1. THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
Artist Song / Psych Concept
1 Aerosmith
Dude (Looks Like A Lady)
(Schemas; Top-Down Processing)
2 R.E.M.
Man On The Moon
(Confirmation Bias)
3 Grouplove
Tongue Tied
(Fluency)
4 Billy Joel
Only The Good Die Young
(Availability Heuristic/Illusory Correlation)
5 Wyclef Jean
Perfect Gentleman
(Representativeness Heuristic)
6 The Killers
Somebody Told Me
(Biases in Secondhand Information)

2. CHAPTER 4:
SOCIAL COGNITION
Melanie B. Tannenbaum, M.A.
Psychology 201
Spring 2014

3. IMPORTANT POINTS
○ Why Study Social Cognition?
!
○ Information Available for Social Cognition
!
○ How Information is Presented
!
○ How We Seek Information
!
○ How We Understand Information
!
○ Reasons, Intuition, Heuristics

4. WHAT IS SOCIAL COGNITION?
!
○ Social Cognition: The encoding, storage, retrieval, and
processing of information in the brain which relates to
members of the same species.
!
○ How we interpret, remember, and understand information
that we receive about the people and situations that
surround us every day.
!
○ How do we think about the world & make
judgments that help us interpret the past,
understand the present, and predict the future?

5. WHY STUDY SOCIAL COGNITION?
○ Construals impact how people process and remember
social information differently.
!
○ Our judgments are rarely (if ever!) flawless.
!
○ Social cognition gives us useful information about the
strategies & rules that people follow to make judgments.
!
○ Mistakes often reveal a lot about how we think by
showing what our limitations are.
!
○ What mistakes do we make? Why do we make them?

6. THE INFORMATION AVAILABLE
FOR SOCIAL COGNITION

7. INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR JUDGMENT:
Firsthand Information
!
Information based on personal
experience or observation.
Secondhand Information
Information that comes from other
sources (gossip, books, magazines,
Internet, etc.)

8. BIASES IN FIRSTHAND INFORMATION
○ Might be unrepresentative
● If you’ve only ever been to Paris, can you make complete
judgments about what all of France is like? No!
!
!
○ Pluralistic Ignorance
● Individual motivations not to deviate from group norms can
create misperceptions about those norms.
!
!
○ Negativity Bias

9. WHAT’S IN A FACE?
○ Snap Judgments: Quick judgments about people’s
personalities based on seeing their faces for a period of
time as short as a tenth of a second.
Two dimensions stand out:
Trustworthiness
Dominance
People can have “baby faces”
High on trustworthiness
Low on dominance

10. ARE SNAP JUDGMENTS ACCURATE?
!
○ Sort of.
!
!
○ No real evidence that “baby faced” people are
actually more trustworthy or agreeable.
!
!
○ However, sometimes perception is reality...

11. ARE SNAP JUDGMENTS ACCURATE?
○ Pairs of politicians
● Candidate who looked “more competent” won 70% of the time.
!
○ 10-second silent video clips of professors
● Judgments of how anxious, competent, active, professional, and
warm those professors seemed were significantly correlated
with actual student evaluations.
!
○ In these situations, it doesn’t matter if the politicians
really are more competent or what the professors are
“really” like...all that matters for the outcome is what
voters and students think of them.

12. SNAP JUDGMENTS
○ What people think about others matters...a lot.
● Many decisions are based on very little information
● Self-fulfilling prophecies
!
○ Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
● People have an expectation about what others are like
● This expectation influences how they act towards that person
● This causes the person to behave consistently with the original
expectation, which makes the expectation come true.
!
○ If you expect TSA agents to be nasty, you might be rude
first...if they meet enough mean people all day, they will
probably (understandably!) be quite nasty back.

13. SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES
○ Researchers randomly divided a class roster in half.
!
!
○ Group A: “We expect these students to bloom this year!”
○ Group B: “We expect these students to fail this year.”
!
!
○ This was totally random!!

14. SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES
!
○ At the end of the year...
● Students labeled as “bloomers” scored higher on aptitude tests
than the “should-fail” students.
!
○ Teachers expected the students to do well or fail,
and taught them based on these expectations.
!
○ Maybe they spent more time with the “bloom” students
because of their promise, or quit faster with the “will-fail”
students because they thought it was a waste of time...

15. PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE
!
We misperceive group norms because people are
behaving in a way that is inconsistent with private
beliefs for fear of negative social consequences.
Classroom Questions

16. PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE
• All students find a certain topic confusing
!
• John sees the other students with their hands down.
!
!
• John assumes everyone understands the topic except for him.
!
!
• John doesn’t raise his hand because he doesn’t want to look stupid.
!
!
• Becky also doesn’t understand the topic; sees the other students
(including John) with their hands down, assumes that she’s the only
one who doesn’t understand...

17. PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE:
REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES
● Support for tyrants/dictators
!
● College drinking and the “hook-up culture”
!
● Cross-Race Friendships
○ Many people want cross-race friendships, but attribute their own
failure to initiate conversation to a fear of rejection while attributing
others’ behavior to a lack of interest (Shelton & Richeson, 2005)
!
● Gang Behavior
○ Gang members will often privately confess that they don’t like brutal
initiation processes or intergroup violence, but won’t say so publicly
because they assume other members don’t agree (Matza, 1964)

18. NEGATIVITY BIAS
!
○ We pay more attention to negative information than
positive information (often deliberately, sometimes
automatically).
!
!
○ If I get 10 positive teacher evaluations and 1 negative
one, I will likely overweight/pay more attention to the
negative evaluation and remember the feedback as being
more negative overall than it really was.

21. NEGATIVITY BIAS
!
!
Evolutionary Rationale
● Threats need to be dealt with ASAP
● Rewards can be delayed until it is safe to indulge them

22. BIASES IN SECONDHAND INFORMATION
○ When people tell stories, they often change details in order to
communicate the underlying message better.
!
○ Sharpening and Leveling
● Sharpening: Emphasizing the more interesting parts.
● Leveling: De-emphasizing/eliminating less interesting parts.
!
○ Examples
● Exaggerating a story when you tell it to friends
● Headlines
● News in general (the more dramatic, the better)
○ In the world as seen through the media, 80% of all crime is violent.
○ In the real world, only 20% of crime is violent.

23. BIASES IN SECONDHAND INFORMATION
!
○ Distorted Secondhand Impressions
● Secondhand impressions of people might be extreme because
we are receiving “sharpened” and “leveled” descriptions.
!
!
○ Ideological Distortions
● People might be biased when communicating information
because they want to encourage other people to share views.
● Example: Both Republicans and Democrats tend to slant
statistics in their favor to make the other side look worse.

24. ORDER EFFECTS
○ Primacy Effect
● Information presented first has an overly strong influence on
later judgments.
○ Recency Effect
● Information presented last has an overly strong influence on
later judgments.
Order of Presentation
!
Even though the content is the same, an
issue can be framed differently depending
on the order in which it is presented.

25. ORDER EFFECTS
○ Primacy Effect
● Information presented first has an overly strong influence on
later judgments.
○ Recency Effect
● Information presented last has an overly strong influence on
later judgments.
Order of Presentation
!
In surveys about life satisfaction and romantic
satisfaction, the correlation is higher if you ask
about romantic life first.

26. ORDER EFFECTS: WHY?
○ Construal
● Many words are ambiguous
● Interpretation is colored by preceding information
!
!
○ Limited Cognitive Capacity
● Easier to pay attention to first and last items
!
!
○ Attention & Motivation
● We are “fast and frugal” with cognitive resources
● Put just enough effort in to do things right, then stop.

27. PRIMACY EFFECTS
○ Primacy effects generally result from a tendency to pay
great attention to stimuli presented early on and then lose
focus during the presentation of later items.
!
○ Initial information affects how later info is construed.
!
● When “stubborn” comes after intelligent and industrious, it’s
interpreted as “steadfast” or “determined.”
!
● When “stubborn” comes after envious, it’s interpreted as
“closed-minded” or “rigid.”

28. RECENCY EFFECTS
○ Typically result when the last items are easiest to recall.
!
○ The “Pimp Spot”
● Ever notice that the last performances on SYTYCD and
American Idol are usually the best of the night and those
contestants rarely get sent home that week?

29. FRAMING EFFECTS
○ The influence on judgment resulting from the way
that information is presented.
!
○ Spin Framing
● Changing the way something is phrased/framed so
that it looks more favorable or unfavorable.
!
○ Paul Ryan’s Bipartisan Appeal:
○ http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-
august-13-2012/paul-ryan-s-bipartisan-appeal

30. FRAMING EFFECTS
○ Positive vs. Negative Frames
● Phrased in terms of what you will gain or what you will lose?
Frames In Real Life
Credit card companies charge businesses a small amount of
money for each transaction
When credit cards were first being adopted, businesses didn’t
know how to address this.
Rather than angering customers by charging more for using
credit cards (a negative frame), companies talked businesses
into raising their baseline prices and offering “discounts” for
using cash (a positive frame).

31. FRAMING EFFECTS
○ What do you think sounds better?
● A) Ground beef that is 75% lean?
● B) Ground beef that is 25% fat?
!
!
○ Generally, meat described as 75% lean is considered
more appealing than meat described as 25% fat....
!
○ ...even though they mean exactly the same thing.

32. FRAMING EFFECTS
○ Because negative information tends to attract more
attention/have more of an impact (negativity bias),
negatively framed info elicits a stronger response.
!
○ 82% of physicians recommended a surgery with a 90%
survival rate, but only 56% recommended it when it was
phrased as a 10% mortality rate.
!
○ People are willing to pay more to restore what was lost
than bring about the same benefit anew (e.g. restore
destroyed forests vs. grow more trees) – stronger
response to negative information.

33. HOW WE SEEK INFORMATION

34. CONFIRMATION BIAS
○ The tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that
would support it.
!
○ If you want to support a particular viewpoint/candidate/etc., you
look for material that supports this POV and ignore material that
does not.
!
○ People are more likely to readily accept information that supports
what they want to be true, but critically scrutinize/discount
information that contradicts you.
!
○ However, it is not necessarily this ideologically motivated;
it can just mean that people only test hypotheses by trying to
confirm them, not by trying to reject them.

35. CONFIRMATION BIAS:
PERSON PERCEPTION
○ Snyder & Swann, 1978
!
○ Introduced to a person
○ Had to ask questions to get to know him/her better.
!
○ Participants specifically asked to determine either…
○ Is this person extraverted?
○ Is this person introverted?

36. CONFIRMATION BIAS:
PERSON PERCEPTION
!
!
○ When people were asked to determine if someone was
introverted, asked questions like, “Do you enjoy being alone?”
!
!
○ When people were asked if someone was extraverted, asked
questions like, “Do you enjoy large groups of people?”
!
!
○ If you really wanted a rational judgment, you should ask both
kinds of questions, regardless of how the prompt was framed.

37. CONFIRMATION BIAS:
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
○ Crocker, 1982
!
○ Does practicing on the day of a match make players…
○ More likely to win?
○ More likely to lose?
!
○ Given access to a bunch of videotapes of past matches that
they could watch to gather evidence to answer the question.

38. CONFIRMATION BIAS:
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
○ Crocker, 1982
○ More likely to win?
● Participants more likely to examine the cases of players who had
worked out the day of a match and won.
20%
36%
52%
68%
84%
100%
Practiced & Won Practiced & Lost Didn't Practice
More Likely To Win?
More Likely To Lose?

39. CONFIRMATION BIAS:
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
○ Crocker, 1982
○ More likely to lose?
● Participants more likely to examine the cases of players who
had worked out the day of a match and lost.
20%
36%
52%
68%
84%
100%
Practiced & Won Practiced & Lost Didn't Practice
More Likely To Win?
More Likely To Lose?

40. CONFIRMATION BIAS:
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
○ Crocker, 1982
○ Neither group showed much interest in number of players who
didn’t practice and then won or lost...which you would need to
know in order to really evaluate anything!
20%
36%
52%
68%
84%
100%
Practiced & Won Practiced & Lost Didn't Practice
More Likely To Win?
More Likely To Lose?

41. TOP-DOWN VS. BOTTOM-UP
○ Theory Driven
!
!
!
○ Filter and interpret new
data based on what you
already know
!
○ Base your judgments/
decisions on pre-existing
expectations and
knowledge.
○ Data Driven
!
!
!
○ Put together pieces of
information to see what
you get
!
○ Base your judgments/
decisions on the stimuli
you encounter.
Top-Down Processing Bottom-Up Processing
Schemas!!

42. WHAT IS A SCHEMA?
○ A cluster of related, meaningfully interdependent knowledge
○ Related information that is stored together
Fast Food Restaurant
Cheap
Part of a chain
Fattening
Dirty
Tasty
College Courses
20+ students
Some academic topic
1-3 exams
Awesome instructors ☺
Squirrels
Small
Furry
Easily Distracted
Hides Acorns
Oddly ballsy
Interactions With Friends
Be extraverted
Be funny
Be interesting
Fun, relaxing

44. PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
○ When we need to do something, we rely on the most readily
accessible schema.
○ By the time we reach adulthood, we have encountered most
stimuli/situations before.
○ Even if a situation is new, you can usually draw comparisons to
situations you’ve already encountered.
● The first day of work will be similar to first day of class
● A date with someone new will be similar to other dates
○ We automatically activate & apply relevant schema.
!
○ Most of the time, this is a good thing!
● It would be inefficient to ignore the hard-earned knowledge you’ve
gained just because situations aren’t 100% identical.

45. SCHEMAS & PRIMING
○ Priming
● Words/stimuli presented outside of conscious awareness can prime
schemas so they influence information processing
!
○ Most Famous Priming Study (Elderly Priming Study):
○ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4_v4JStOU
!
○ Priming is when a schema is activated in your brain, so it can
then be applied to subsequent judgments/actions.
!
○ In the Elderly Priming Study, people shown words relating to
old people had the elderly schema activated, which made
them walk slower.

46. INFLUENCE OF SCHEMAS
1. Schemas Guide Attention
○ Attention is a limited resource.
○ We automatically allocate attention to relevant stimuli.
○ We are also very good at ignoring irrelevant stimuli.
○ What is relevant? What is irrelevant?
● That’s decided by your activated schemas.
○ Classic Examples:
● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&feature=player_embedded
● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY&feature=related
○ Real Life Examples:
● Motorcycle Safety: You’re looking for cars, not bikers
● Lifeguarding: You’re looking for troublemakers, not drowning children

47. INFLUENCE OF SCHEMAS
2. Schemas Guide Construal
○ New information almost always processed with top-down influences
!
○ Example: The “Donald Study”
● Participants were primed with two different word sets
○ ADVENTURE: Independent, Persistent, Self-Confident
○ RECKLESS: Aloof, Stubborn, Conceited
● They then read a story about Donald, who does something
ambiguous (like cross the Atlantic alone in a tiny sailboat)
!
○ When they evaluated Donald, they rated him higher on traits consistent
with the schemas they were exposed to.
● Those who saw “adventure” words judged him as adventurous.
● Those who saw “reckless” words judged him as reckless.

48. INFLUENCE OF SCHEMAS
3. Schemas Guide Memory
○ We remember schema-consistent information better than
schema-inconsistent behavior.
● Because schemas influence attention, also influence memory.
● We remember stimuli that capture the most of our attention.
○ Confirmation Bias: We’re on the lookout for behavior that
confirms our schemas.
Caveat:
Behavior that is heavily
schema-inconsistent will
also be remembered very
well (because it is
surprising, which also
captures attention).

49. SCHEMAS AND MEMORY
○ Cohen, 1981
● Participants watched video of a husband & wife having dinner.
● Half were told that the woman was a librarian, half a waitress.
● The video included an equal number of “events” that were
consistent with either “librarian” or “waitress” stereotypes.
● Students later took a quiz to see what they remembered.
○ Was the woman drinking wine or beer?
○ Did she receive a history book or a romance novel as a gift?
!
People remember stereotype-consistent information
much more than stereotype-inconsistent information.

50. REASON, INTUITION,
AND HEURISTICS

51. Stimulus
Reflective
Impulsive
Behavior
AUTOMATIC VS. CONTROLLED PROCESSING
○ Dual Mode Theories: People have two “modes”
● Automatic: Impulsive, intuitive, immediate
● Controlled: Reasoned, rational, reflective
!
○ You always activate the automatic route.
○ The controlled route can be activated, but can also be
bypassed (if you have low motivation or low ability).

52. AUTOMATIC VS. CONTROLLED PROCESSING
○ Quick
!
○ Based on associations
(schemas)
!
○ Can be done alongside
other processes
!
○ Effortless; you may not
even realize it’s happening
○ Slow
!
○ Uses rule-based reasoning
(“if-then” statements)
!
○ Can only be done one-at-a-
time
!
○ Effortful and/or deliberate;
something you try to do.
Automatic Controlled

53. AUTOMATIC VS. CONTROLLED PROCESSING
○ Controlled processes can become automatic with time.
● Math is generally a controlled process
● 2 + 2 has become automatic through lots of practice
!
!
○ Automatic processes are the immediate judgments that
you make when you first encounter a stimulus.
!
!
○ Controlled processes are the thoughtful judgments you
make when you stop to think carefully.

54. HEURISTICS
○ Common “intuitive system” processes
● A grab-bag of mental processes that are commonly used to
make quick and efficient judgments & decisions
!
!
The most famous/popular heuristics:
1. Representativeness Heuristic
2. Availability Heuristic
3. Fluency

55. HEURISTICS
○ This is Linda.
!
○ Linda is:
● 31 years old
● Single
● Outspoken
!
○ As a student, Linda was
deeply concerned with
issues of social justice,
and participated in anti-
nuclear demonstrations.
What is more probable?
A) Linda is a bank teller
B) Linda is a bank teller and is
active in the feminist
movement

56. People who are bank tellers
People who are bank tellers AND feminists

57. HEURISTICS
○ Professor Smith teaches at UIUC.
!
○ He has black-rimmed glasses & reads poetry as a hobby.
!
!
○ What is more likely?
● A) Professor Smith teaches Philosophy
● B) Professor Smith teaches Engineering

58. !
Engineering
Professors
Dark Hair
Black-Rimmed Glasses
Reads Poetry
Philosophy Professors

59. 1. The number of Engineering professors
who have dark hair, black-rimmed
glasses, and read poetry is very small,
especially compared to all of the
Engineering professors who don’t.
!
2. All of the Philosophy professors look
and act this way.
!
3. BUT...chances are STILL greater that
Professor Smith teaches Engineering,
because of base rates.
!Engineering
Professors
Dark Hair
Black-Rimmed
Glasses
Reads Poetry
Philosophy Professors

60. REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
○ Base Rate Neglect
!
○ Base Rate: Objective
statistical (probability)
information
!
○ People tend to underuse base-
rate information.
!
○ This is particularly
problematic when the base-
rate is very low.
!Engineering
Professors
Dark Hair
Black-Rimmed
Glasses
Reads Poetry
Philosophy Professors

61. REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
○ Make a judgment based on how similar target is to some
prototype
○ Assume that members of a category should resemble the
group’s prototype
○ Professor Smith
● There are more Engineering professors than Philosophy
professors at UIUC
● If you had to make a guess using base rates, you should guess
that Professor Smith is an Engineering professor (since there
are more of them on campus).
○ However, you use the information about how
representative he is of your Philosophy/Engineering
professor stereotypes to sway your judgments.

62. REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
○ Base Rate Information
● Information about the relatively frequency of events or
members of categories within the population.
!
!
○ Professor Smith Example
● There are very few Philosophy professors, but many
Engineering professors
● No matter how much Professor Smith sounds like a
“Philosophy” kind of guy, he probably is not, just because there
are relatively few Philosophy professors on campus.

63. REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
○ Base Rate Information
● Information about the relatively frequency of events or
members of categories within the population.
!
!
○ Linda the Bank Teller
● If Linda is a feminist bank teller, she has to be a bank teller
● There must be more “bank tellers” than “feminist bank tellers”
● However, the information that you have about Linda make you
wrongly think it’s more likely that she fits into the smaller box

64. REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
○ Why do we have this heuristic?
● Representativeness often works
● Group prototypes are formed in the first place by averaging
across everyone in the group, so there is a kernel of truth
Representativeness Mantra:
“This seems like...”
Works to the extent that...
There is some validity
Group members cluster around the prototype
You use representativeness as a “first step.”

65. HEURISTICS
○ Are there more words in the English language that
start with “K” or that have “k” as a third letter?
!
○ A) Start with “K”
○ B) Have “k” as the third letter

66. HEURISTICS
○ What is a more likely cause of death in the U.S.?
!
○ A) Being killed by a shark
○ B) Being killed by falling airplane parts

67. HEURISTICS
○ What is a more likely cause of death in the U.S.?
!
○ A) Homicide (Murder)
○ B) Suicide

68. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
○ People make judgments based on how easy it is to bring
relevant information to mind.
○ Underlying Assumption: Things that are easy to recall
are more common, probable, correct, etc.

69. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
○ People make judgments based on how easy it is to bring
relevant information to mind.
○ Underlying Assumption: Things that are easy to recall
are more common, probable, correct, etc.
People think that more tornadoes
happen in Kansas than Nebraska
because it’s easy to think of Wizard
of Oz, but the rates are equal.

70. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
○ People make judgments based on how easy it is to bring
relevant information to mind.
○ Underlying Assumption: Things that are easy to recall
are more common, probable, correct, etc.
People think that more tornadoes
happen in Kansas than Nebraska
because it’s easy to think of Wizard
of Oz, but the rates are equal.
People think it’s much more likely
that they will die in a plane crash
than a car accident, but it’s the other
way around.

71. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
○ Schwarz et al. (1991)
!
○ Participants recalled 6 (or 12) examples of being
assertive (or unassertive)
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
6 examples 12 examples
...of Assertiveness
...of Unassertiveness
HOW ASSERTIVE ARE YOU?
People thought they were
most assertive when they
recalled a few examples of
being assertive

72. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
○ Schwarz et al. (1991)
!
○ Participants recalled 6 (or 12) examples of being
assertive (or unassertive)
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
6 examples 12 examples
...of Assertiveness
...of Unassertiveness
HOW ASSERTIVE ARE YOU?
People thought they were
most assertive when they
recalled a few examples of
being assertive, or many
examples of being unassertive!
!
Why?

73. ○ Easy to recall 6 examples of something
○ Harder to recall 12 examples
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
6 examples 12 examples
...of Assertiveness
...of Unassertiveness
6 examples of being assertive...
That was easy.
I must be assertive.
!
6 examples of being unassertive...
That was easy.
I must not be very assertive.
12 examples of being assertive...
That was hard.
I must not be assertive.
!
12 examples of being unassertive...
That was hard.
I must be assertive.

74. ○ Easy to recall 6 examples of something
○ Harder to recall 12 examples
The availability heuristic occurs based on
how easy it is to retrieve the information.
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
6 examples 12 examples
...of Assertiveness
...of Unassertiveness

75. FIRST DAY OF CLASS QUESTIONS
4. You want your friend to come to a party with you, but she
says that she is too shy to go to a big party. To convince
her to come along, you should challenge her belief by...
A) Reminding her that she liked the last party that she
went to
B) Telling her that this would be a good opportunity to test
that belief
C) Asking her to give you 10 good examples of times that
she was actually outgoing
D) Asking her to give you 10 good examples of times that
she was actually shy
!
Now you know why the answer was D!

76. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: APPLIED
○ Dramatic, easy-to-remember events are assumed to be
more frequent than “dull,” commonplace events
!
○ The likelihood of dramatic deaths (e.g. shark attacks) are
way overestimated compared to commonplace deaths that
are actually more likely (e.g. stroke, electrocution)

77. The Summer of the Shark

78. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: APPLIED
○ Group Projects
● Because you worked on your portion of a group project, it’s
easy for you to recall exactly what you worked on
● Because you didn’t work on your partners’ portions, it’s not
easy for you to recall exactly what they worked on
!
○ Result: People tend to overestimate their own
contributions to joint projects.

79. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: APPLIED
○ Marriage & Chores (Ross & Sicoly, 1979)
● Married couples were asked to give the percentage of the
household chores that they did
○ Not surprisingly...estimates added up to over 100%
!
○ Both husbands and wives tended to think that they did
more of the chores!

80. FLUENCY
○ The feeling of ease associated with processing information
○ Some stimuli are easier to process than
others
● For instance, unfamiliar or irregular words are
harder to process than simple and
familiar words
○ One common way to manipulate fluency is through font
● Though there are many, many other ways

81. FLUENCY
○ The more fluent a stimulus is, the more it’s judged as...
● True/Correct
● Good/Desirable
● Important
● Memorable
!
○ The less fluent a stimulus is, the more likely it will be
carefully scrutinized (analyzed in a deliberate way)
!
○ This is essentially another way of wording the
availability heuristic; the easier information is to process/
recall, the more people like it and the more likely they
are to actually use it in judgments

82. FLUENCY
○ Disfluency is a signal to “slow down” and “be careful.”
!
!
○ Song & Schwarz (2008)
● Subjects were given a recipe
○ ½ were given a recipe that was difficult to read (due to font)
○ ½ were given a recipe that was easy to read
!
!
○ The subjects given the difficult-to-read recipe thought
that the dish would be harder to make than those who
saw it in an easy-to-read font!

83. FLUENCY
○ So, is “fluent” always “better”?
● Not necessarily.
● It depends on what you WANT.
!
○ Remember...
● Fluent = Easy to remember, easy to process, like it more
BUT...
● Disfluent = Pay more attention, process more carefully
!
○ If you want someone to pay extra close attention to what
you are saying, it’s better to put it in a hard-to-read font!

84. QUESTION
○ Hot Hand Effect
● Is a basketball player who has recently made several
shots in a row more likely to make the next shot?

85. ILLUSORY CORRELATION
○ The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact
they are not
!
○ Occurs because of the representativeness and
availability heuristics operating together
● Representativeness: Examples that represent what you
believe to be true are easier to remember
● Availability: These examples also come to mind more easily
!
○ As a result, we overestimate the frequency of
“representative” examples

87. ILLUSORY CORRELATION: EXAMPLE
!
○ The “hot hand” effect does not exist
● Players are no more likely to make a shot immediately
after a string of shots than immediately after a string of
misses (Gilovich et al., 1985)
!
○ People are geared to see patterns in random events
● We don’t deal well with random sequences

88. HOW MUCH DOES THIS DESCRIBE YOU?
○ You have a great need for others to like & admire you.
○ You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
○ You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have
not turned to your advantage.
○ While you have some personality weaknesses, you are
generally able to compensate for them.
○ Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be
worrisome and insecure inside.
○ You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not
accept others' statements without satisfactory proof.
○ At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at
other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.

89. THE “FORER EFFECT”
Subjects give higher accuracy ratings if...
!
○ The subject believes analysis applies only to him/her
!
!
○ The subject believes in the authority of the evaluator
!
!
○ The analysis lists mostly positive traits, or turns
weaknesses into strengths

90. ILLUSORY CORRELATION: APPLIED
○ Horoscopes
● Also known as The Barnum Effect, after P.T. Barnum’s
observation that “we’ve got something for everyone.”
● People will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their
personalities that are supposedly tailored specifically for
them, but are in fact vague & general enough to apply to
pretty much anyone.
● If you read your horoscope every morning, you will notice the
things that day that fit what the horoscope “predicted,” and
then remember the pattern.

91. ILLUSORY CORRELATION: APPLIED
○ Why does it always rain right after you wash your car?!
● It doesn’t.
● You just notice the rain after a car wash more because you’re
looking out for it and you want to avoid it.
!
○ When it occurs, you’re upset and you remember it.
○ When it doesn’t occur, you don’t notice.

92. ILLUSORY CORRELATION: APPLIED
○ As soon as you get a new car, suddenly everyone
else on the road is driving the same car.
!
○ As soon as you think about a movie/actor/etc. for
the first time in a while, suddenly you see
references to it everywhere.
“A pall came over the office; no one liked babies’
funerals. Robert thought, It always rains when we
bury the babies. Then he thought that couldn’t be
true really. But I’ll bring an umbrella just in case.”
!
- Her Fearful Symmetry, p. 221

93. YES, EVEN PEOPLE WHO TEACH THIS FOR A LIVING
FALL VICTIM TO HEURISTICS.
!
!
H66 License Plates
Candace Bergen

94. SUMMARY:
REASON, INTUITION, HEURISTICS
Representativeness
Heuristic
“This seems like...”
Availability Heuristic
How easy is this to
remember?
Automatic vs. Controlled
Processes
- Quick, impulsive, effortless?
OR
- Slow, reasoned, deliberate?
!
A main example of automatic
processes that we discussed
today are heuristics
Fluency
The easier it is to process/
understand, the more I
like it

95. SUMMARY: CHAPTER 4
○ Information Available for Social Cognition
● Firsthand (Negativity Bias, Pluralistic Ignorance)
● Secondhand (Sharpening/Leveling, Exaggerations)
○ How Information is Presented
● Order effects, framing effects
○ How We Seek Information
● Confirmation bias
○ Top Down vs. Bottom Up Processing
● Data driven (bottom up) or theory driven (top down)?
● Top Down = Rely on schemas
○ Reason, Intuition, and Heuristics
● Heuristics simplify cognitive processing, but also leave us
vulnerable to common judgmental biases

96. CH. 4: MOST IMPORTANT POINTS
○ Primacy & Recency Effects
● Why do they occur?
!
○ Schemas & Memory
● Consistent vs. Inconsistent Info
!
○ Pluralistic Ignorance
!
○ Negativity Bias
!
○ Firsthand/Secondhand Biases
!
○ Bottom-Up/Top-Down Processing
○ Availability Heuristic
● Why does it occur?
!
○ Representativeness Heuristic
● Base Rate Neglect
!
○ What is priming?
● Elderly Priming Study
!
○ Confirmation Bias