Discussion 3

profilestyrdestiny24-
Ch5SocialCognitionpart2.pptx

Chapter 5

Social Cognition Part 2

Today’s outline

Findings about automated processing

Heuristics

Cognitive biases

Attributions

Fundamental attribution error

Social Cognition continued

Last class we discussed the theme of automated/non-conscious/peripheral processes vs controlled/conscious/central processes.

As you may recall seeing, another way to describe automated cognition is called ‘heuristics’

If you don’t know how that word is pronounced/sounds, click here and click on US https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/heuristic

Heuristics

Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that the automated mind uses to help us make decisions quickly/easily

They can, however, also be prone to certain errors

Indeed, you may recognize the name Daniel Kahneman

He won the Nobel Prize for “having integrated insights from psychology into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”

Representativeness Heuristic

‘The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which is resembles a typical case’

Which series of coin flips is more likely? (h = heads; t = tails)

HHHHH or

HTHTH

Most people say the second one, but in reality, the odds are the same

Representativeness Heuristic continued

What’s more healthy?

Turns out rats that were fed Lucky Charms grew and were fine, but rats fed 100% natural Quaker Oats Granola didn’t grow and died early in their life span

Granola seems healthier, but had tons of saturated fat

OR

Availability Heuristic

Were you more afraid to fly on your first airplane or to drive somewhere?

Most would say airplane

But the chances of dying in a car crash (1 in 5,000) are many many many times more likely than dying in an airplane (1 in 11 million)

Car crashes remain one of the leading causes of death, alongside heart attacks and cancer

Plane crashes, though, stand out because they’re rare and usually covered extensively in the news

Heuristics continued

A lot of the time, heuristics can help us make decisions

But often there’s a major flaw with our brain:

Information from base rates and statistics get overshadowed by biases, like the availability heuristic or representativeness heuristic

Also the gambler’s fallacy, which we’ll discuss shortly

Anchoring & adjustment heuristic

In estimating the likelihood or frequency of an event, if there’s a starting number present, people will anchor on to that and adjust either up or down

E.g. in a negotiation, if the company offered you 60k a year.

Anchoring & adjustment heuristic

Tversky and Kahneman (1974):

Spun a random 1-100 wheel in front of participants (the wheel was rigged to either land on 65 or 10)

Whichever it landed on, researchers would ask: “Is the percentage of African countries in the UN higher or lower than the # on the wheel?” Then, “What was the # of African countries?”

Participants who were anchored by the number 10%, estimated 25%, whereas those anchored by 65% estimated 45%.

This occurs even though participants see the wheel and believe it’s just random

Other cognitive biases

We already discussed confirmation bias in previous chapters, though the effect of that bias cannot be overstated

Conjunction fallacy

Let’s try this out

Linda is 31, single, outspoken, very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more likely?

A. Linda is a bank teller

B. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement

Conjunction fallacy

Even though b. is tempting, the answer is a.

The odds of one event occurring (she’s a bank teller) is more likely than two separate events occurring together (bank teller and feminist)

People perceive an increase in accuracy as information gets more specific and tied to similar-seeming elements, but in fact, the opposite is true

E.g. not all bank tellers are feminists, and vice versa

Illusory correlation

When two rare things occur together, they stand out as correlated

This explains why some people have a bad view of minorities, because if the news reports on a minority member (rare) committing a crime (rare), that stands out

In one study, participants read about actions taken by people from two groups, Group A and Group B.

Group A has more members than Group B

Illusory correlation continued

Some of the actions taken by people in both groups were desirable (e.g. helped someone) or undesirable (e.g. lied to someone).

But the ratio of desirable to undesirable behaviors was the same for both groups

Nevertheless, after reading all of the stories, participants estimated that members from Group B. committed more undesirable acts than desirable ones

Base Rate Fallacy

As sample size increases, variability decreases

E.g. if you flip a coin 10 times, you might see HHHHTTHHHH, 8 out of 10 heads

But if you flipped 1000 coins, the chances of seeing 800/1000 heads is way lower

Some sports, then, are more likely to have flukes!

Any game with low scores, like

soccer; to reduce flukes, games should

have high scores and multiple matches

(e.g. best of 3)

Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand

Say you flip a coin 9 times, and the result is all heads. Will the next one be:

A. Head

B. Tails

C. Heads or Tails are equally likely

What do you think the answer is?

Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand

Hot hand players would believe good luck would continue and say A. Heads

Gambler’s Fallacy players would say a Tails is due and pick B. Tails

The answer is C.

The 10th flip is a discrete event, the prior events have no impact on the current flip

Researchers demonstrated this

by putting cameras above roulette

tables in Las Vegas Casinos

Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand

If you play any kind of board games that include dice, you’ll catch yourself making either the Hot Hand or Gambler’s Fallacy very often

I know I do!

Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand can be understood in the context of the representativeness heuristic

People expect strings of numbers to look average

These two fallacies could also play into the next bias…

Illusion of Control

People have an immensely strong desire to control everything

We come to believe we can control chance events

E.g. in past times, things like rain dances

More casino research has shown people who want high numbers roll dicer harder, and people who want low numbers roll dice softer

Similarly, with Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand, it’s possible people are trying to reason around random chance by explaining in their mind why the next flip should be heads tails

Referring back to self-esteem, illusions of control are probably a mentally healthy thing to have

Magical thinking

Any assumptions that don’t hold up to scrutiny or fact

E.g. being afraid to wear a sweater that someone who has HIV/AIDS wore

It couldn’t be transmitted as such

Being afraid of eating a chocolate bug

Unrealistic contamination

We all get grossed out if we see a hair in our food or if a bug just landed in it

But in reality, nothing really happens from that ;p

Statistical Regression

Sir Francis Galton came up with it

Aka regression toward the mean

Streaks can happen in anything, sports, gambling, etc., but eventually, everything regresses back to whatever its mean is

This relates back to the base rate fallacy, as sample size increases, variability decreases

Counterfactual thinking

Imaging alternatives to past or present events, despite reality being set in stone

What if a different candidate won

What if you would have been on time for that date

Narrowly missing a subway train is something people find more aggravating than missing it by 5 minutes, even though there’s no real difference

Attributions

Attributions are an explanation of why something happened

Inferences we make to explain events in our life

E.g. Dylan said something mean because he’s a jerk

Earlier in the course we had discussed the ‘self-serving bias’

Where people attribute their success to internal characteristics (I’m smart, hard-working, etc.)

But attribute failures to external things (my boss just didn’t like me)

Let’s investigate another important bias…

Attributions

Fundamental attribution error (FAE)(aka correspondence bias):

tendency to attribute the actions of others to internal causes even if they are actually caused by external forces or circumstances (Jones & Nisbett)

e.g. Bob is late because he's a slacker (internal)

we don't assume it's due to traffic

This bias is one of the most

famous and important findings

in social psychology

Actor and Observer

Actor-observer bias: as observers, we attribute the behavior of others to their wants, motives, and personality traits (this is the fundamental attribution error), but as actors, we tend to find external explanations for our own behavior

Personalizing the Fundamental Attribution Error

Can you think of an example from your recent past where you evaluated someone's actions and made the fundamental attribution error?

in other words, you attributed their behavior to internal causes, even though you don't know for sure

Can you similarly think of an example where someone attributed YOUR behavior to an internal cause, when really the cause was external?

Personal Anecdote on FAE

I have a memory that stands out to me:

Junior year of college I had woken up after my first night back on campus and was going to head to my first class, animal behavior

The instructor was Dr. Yasukawa, who

was kind of intimidating and well-

regarded on campus, but I was excited

to take his class because he was the athletics

director and we had often played some sports

with students/faculty during ‘noon ball’ in

between classes during my pervious year/s

Personal Anecdote on FAE continued

So I woke up, took one look in the mirror, and saw that my eyes were super bloodshot

It looked like I was on drugs

In fact, it was because I had severe allergies from being in the Midwest (hay, pollen, ragweed, etc.)

Afterwards I got on allergy medication which stopped any such problems

I tried a few things to fix the problem, but ended up not being able to, and had to decide to just go to class, and was late at this point

I walked in and everyone was looking at me, classes were small at my college, only 20 people

Personal Anecdote on FAE continued

As I was heading to my seat, he said “Hi Jon, that’s your ‘one bite.’

Referring to animal behavior, as that was the course, and how dogs can kind of get away with one bite, but after that they get branded as trouble

I was so embarrassed!!! I apologized after class, but you can tell when someone doesn’t believe what happened

Personal Anecdote on FAE continued

He (the observer) assumed I was late because: I was just the kind of person who ran late, was disrespectful, or had been smoking, etc.

In reality, this was a perfect example of the FAE

He assumed internal causes for my lateness

I (the actor) knew, of course, that there was a clear, external cause

Monitor your own judgements of people, I’ve caught myself making the FAE many times

Factors Influencing Attributions

Discounting: downgrading internal causes as a way of explaining an individual’s behavior when a person’s actions seem to have strong external causes

e.g. athletes endorsing shaving cream

Consensus: degree to which people respond alike; implies that responses are externally caused

everyone is late....traffic