PSYCH230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Physical Attractiveness, Illusory Correlation, Fundamental Attribution Error

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH230
• Professor: John Rempel

Document Summary

Central processing: refers to consciously, deliberately and relatively dispassionately evaluating the quality of the information that you are getting. Weighing pros and cons of the information in terms of its value. Presumably its this kind of processing that you want to be the influential part of your evaluating. A lot of the things we do tend to be influenced by peripheral factors: Peripheral processing: may or may not be conscious. You aren"t always going to be aware that they are influencing you (often you are not). Tend to be peripherally relevant to the decision making. Will influence you, but shouldn"t be the main thing to be influencing you. Problem with this (and the reason that this is a peripheral label) is because people can come across as very credible, but they may not be. They may know how to appear credible and sincere and honest, but they really aren"t.