PSYC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Confirmation Bias, Socalled, Social Reality

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: Adam Etinson

Document Summary

People hear a rumor and start to worry that their money is not safe in the bank. Many start to demand to take their money out. The bank eventually cannot pay everyone and so goes out of business (because money you deposit is lent out to borrowers, who cannot immediately return it to the bank) "a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true" "the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning" Clever hans could do it even without the trainer. Hans was responding to expectancies of the questioner, as subtly and unintentionally communicated. We know about the belief-confirming effects of schemas, confirmation bias, and motivated cognition. Maybe sometimes reality actually does confirm our belief - but only because we have changed that nature of that reality. Perceiver"s expectancy ---> perceiver"s behavior ---> target"s behavior confirms the expectancy.