Discussion 3
styrdestiny24-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