool, etc.
– Irrelevant information about a person makes that
person seem more similar to others, and thus
more average and like everyone else
Judgmental heuristics
• Representative heuristic
• Availability heuristic
• Attitude heuristic
Judgmental heuristics
• Judgmental heuristics
– A mental shortcut
– A simple, often approximate, rule or
strategy for solving a problem
• Require little thought—just the selection
of the rules and a straightforward
application to the issue at hand
Representative heuristic
• We focus on the similarity of one object to
another to infer that the first object acts like
or “represents” the second object
– I.e. high-quality products are expensive; therefore,
if something is expensive, we might infer that it’s
really good.
– I.e. If we need assistance in a store, we look for
someone who looks like (“represents”) and
employee—wearing a uniform, vest, or name tag.
– Basketball players tends to be tall, therefore, the
tallest student on campus must be on the
basketball team.
• Whether an object fits your stereotype of a
category is, however, not always a good
indicator of how likely it is that the object
belongs to that category.
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Availability heuristic
• We focus on specific examples that are brought easily
to mind
• Sometimes what is brought most easily to mind is not
typical of the overall picture
– We tend to overestimate the frequency of more vivid and
memorable instances or events because they are most
available in our memory when we try to retrieve information to
answer a question or make a decision.
• This will lead us to faulty conclusions
– I.e. do you think more people in the US die from shark attacks
or from falling airplane parts?
• We hear more often about shark attacks than falling plane parts,
but just because we hear about it more often doesn’t necessarily
mean that it occurs more often
– I.e. More people fear plane crashes yet we are far more likely
to be harmed in a car accident on the way to the airport.
– I.e. Another example of when it doesn’t work well--estimation of
how often you do the chores (you remember your own cases
much better than your partner or roommates’).
Attitude heuristic (examples)
• Halo effect
– a bias in which favorable or unfavorable
impressions of a person affect our inferences and
future expectations about that person
– I.e. performance review
• False-consensus effect
– our tendency to overestimate the percentage of
people who agree with us on any issue
– If I believe something, I jump to the conclusion that
others feel the same way
Attitude heuristic
• We use preexisting evaluations to assign
information to a favorable or unfavorable
category
– I.e. Reagan and grades earned in college. Very
few people actually know this and so answer
depends on attitude toward him. Students who
liked him more likely to believe A average vs.
students who disliked him more likely to believe C
average.
• The use of an attitude heuristic can influence
our logic and ability to reason
When do we use heuristics?
• When we don’t have time to think
carefully
• When we are overloaded with
information
• When the issues at stake aren’t very
important
• When we have insufficient information
to use in making a decision
• If we think a movie was good, we assume others will or
others did like it too.
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Stereotypic knowledge and
expectations
Categorization and stereotypes
• Once we categorize a person or event,
we base our future expectations or
course of action on that categorization
– Gulf war and positive and negative
consequences of going to war
• One of the most important consequences of
categorization is that it can invoke specific data or
stereotypes that then guide our expectations
• Once we categorize a person or an event using a
certain term vs. another term, we base our
expectations about future interactions on the
accompanying stereotypes
– I.e. a café categorized as a “bar” vs. a “fine dining
establishment”
– I.e. Hannah videos playing in high-class or poor
neighborhood vs. seeing playing and achievement problems
led to stereotyped judgments
• We debate over how to categorize
persons and events hundreds of times a
week and the consequences of how we
interpret and define events can be
significant
Self-fulfilling prophesy
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•
AKA The Pygmalion Effect or the Experimenter Effect
The process by which expectations or stereotypes lead people to treat
others in a way that makes them confirm their expectations
–
I.e. Rosenthal and planting false stereotype with teachers about 20% of students being
“bloomers”
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It’s more likely that the event occurred because it was predicted to occur.
The expectation of it helped it occur.
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Can be self-imposed or other-imposed
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I.e. anticipated having a good/bad time at a social gathering and the event met your
expectations.
I.e. expect to be nervous during a job interview nervous.
• Most people seem to have some understanding of stereotypes
and seem reluctant to apply them in the absence of solid data
• Our stereotypes still influence our perceptions and judgments
when there is additional ambiguous information that lends a
false sense of rationality to the judgment
Robert Rosenthal’s Four Factor Theory
1.
2.
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I.e. When teachers see potential in their students they create a warmer “climate” for them
(verbally and nonverbally), give those students more attention, more critical feedback, and
more opportunities to respond
I.e. My Fair Lady—Lizza Doolittle learning to speak/act like upper class.
I.e. placebo effect—pt. believes taking Rx will help them feel betterbeliefit
works/”cure.”
I.e. assume someone is unlikable/likable, then you’ll probably act in ways that
communicate that beliefother’s actions will probably reflect your expectations.
The underlying emotional climate of the environment.
Communicated mostly by nonverbal communication.
Input
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3.
This occurs when we act on our impressions of others
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Climate
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The effort that the teacher or boss puts into providing
information to the student or employee.
Will teach more material, and more difficult material to
students or employees seen as having more potential.
Feedback
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More informative feedback is given verbally and
nonverbally to the “special” students or employees and
less to those seen as having potential.
•
4.
More specific praise about performance, tips on how to
improve, etc.
Output
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More or less opportunities are given verbally and
nonverbally to students or employees.
•
Encouraged/not encouraged to ask more questions, etc.
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The illusory correlation
• Perceiving a relationship between two entities that we think
should be related
– I.e. “It always rains right after you wash the car”
– I.e. “You always seem to need something just after you’ve thrown it
away”
– I.e. "The only time I forget my pencil is when we have a test"
• This is most likely an illusory correlation (unless the speaker is very,
very, unlucky). It could be caused by only a few other pencil-less tests,
which stand out particularly well in the memory.
• Even though both things occur, there is no direct relationship
between the two events occurring
• Our stereotype leads us to see a relationship that then seems to
provide evidence that the original stereotype is true
– I.e. overestimate the extent to which lesbians are likely to contract
AIDS. Lesbians have lowest rate of HIV infection compared with
female heterosexuals, male homosexuals, male heterosexuals
Minimum group paradigm
• Complete strangers are formed into groups
using the most trivial, inconsequential criteria
imaginable
• flipping a coin to randomly assign groups
• Significant results are often obtained on the
basis of group identification that means very
little
– The subjects are total strangers prior to the study
yet they behave as if those who share their
meaningless label are good friends or close kin
– Like those who share their label and allocate more
rewards to others in their same group
In-group and out-group effects
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•
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The in-group is the group you belong to
The outgroup is everyone else
Us vs. them, my school vs. yours, etc.
Homogeneity effect
– perceiving everyone belonging to the outgroup as similar to each other than
members of our own group (the in-group)
• In-group favoritism
– Tendency to see one’s own group as better
on any number of dimensions and to
allocate rewards to one’s own group
Re-constructive memory
• Remembering is a re-constructive process
• We cannot tap into a literal recreation of past events
– Our memory is not like a video tape
• We recreate memories from bits of information
filtered through what we think might have been, or
should have been, or what we would have liked it to
be, and by what others tell us about it
– I.e. Loftus suggestive questioning can influence memory and
eyewitness testimony
– Watched film of car accident and some asked how fast cars
were going when smashed into each other vs. others asked
when hit each other
– Those asked about smashing into each other estimated cars
were going faster
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Autobiographical memory
• We don’t remember our past as
accurately as we would like to believe
• Revisions and distortions occur over
time
• These revisions are organized around
self-schemas
Recovered memory
• Elizabeth Loftus and other researchers
have conducted extensive, systematic
research into the phenomenon of false
childhood memories of sexual abuse
• Most cognitive scientists do not believe
that traumatic events are “forgotten,” but
rather have been unintentionally planted
by others around them
Self-schemas
• Coherent memories, feelings, and
beliefs about ourselves that form an
integrated whole
• Our memories are distorted to fit the
general picture we have of ourselves
How conservative is human
cognition?
• We try to preserve or conserve or hold
onto that which is already established
• We maintain our existing knowledge,
beliefs, attitudes and stereotypes
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Confirmation bias
• We tend to seek confirmation of initial
impressions or existing beliefs and
ignore contradictory information
• We see what we expect to see
– I.e. O.J. Simpson case
Hindsight bias
• “I-knew-it-all-along” effect
• Once we know the outcome of an event,
we have a strong tendency to believe
that we could have predicted it in
advance
• We cling to these initial impressions and
interpretations
• Sometimes this tendency results in an
inaccurate picture or faulty
understanding
Consequences of
cognitive conservatism
• the misuse of inappropriate categories may cause a
person to distort events or to miss important information
- The misapplication of a heuristic can lead to poor
decision making
- The failure to update our conception of the world in the
face of new and discrepant information can result in a
mistaken picture of reality
- Not just mental consequences but can show up in social
problems like racism, sexism, prejudice
+ At least one benefit in that it allows us to perceive the
social world as a coherent and stable place
–I.e. suppose every time the library received new books that didn’t
fit prior cataloging system, librarian renumbered and recataloged
all books in the library. To keep library operating and coherent,
makes sense to modify only slightly the current cataloging system
and fit new books into old system
Ways of avoiding negative consequences of cognitive
conservatism
1. Be wary of those who attempt to create your
categories and definitions of the situations
•
There are many ways to define and label a person
or event
2. Try to use more than one way to categorize
and describe a person or event
•
By seeing a person or event in different ways, we
do not rely on a single category that we then
misemploy to fit a preconceived notion
3. Try to think of persons and important events
as unique
•
While members of a certain category (i.e. gender),
also members of many other categories
4. When forming an impression, consider the
possibility that you might be mistaken
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How do attitudes and beliefs guide behavior?
• Perhaps there is no relationship
• Perhaps we succumb to the pressure
of the immediate situation
–I.e. proprietors’ stated attitudes about
Chinese people didn’t predict their
business decisions about allowing/refusing
service to them
When do attitudes predict behavior?
• Just because attitudes don’t always
predict beliefs doesn’t mean that they
never do
• Scientists try to determine the
conditions under which an event is
more or less likely to occur
Correspondent inference
• Our tendency to attribute the cause of
a behavior to a corresponding
characteristic of that person
(dispositional)
• The behavior of the person is
explained in terms of an attribute or
trait that is just like the behavior
–I.e. Sam spilled wine on the carpet
because he is clumsy (not because he was
momentarily distracted)
Attitude accessibility
• The strength of the association between an
object and your evaluation of it
–I.e. when “snake” is said, many people would
associate it with bad, dangerous
• Not all attitudes are highly accessible
• Highly accessible attitudes are more likely to
guide behavior
• One measure of attitude accessibility is the
speed with which an individual can provide an
evaluative response of an object or issue
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Acting on perceptions
• Beliefs can create our social world
• Subtle situational variables are often
strong determinants of our behavior
• Context can influence attitudes and
expectations which affects behavior
which subsequently affects perceptions
Social Perception
• Perceptions are based on limited
observation and incomplete information
– We do not see and hear everything that
happens in a particular situation
• We are selective in what we attend to and what
we, in turn, perceive
• This selectivity leads to the tendency or bias to
perceive one thing and not another
Biases in social explanation
1. Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
2. Actor-observer bias or difference
3. Self-bias
– Egocentric thought
– Self-serving bias (SSB)
1. Fundamental attribution error
• The general human tendency to overestimate the
importance of personality or dispositional factors rather
than situational or environmental factors when
describing and explaining the causes of social behavior
• An attribution is the attributing or attaching meaning to
behavior or why we think the behavior occurred.
–I.e. driver cuts in front of you. More likely to conclude they are a
jerk than in a hurry to work, school, the hospital, etc.
–I.e. reaction to person using food stamps at the store or a
homeless person on the street—they are lazy; if they just tried
harder, they could get a job
–Ignores other situational factors that play a part in the situation
–I.e. gas pump scenario
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2. Actor-observer bias or difference
• The tendency for actors to attribute their actions to
situational factors while observers attribute the same
actions to personality factors
3. Self-biases
• Egocentric thought
• Self-serving bias (SSB)
–So we assume that other people’s behavior is due to
something about their personality, whereas our behavior is a
result of a situational factor.
• Occurs as a result of where a person’s attention is
focused
• Actor’s attention is usually focused on the
environment and past history
• Observer’s attention is almost always focused on the
actor and may not be aware of historical or
environmental reasons for why the actor did what
they did
Egocentric thought
• The tendency to perceive ourselves as
more central to events than is actually
the case
• We tend to think we influence events
and people more than we do
Self-serving bias
• The tendency make dispositional (personality)
attributions for our successes and to make
situational attributions for our failures
–I.e. in a basketball game, if the difficult shot is made, it
is attributed to having a great eye and leaping ability. If
player misses, they might claim that they were fouled or
that there was something on the floor that led to
mistiming the jump
–I.e. Accident reports
•The telephone pole was approaching fast; I attempted to
swerve out of its way, when it struck the front of my car.
•An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle, and
vanished.
•As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring
my vision. I did not see the other car.
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The value/cost of self biases
• The value of self biases
+ Believing we cause good things leads to
attempting to achieve and persisting
toward difficult goals
+ Believing we can overcome obstacles
helps us deal with stress
The cost of self biases
• A distorted picture of ourselves and
the world
• The cost of self biases
- A distorted picture of ourselves and the
world
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