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CHAPTER 3: SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGEMENTS

Members:
Zapanta, Shary C.
Pabelonia, Charie E.
Botona, Jannalou

HOW DO WE JUDGE OUR SOCIAL WORLDS, CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY?

PRIMING
-is the awakening or activating of certain associations
embodied cognition
-the mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive
preferences and social judgments.

INTUITIVE JUDGEMENTS
The Powers of Intuition
• Schemas are mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and
interpretations.
• Emotional reactions are often nearly instantaneous, happening before there is time
for deliberate thinking.
• Given sufficient expertise, people may intuitively know the answer to a problem
• Given but a very thin slice of someone - even just a fraction of a second glance at
their photo
The Limits of Intuition
Social psychologists have explored not only our error-prone hindsight judgments but also
our capacity for illusion

OVERCONFIDENCE PHENOMENON
-the tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one's
beliefs.
-Incompetence feeds overconfidence
-stockbroker overconfidence
-political overconfidence
-student overconfidence

CONFIRMATION BIAS
-a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

HEURISTICS : MENTAL SHORTCUTS


- a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments.
- the speed of these intuitive guides promotes our survival
The Representative Heuristic
-the tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary odds, that someone or something
belongs to a particular group if resembling (representing) a typical member.
The Availability Heuristic
- a cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory.
If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace.

COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING
- imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't.
- the more significant and unlikely the event, the more intense the counterfactual thinking

ILLUSORY THINKING
Illusory Correlation
- perceptions of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship
than actually exists.
-Gambling
-Regression toward the average
the statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behaviour to return toward their
average

MOODS and JUDGMENTS


- moods infuse our judgment
-moods pervade our thinking

HOW DO WE PERCEIVE OUR SOCIAL WORLDS?


• Perceiving and interpreting events
- political perceptions
“Once you have a belief, it influences how you perceive all other relevant information. Once
you see a country as hostile, you are likely to interpret ambiguous actions on their part as
signifyingtheir hostility.”
—Political Scientist Robert Jervis (1985)

• Belief perseverance
Persistence of one’s initial conceptions, such as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited
but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives.

• Constructing memories of ourselves and our worlds


Memories can be likened to a storage chest in the brain into which we deposit material from
which we can withdraw later if needed. Ocassionally something is lost from the "chest", and
then we say we have forgotten.

- misinformation effect
Incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event after witnessing an event
and receiving misleading information about it.

• Reconstructing our past attitudes


“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying
in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”
—Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1711

- rosy retrospection
they recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experience them

• Reconstructing our past behavior


Memory construction enables us to revise our own histories.
Sometimes our present view is that we’ve improved—in which case we may misrecall our
past as more unlike the present than it actually was.

HOW DO WE EXPLAIN OUR SOCIAL WORLD?


• Attributing casuality: to the person or the situation
- misattribution
mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source.

- attributing theory
the theory of how people explain others’ behavior. For example, by attributing it either to
internal disposition (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external factors.

- dispositional attribution
attributing behavior to the person’s disposition and trait.

- situational attribution
attributing behavior to the environment.

- infering traits
We often infer that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions
(Jones & Davis, 1965).

( spontaneous inference)
an effortless, automatic interference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behavior

• The fundamental attribution error


- the tendency to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional
influences upon other’s behavior

• Perspective and situational awareness (camera perspective basis)


we observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves - attribution
theorists (Jones, 1976: Jones & Nibett, 1971). Ex. camera perspective bias.

• Cultural differences
Cultures also influence attribution error (Ickes, 1980; Watson, 1982). An individualistic
Western worldview predisposes people to assume that people, not situations, cause events.
Internal explanations are more socially approved (Jellison & Green, 1981).

HOW DO OUR SOCIAL BELIEFS MATTER?


Self-fulfilling prophecies- A belief that lead to their own fulfillment.
Examples:
1. Experimenter Bias (Robert Rosenthall, 1985-2006)
2. Teacher Expectations and Student Performance
Behavioral confirmation - A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s social
expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.
So..HOW DO OUR SOCIAL BELIEFS MATTER?
Our beliefs sometimes take on lives of their own. Usually, our beliefs about others have a
basis in reality. But studies of experimenter bias and teacher expectations show that an
erroneous belief that certain people are unusually capable (or incapable) can lead teachers
and researchers to give those people special treatment. This may elicit superior (or inferior)
performance and, therefore, seem to confirm an assumption that is actually false.
Similarly, in everyday life we often get behavioral confirmation of what we expect. Told that
someone we are about to meet is intelligent and attractive, we may come away impressed
with just how intelligent and attractive he or she is.

WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE ABOUT SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGMENTS?


Social beliefs and judgments reveals how we form and sustain beliefs that usually serve us
well but sometimes lead us astray. A balanced social psychology will therefore appreciate
both the powers and the perils of social thinking.
Reflecting on Illusory Thinking

• Emotions enrich human experience and that intuitions are an important source of
creative ideas.

“Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him also of his happiness.” —Henrik
Ibsen, The Wild Duck, 1884
• To sift reality from illusion requires both open-minded curiosity and hard-headed
rigor. Hence, we need to be critical but not cynical, curious but not gullible, open but
not exploitable.
“The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more
responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin
the other.” —Pope Francis, TED talk, 2017

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