Social Psychology I 25/09/2013 2:56:00 PM

Should we all “scream for schemas”?

Are schemas a good thing or a bad thing?

Schema is a categorization of a person/thing that will hold true in

many cases; your organizing structure – can be stereotypes

YES! Reasons:

o Aid and speed up information processing and recall

There is so much information in our environment that

we cannot possibly process all info at once

It is a shortcut that helps us to understand a

situation/thing or at least get the gist of it

o Fill in gaps when information is missing or ambiguous

Making a judgment about a person when you don’t have

all of the info; applying stereotype to job interview

Powerful man with trophy wife, minimal

relationships within company; you want the job

What do you think about this man?

Maybe he likes golf, so you talk about a golf

game over the weekend

In some situations your guesses will be correct ->

an educated guess based on your schema (as

long as your schema is fairly accurate)

o Guide expectations and interpretations

How are you going to interact with someone? Job

interview, date, etc.

Even people we know very well, we have schemas for

We may need to modify the schemas for people

that we know

NO! Reasons:

o Can be too accepting of/dependent on schemas

Fail to notice information that stops fitting with our

schemas

Stereotyping -> negative consequence of schemas

o Can lead us to ignore important info

o Can lead to inaccurate expectations

Ex. heterosexual women basing schema of relationships

based on Drew Barry movies

Not going to meet your expectations; discrepancy

from what you wanted

Ex. heterosexual men basing schema of sex based on

pornography

o Incorrect information can be used to fill in what’s missing

o Hard to change once created

Difficult to alter schema -> assimilating new information

into schema

Easier to revise/debate info coming in than general

schema

Perseverance effect: info that discredits our

schema comes to light and we don’t care

Schemas in ambiguous situations

Schemas for a guest lecturer

o Group A: read guest lecturer is a very warm person,

industrious, critical, practical, and determined

Personality profile/schema for the guest lecturer before

he even comes to the class

o Group B: read guest lecturer is a rather cold person,

industrious, critical, practical, and determined

Groups have different sets of expectations for what this

person is going to be like and what he is going to

deliver

Groups asked to evaluate the lecture; his performance

is based on things that have nothing to do with his

performance or what he is delivering; nonconscious

Group A: rated the professor more highly and

were more likely to ask questions and participate

in discussion

Group B: rated the professor lower and were less

likely to ask questions and participate in

discussion

Schemas in high pressure situations: Shooter Bias

Real world example: Amadou Diallo

Shot 41 times when he was reaching for his wallet; police thought

he was reaching for a gun

o They made a split second judgment based on their schema of

targets; shoot someone with gun, do not shoot someone

without a gun

Two errors you can make; shoot someone without gun,

or don’t shoot someone with gun

o 4 scenarios with black/white men with/without guns

study in 2002: choose which men to shoot based on

split second judgment

we see a bias that people are more likely to shoot a

black man than a white man

more errors when it comes to not shooting white men

with guns

movie “Crash” addresses this

racial profiling guides peoples’ responses to

specific situations

Schemas influence attention and interpretation

We engage in confirmation hypothesis testing bias

o Tendency to seek information that verifies existing beliefs

(look for evidence confirming our schemas)

o Ex. Trophy wife boss man -> you see a picture of him golfing

and you think “I knew it all along”; you don’t notice a picture

of him serving at a soup kitchen

Rosenhan’s psychiatric hospital study 1973

o 8 fake patients were acting completely normally, but said to

say one fake phrase, that they were hearing a voice in their

head saying “thud”

o fake patients were diagnosed with different disorders, such as

schizophrenia or bipolar

o the only way to leave the experiment was to agree that they

had disorders, and they would be discharged

o patients given heavy anti-psychotic drugs

schemas about patients if you work at a mental hospital

-> if someone comes in, they must be crazy, and they

will be treated as such

also in a prison, schema of prisoner

also on jury duty

thought processes - imagine an iceberg:

o you see a tiny bit (your self-awareness)

o the rest submerged is nonconscious processes

Schemas Guide Memory

What you recall at a later time

o Study: participants read a story: Barbara and Jack go to the

mountains

Condition 1: Jack proposes to Barbara

Condition 2: Jack rapes Barbara

2 weeks later participants recall details of the story

researchers gave list of details to participants;

some details were real, some were fake

marriage proposal story: many incorrect proposal

details, few incorrect rape details

rape story: few incorrect proposal details, many

incorrect rape details

o ex. Family gatherings: annoying when you’re there, but warm

memories afterward

Accessibility of Schemas

At any given time, you have schemas of what is going on around

you operating at the same time

What will influence which schemas are applied to a situation?

o Past experiences/memories

If you’re used to being rejected in the dating game, you

develop a rejecting mindset; if you go in expecting

someone to reject you, they will -> self-fulfilling

prophecy

o Current goals

what is important to you right now

ex. Doing well in social psych class

related to what is also going on in your life; you

see social psych everywhere

o Recent experiences

What’s going on right now, in our immediate

environment

Priming

Methods of Priming

Memory task

o Prime = asking participants to memorize a list of words, then

engage in other task, then recall words

Participants think the tasks are unrelated

Whatever schema the researcher wants to prime you

with is in those words

o Ex. Higgins, Rholes, Jones 1977

Part 1: fake “perception study”

Identify colors and memorize words

Negative: reckless, conceited, aloof,

stubborn

Positive: adventurous, self-confident,

independent, persistent

Part 2: fake “comprehension study”

Read passage and give impressions of Donald

Positive impressions by those primed with

positive words

Negative impressions by those primed with

negative words

Word search

o Prime embedded in search (words)

Search with words like hopeful, fun, upbeat, etc. will

put people in a positive mood

Scrambled sentence task

o Words in a sentence relate to prime

o Ex. Study Bargh, Chen, Burrow 1996:

IV: prime

Elderly stereotype vs. neutral words

DV: walking speed

Result:

Priming elderly stereotype did lead to slower

walking pace -> unconsciously

Physical presence of stimuli

o Includes subliminal priming

Idea that if you give primes outside of conscious

awareness, they will affect behaviour

Can we overcome the automatic influence of schemas? Leandre/Shah 2010

IV: subliminal indifference vs. control primes

o Bored looking people vs. engaged people

DV: persistence and performance on anagram task

o i.e., make words from RTCAE (crate, trace, etc.)

o can we override the primed conditions?

Moderator: “how committed are you to the task?”

Control prime: doesn’t matter if people were

committed or not committed, the performance

was around the same rate

Indifference prime: if people are uncommitted,

they will perform much worse than if they were

committed; motivation matters!

Heuristics

Social cognition topic; form of automatic thinking; rules of thumb

The rules of principles that allow us to make social judgments

rapidly and with reduced effort; snap judgments that we make

o Different from schemas and also similar to schemas;

Mental shortcut – similar

Applied to decision making – different (if this, then that)

Social judgments on how we interpret situations

or how we act in those situations

o Availability heuristic

Why some people are more afraid of flying than they

are of driving to the airport; frequency of hearing about

something -> ease of recalling

o Representativeness heuristic

o Anchoring/adjustment heuristic

o Risk aversion

Automatic vs. Controlled thinking

Counting to 5

o Automatic thinking

Saying 1-5 in alphabetical order

o Controlled thinking

Motivates thinking that is conscious, intentional,

voluntary

Thought suppression

When you’re trying not to think about something/not say something

o i.e., Austin Powers – MOLE

avoiding thinking about something a person would prefer to forget

o problems that are painful to think about

o suppress thoughts so you can get on with your day

thoughts suppression is effortful and depends on two processes:

o automatic monitoring process

searches for unwanted thought; scanning your thoughts

o controlled operating process

replaces it with distracter thought

problems: you think about something more when trying not to think

about (control process breaks down, automatic process goes on

auto drive) -> when tired/stressed/distracted

ex. “the white bear”

Counterfactual reasoning

counter to the facts

mental undoing of the events

who is happier: bronze or silver?

o BRONZE -> silver almost got it, so they’re pissed

Downward counterfactuals:

o Imagine how it could have been worse

o i.e., “I know someone who worked at the twin towers and

called in sick on 9/11…it could have been worse”

o purpose: makes us feel better -> we feel lucky

upward counterfactuals:

o imagine how could have been better

o purpose: prepare us for the future

o i.e., “if I had studied harder I would have done better on the

test”

Mood, Self-Esteem, and Counterfactuals

Sanna, Turley-Ames, Meier 1999

o Study where counterfactuals generated vary as a function of

self-esteem and mood

o When people are in a bad mood, some people have trouble

lifting themselves from that bad mood, and others do not

have the trouble

When both high and low self-esteem people were in a

good mood = downward counterfactuals

BUT:

When low self-esteem people were n bad moods =

upward counterfactuals

When high self-esteem people were in bad moods =

downward counterfactuals

how to improve human thinking in textbook

books:

blink by Malcolm Gladwell

predictably irrational by Ariely

stumbling on happiness by Daniel gilbert

THE TEST

1 hour

no lecture after the test

50-60 multiple choice questions -> factual, conceptual, applied

(more weight on latter 2)

don’t need to know names just concepts

have understanding of the studies in text that show effects

describe methods of study, then multiple choice for result

OR

give result of study and ask what does it mean or what

theory is it? Multiple choice

factual question example

which of the following statements about schemas is true?

o Schemas affect the information we notice, but only when we

are aware of the schema

o Schemas affect what we perceive while emotional processes

are important for determining what we think about and

remember

o Schemas affect what we notice but not necessarily what we

remember

Conceptual question example

During the last Canadian election there was a televised debate among the

candidates for prime minister, after the debate supporters of each side

claimed that their candidate had handily won the debate. According to the

text, the supporters’ judgments were [probably affected by :

A) Schemas, B, C, D, E

Applied question example

You do not know many people with disabilities but view a telethon in which

people with disabilities is on tv. You see a blind woman the next day and

help her out

A)primed, B, C, D. E

Film: judgment and decision making

How do we make decisions?

o We have to act decisively

o We think we are good at this, but we are not

o Failures of human intuition

Do groups have effect on our judgment?

o As part of a mod, individuals no longer think independently ->

mob psychology can turn into mass hysteria

What mistakes do we make when we negotiate?

What conditions would make a student believe her own lie?

Socially appropriate rules of conduct (Freud)

Mental strategies can be biased

Cognitive illusion: error in judgment

o People do not always know when something is

appropriate/inappropriate

o People make illogical choices: how and why?

o Two approaches to the study of decision making:

Normative: how we ought to make decisions

Rational and coherent, but not a terrific model of

how people actually make decision

Descriptive: how decisions are actually being made in

practice

Availability Heuristic ->

Are there more words in English that:

o A)Begin with K

o B)The third letter is K

What would you worry about when spending a month in the middle

east?

o A) terrorist attack

o B) traffic accident?

Representativeness Heuristic ->

Linda 31 philosophy major in college single

Bank teller OR feminist bank teller?

Anchoring Heuristic -> question about length of Mississippi river

Initial number pulls the estimate in that direction, even if it is

nowhere near accurate

information floating in your head will have the weight of a

suggestion, even if you don’t believe it or if it has been discredited

Risk aversion ->

Gambling

o A) 85% chance to win 100$

o B) sure gain of 85$

Next

o A) 100% chance of losing 85$

o B) 85% chance of losing 100$

We should not trust our instincts as we make errors

dread factor: unfamiliar or catastrophic risks are seen more risky

than familiar or risks that appear later

9/25/2013 2:56:00 PM

9/25/2013 2:56:00 PM