CHAPTER 3 – SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGEMENTS o Intuitive; offscreen where reason does not - Self-verification – we tend to seek friends

cation – we tend to seek friends and

go spouses who bolster their own self-views; to seek
Motivated reasoning – gut-level liking or disliking can Examples of Automatic thinking experiences that will confirm perceived self-image
powerfully influence how we interpret evidence and 1. Schemas – mental concepts or templates that
view reality intuitively guides our perceptions and Remedies for overconfidence
HOW DO WE JUDGE OUR SOCIAL WORLDS? interpretations - Be wary of other people’s dogmatic statements,
- We have two brain systems: 2. Emotional reactions – instantaneous; before confidence and competence need not coincide
o System 1 – automatic and out of awareness deliberate thinking - Three techniques to reduce overconfidence bias:
a. Because of a neural shortcut that takes 1. Prompt feedback – clear, daily
▪ “intuition” or “’gut-feeling”
o System 2 – requires conscious attention and information from eye/ ear to sensory feedback
effort switchboard, the thalamus 2. Estimate probable accuracy
- System 1 influences more of our actions than we 3. Expertise – people may intuitively know the 3. Get people to think of one good
realize answer to a question reason why their judgements might
4. Snap judgements – given a thin slice of be wrong – force them to consider
Priming someone for just a second disconfirming information
- Activation of particular associations in memory • Facts, names, and past experiences we remember
by system 2 HEURISTICS: MENTAL SHORTCUTS
(remember that our memory system is a web of
• Skills and conditioned dispositions are form system - our cognitive system is fast and frugal, it
associations) 1
- What is out of sight might not be completely out of specializes in mental shortcuts
• Blindsight – loss of a portion of the visual cortex • Heuristics – simple, quick, and efficient thinking
mind that makes one a person blind at some areas of
- Invisible images or word primes a response to a strategies
visual field due to stroke or surgery
later task o Enables us to make routine decisions with
• our brains know much more than it tells us minimal effort
- We are being influenced unconsciously; not
• Limits of Intuition – unconscious thinking may nt 1. Representativeness heuristic – tendency to
aware
be as smart as we thought it to be presume despite contrary odds, that someone or
- Much of our social information processing is
automatic something belongs to a particular group when it
Overconfidence resembles a typical member
- Most of our everyday life is determined by - As we interpret and construct memories, our system
unconscious mental process that are put into 2. Availability heuristic – cognitive rule that
1 intuitions are sometimes wrong, creating errors judges the likelihood of things in terms of
motion by features of the environment that we are unaware of thus making us display
• Embodied condition – physical sensations that availability in memory, when it is readily
overconfidence available to our mind, we tend to see it as a
prime our social judgements
- Incompetence feeds overconfidence commonplace (easier recall -> more likely it
o Mutual influence of bodily sensations on
- Our ignorance of our ignorance sustains self- seems)
cognitive preferences and social judgements
confidence
o Ex. Social exclusion literally feels cold and ▪ People are slow to deduce particular
- Overconfidence phenomenon – tendency to be instances from general truth, but quick to
cold feels like social exclusion
more confident than correct infer general truth from vivid instances
o Our social cognition is embodied: the brain
- Overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs ▪ Explains why vivid, easy-to-imagine
systems that process bodily sensations
- Examples of overconfidence events seem more likely
communicate with the brain systems
▪ Stockbroker ▪ Probability neglect – we worry about
responsible for social thinking
▪ Political remote possibilities while ignoring higher
▪ Student probabilities
Intuitive Judgements
- Overprecision – identifying too narrow a range ▪ our statistical intuition is not based on
- Knowing something without reasoning or analysis reason and calculation, but by emotions
Powers of Intuition attuned to this
Confirmation Bias
• Controlled – active, deliberate, and conscious a. Ex. Which has greater population? Iraq or
• Automatic – impulsive, effortless and without Tanzania?
awareness
 ▪ We think its Iraq because it more Moods pervade our thinking Reconstructing our Past attitudes
likely but on the contrary, - Thoughts changes when mood swings - Positive memories brighten our recollections
Tanzania has greater population - Memories and judgements change with the • Rosy retrospection – recall mildly pleasant events
color of the mood on that time by bringing to more favorably than the experienced
Counterfactual thinking mind the past experiences associated with - Produces pleasure
- Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that mood - When memories are hazy, current feelings
that might have been, but didn’t - Mood-related thoughts distracts complex guide our recall
- Occurs when we can easily picture an thinking - The worse your current view of your partner is,
alternative outcome o Hijack of amygdala the worse your memories are, which only
o Ex. I could’ve caught the bus if only it - When moods are high, we are subjected to further confirms negative feelings about
didn’t rain snap judgements by the system 1 them
o “if only…” - Ex. A depressed moods motivate intense Reconstructing our past behavior
- Underlies our feelings of like when we barely thinking - Memory construction enables us to revise
escaped a bad event, we easily imagine a our own histories
negative counterfactual thinking that makes us HOW DO WE PERCEIVE OUR SOCIAL WORLDS? - We recall things as revised memories that
feel lucky - Our preconceptions or predispositions guide suit our present views
how we perceive and interpret information - Totalitarian egos – underreport bad
Illusory correlation as we construe the world through our belief- behavior and overreport good behavior
- Perception of a relationship when none exist, or tinted glasses
perception of a stronger relationship than Perceiving and interpreting events HOW DO WE EXPLAIN OUR SOCIAL WORLDS?
actually exists - Our beliefs shape our interpretation of Attributing Causality: to the person or the
- We easily misperceive random events as a everything else situation
confirmation of our beliefs • Belief Perseverance • Misattribution – mistakenly attributing a behavior
A. Gambling - Persistence of one’s initial conceptions such to the wrong source
- We act as if we can control or predict chance as when the basis for that belief is discredited, - men are more likely to attribute women’s
events we somehow believe it nice gesture as flirting or sexual interest
- Gamblers attribute wins to great skill and - Its difficult to demolish a falsehood after a which can contribute to sexual harassment
foresight but losses to bad luck person conjures up a rationale about it • attribution theory – theory of how people explain
- Ex. We throw the dice hard for high numbers others’ behavior by attributing it to internal
- The more we examine our theories and
and soft for otherwise (personal dispositions or traits) or external
explain how they might be true. The more
- Illusion of control breeds overconfidence dispositions (person’s situation)
closed we become to information that
- We like to be in control, so if we feel like we - dispositional attribution – attributing
challenges our beliefs
lack control, we will act to create a sense of behavior to person’s disposition and traits
predictability - situational attribution – attributing
B. Regression toward the average behavior to environment
- Statistical tendency for extreme and subpar Inferring Traits
Constructing memories of ourselves and our
scores to regress to average • spontaneous trait inference – effortless,
worlds
- When things reach a low point, we try automatic inference of a trait after exposure to
- We construct memories at the time of someone’s behavior
everything, and fail to recognize the withdrawal - the ease in which we infer traits
regression effect - We also reconstruct distant past by using our • fundamental attribution error – tendency for
- Exceptional performance tends to regress current feelings and expectations to combine observers to underestimate situational influence
toward normality information fragments which may lead to and overestimate dispositional influences upon
falsehoods others’ behavior
Moods and Judgements • Misinformation effect – incorporating - discounting of the situation
- Our moods infuse our judgements misinformation into one’s memory of the event after
- Social judgement involves efficient witnessing an event and receiving misinformation
information processing about it
 - we tend to presume that others are the way
they act even when we don’t make the same
presumption to ourselves HOW DO OUR SOCIAL BELIEFS MATTER?
Why do we make the attribution error? - It matters because it influences how we feel
- A bias in the way we explain others’ behavior and act
- It only applies to others but not to us • Self-fulfilling prophecies – beliefs that lead to its
Perspective and situational awareness own fulfillment
- We observe others from a different • Experimenter bias – research participants
perspective than we observe ourselves sometimes live up to what they believe
- When we act, the environment commands experimenters expect of them
our attention o By Robert Rosenthal
- When we watch another person act, that Teacher Expectations and student performance
person occupies the center of our attention - Teacher’s evaluations correlate with student
and the environment becomes relatively achievement
invisible - Teacher-expectations effect
- Camera perspective bias – influences - the attitudes of a class towards its teachers
people’s guilt judgements are as important as the teacher’s attitude
- The passage of time decreases the tendency towards the students
toward the fundamental attribution error Getting from others what we expect
- When recall our past, we become like • behavioral confirmation – a type of self-fulfilling
observers of someone else – we ascribe trait prophecy whereby people’s social expectations lead
descriptions them to behave in ways that cause others to
- “Kayla is uptight, but Fiona is relaxed. With confirm their behavior
me it varies upon the situation” o leads others to act in a way
Culture Differences o when someone loves us, it helps us become
- Individualistic western worldview – more the person he or she expects us to be
predisposes people to assume that people, o when children think of them as tidy and
not situations, cause events helpful, they become tidy and helpful
- Eastern Asian cultures – more sensitive to
situational importance WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE ABOUT SOCIAL BELIEFS
- It is “fundamental” because it colors our AND JUDGEMENTS?
explanations in basic and important ways • One can be very smart and exhibit bad judgements
Why we study attribution errors • Trying hard doesn’t eliminate biases
- To reveal how we think about ourselves and • The minds premium on efficient judgements makes
others our intuition more vulnerable to misjudgment than
- We are mostly unaware of them and we can we suspect
benefit from greater awareness • We form and sustain falsehoods
- Social psychology exposes fallacies in the • Laboratory procedures overestimate our intuitive
hopes that we may become more rational, powers
receptive to critical thinking, and more in • Behavioral scientists assume our modes of thought
and behavior are adaptive and the errors are a by-
touch with reality
product of our mental shortcut that simplify
- Illusory thinking is a by-product of our
complex information
mind’s strategy for simplifying complex
• To cope with reality, we simplify it
information
- we should not always blame people for their
problems, sometimes their problems are a
product of real environmental causes