Webinar Two Social Cognition

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Schemas influence:

What we pay attention to or notice

How we interpret things

What we remember

When read a story without knowing the topic it can seem confusing; however, when told the subject it activates our schemas: such as the paragraphs about Christopher Columbus which at first made no sense but once the schema was activated we are able to recall information

Sometimes schemas work against us; where we remember information that wasn't really there

3 Types of Schemas:

1. self schema

2. person schema- interpretations about other people

3. situation schema- scripts; what we expect out of an environment

Situation schemas; scripts:

Such as when we go into a restaurant and expect to go sit down at a table and have the waiter pick up the check; however, we know when we are not in this type of restaurant

Schemas help you to pay attention to the information that is most relevant; we don't have the cognitive ability to think about multiple things at one time

Confirmation bias: we tend to look at information wanting it to confirm our beliefs; the wiki of the week showed both sides, and makes you think about how we use the confirmation bias in every day life

To study make sure that you can come up with examples of each topic; not the technical definition word for word

Automatic cognition:

thinking without thinking; automatic processing

Such as:

+Amadou Diallo who was shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet; he was stopped because they were looking for someone who they believed looked like him

+Sean Bell was shot 50 times because they saw him leaving the scene; was actually leaving his bachelor party

+Trayvon Martin was killed because he was black and wearing a hoodie which meant he was not in the right place

Researchers used a video game to help show the automatic processing

Heuristics vs. Schemas

Schemas we see what we expect to see

Ex: Someone who is a feminist will see things that are dealing with gender roles

Schemas can be developed and become a part of what we believe

Heuristics are specific ways of making a decision, a process

Which state has more tornados? Kansas or Nebraska

Kansas: 80%

Nebraska: 22%

Some might have said Kansas because of the movie Wizard of Oz; which came quickly to mind

Right answer is Nebraska

The answer doesn't matter it's the process that you used to get the conclusion

Representativeness Heuristics

Anchoring Heuristics

When someone tells you not to think of something you are more likely to think of it; telling yourself not to think about something the harder it is to not think about it: Ironic Processing

Counterfactual Thinking:

Olympians who were not happy that they won silver; they were so close to winning gold they are thinking "what if," "if only I had done this instead of that I might have won"

Bronze medalists are happier because they actually placed and won

Thinking of all the possibilities that could have happened

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