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Chapter3-SocialBeliefsandJudgmentsPart1-IntrotoSocialThinking.pptxChapter 3
Social Beliefs & Judgments
Part 1 (An Introduction to Social Thinking)
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First: Draw an Alien
I know it’s a strange request, but just take a moment NOW to draw an alien on a piece of paper. Do it now, not later. You’ll need your drawing in a few minutes, and I don’t want you to be influenced by the upcoming slides
Save this alien drawing until it is mentioned on the slides
I might ask you to scan this drawing and upload it for your group discussion for this chapter, so don’t just blow by this slide, okay!
An Overview of This Chapter
In this chapter, we are going to cover topics related to our social beliefs and judgments. These includes items such as …
Part One: An Introduction to Social Thinking
Part Two: Attribution
Part Three: Priming Mechanisms in Social Judgments
Part Four: Judgmental Heuristics and Rules of Thumb
Part Five: After the Decision is Made
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Part One
An Introduction to Social Thinking
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How do we make sense of the world?
Think about the following – How often do these things come true?
When you wash your car, it will inevitably rain
It is easier to get subsequently pregnant if you first adopt
Whenever you are running late for class, you hit the worst traffic (and can’t find a parking space at FIU!)
Bad luck comes in threes, as do celebrity deaths
The one time you forget your umbrella, it rains
If you really need to use your cell phone, the battery is dead
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How do we make sense of the world?
Although you may remember many instances of the events listed on the previous slide, you may fail to remember all those times when the opposite was true!
Indeed, selective attention and selective memory play roles in strengthening these incorrect beliefs
We pay more attention to incidents that confirm prior beliefs
We remember incidents that confirmed previous beliefs
Do you remember all the times when you didn’t have an umbrella and it didn’t rain? I doubt it!
How do we make sense of the world?
Social Cognition:
How we interpret social events usually depends on our current thoughts, as well as the beliefs and categories we typically use to make sense of things.
Often we rely on basic cognitive processing strategies (that is, we use heuristics and rules of thumb rather than deeply and thoroughly processing all of the information available to us)
However, there are times when we can weigh the costs and rewards in a more deliberative manner
Let’s look at these deliberative versus automatic processes …
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Views of Social Cognition
Jeremy Bentham and felicific calculus (1876)
As philosopher Bentham contends, human cognition is based on felicific calculus, or a happiness calculation. This is a deep, deliberative, rational approach
We add up the pleasure inherent in a decision and subtract the pain (perform a cost-benefit analysis)
Benjamin Franklin often measured such pros and cons
When do we weigh the pros and cons? It depends …
Do we have enough time, attention, motivation, and information to process the world going on around us?
For example, try to figure out what is going on in this picture …
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Why is Robert kissing Ann’s cheek?
Not a lot of information here.
Are they best friends? Maybe.
Siblings? Maybe.
In a romantic relationship? Again, maybe.
This picture doesn’t give enough information to know what’s going on
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Why is Allen kissing Sue’s cheek?
Why is Allen kissing Sue’s cheek here?
With a wedding theme, it is easier to understand their behavior – we now have enough information to better process the scene:
This is obviously a bride and groom in love on their wedding day!
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Judging Our Social World
The powers of intuition – Two routes (dual process model)
1). Controlled thinking involves thinking deliberately and consciously while weighing pros and cons
Requires ability, motivation, and cognitive resources to think
Such requirements are usually hard to meet in real life
2). Automatic thinking involves processing information in a more effortless and impulsive manner, sometimes without full awareness (that is, using rules of “intuition”)
Which of these do you think we do more often?
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The powers of intuition – Two routes (dual process model)
If you guessed automatic processing, then you are correct!
Paying attention to everything around us is impossible!
If we did, we’d never get anything done!
Thus we often operate on instinct and intuition, and often we are not even aware of why we behave the way we do
Automatic processing can actually be very beneficial for us!
For example …
Judging Our Social World
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The powers of intuition – Two routes (dual process model)
Take the case of automatic driving! We often drive intuitively, using well practiced skills. Do you pay attention to everything while you are on the road? Let me put it another way …
Have you ever started driving home, but then “zoned out” along the way? The next thing you know, you pull into your driveway with no memory of the last five miles?
Along the way, you passed other cars, pedestrians, stop lights, and got past all without having an accident! Wow!
Judging Our Social World
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The powers of intuition – Two routes (dual process model)
Automatic driving
We can drive without much conscious awareness because the skills are ingrained in us and we don’t need to actively process all the information on the road in order to drive
But what would happen if the rules changed?
What if, for example, a Red Light = Go ?!!!
Driving would become more cognitively effortful for us
Want to see? Click the “Red Light = Go” film link under supplemental materials (required)!
Judging Our Social World
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The powers of intuition – Two routes (dual process model)
Automatic driving
We can drive without much conscious awareness because the skills are ingrained in us and we don’t need to actively process all the information on the road in order to drive
I bet you’d be chanting “Green means stop; Red means go; Green means stop; Red means go” over and over to yourself if you were in his shoes, too!
It takes a lot of cognitive effort to retrain learned behavior
Judging Our Social World
Insert Sliders Film Clip at the end of this slide
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Judging Our Social World
Automatic processing allows us to use schemas
Pull out your alien drawing. Does it look like the one on this slide? Does it have a great big head, skinny body, antennae, big eyes? It looks like a human, but with weirder proportions?
We all develop and maintain schemas (mental templates that help us make sense of our world). Some are schemas based on our shared cultural experiences that tell us what aliens look like: movies, TV, books, etc., have instilled a similar conception of what “alien” life looks like in the minds of most Americans
Forming impressions of our social world
Now that you know how social schemas and different cognitive processing styles help us figure out our social world, it is time for a closer look at how we make judgments.
In our next section (Part 2), we on attribution, or the ways in which we decide why someone is engaging in some kind of behavior (or why we are engaging in a behavior)
Judging Our Social World
