PSYC18H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Affective Forecasting, Middle Ages, Anchoring
Psychology of Emotion
CLASS FOUR
Emotions and Cognition
Some of the ways in which emotions impede cognition and make them more or less reliable
Topics:
o Two different styles of information processing
o Do emotions help or hinder cognition?
o How do emotions influence cognitive processes?
o Does cognition influence emotion?
Duel process theory: rough over view of how our minds work, theorists have suggested that the
distinction is trivial because they are interrelated. Still useful to think about a distinction to tease
apart certain outcomes. So the two systems are system one and two. SYSTEM ONE: the
emotional system, it might be a mistake to cal it this because its not 100% clear if full blown
emotions occur here but anyways SYSTEM ONE operates quickly, does not require a lot of
mental effort, impulsive and not detail oriented. It’s our intuition, when we don’t have time we
use this, its on in the background, but we can’t always rely on system one to make decisions
because its not that simple so we call onto SYSTEM TWO to help up, its more detailed oriented
but also requires more resources. SYSTEM TWO operates two ( you think a lot about making the
decisions, create pros and cons, you engage in effortful cognitive processes) because it requires
this time and effort it requires mental resources as well, you need to have those resources,
deliberative system and more nuanced processing and its cognitive. We can think of system one
like do I want pizza verses system two when I ask which university should I go to
System two is the better system, it makes sense because its more accurate, no details will be
missed, you are engaged in it. so if that the case, if system two is more accurate then why do we
have/ use system one? Because we do not always have sufficient time or mental resources to
engage in effortful processing! A lot of the decisions we make we do not really need system two,
we can use system one and not be taxed of resources. The idea is that system one is default but
can be overridden when system two is needed. We can use system one because it is always there
and user friendly
Theorists have become interested in system one and two processing among individuals. Are some
people more likely to use system one and other two? Interesting question because if it is the case
then you might be a more intuitive or cognitive thinker which might affect other things
How might we measure how intuitive or cognitive someone is? Theorists have developed a three
question task that categorizes you into system one or two. Cognitive reflection task,
COGNITVE REFLECTION TASK:
A bat and a ball cost one dollar and ten cents in total, the bat costs one dollar more than the ball,
how much does the ball cost? (I have zero clue I am too tired to care) there is one answer that is
10 cents and one that is 5. A large portion of people say 10 cents, but the correct answer is five.
When reading the question the intuitive answer is 10 cents because it just makes sense but the
correct is five cents which makes you a cognitive thinker if you choose it. based on the answer
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you give it shows how much thinking you do hence why 10 cents is system one answer and 5 if
system two answer.
Next question: if it takes five machines to make five widgets how long will it take 100 machines
to make 100 widgets? (HU?) The intuitive answer here is 100 minutes and the other answer
which is correct is five minutes. 100 is the gut level answer because it just makes sense when you
read the question
In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day the patch doubles in size. It takes 48 days for the
patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? ( my
brain doesn’t even understand numbers I still have no clue what happened in the first two
questions). Intuitive answer is 24 days because of wording you would go with that but the correct
answer is 47 days ( why I don’t get it)
Point: this is the task, and by responding to each question you can categorize people into system
one or two. Why do we care? Psychologists have since then looked at performance on this test
and other things t predicts. Participants who perform better of the CRT are more patience, more
risk-averse, less likely to believe in paranormal phenomenon and supernatural agents. These
things all seem to tap into one key concept, reliance on intuitions/ feelings which is negatively
correlated with performance on CRT. If you really rely on your gut you are probably less patient
etc, more likely to believe in things you have a feeling in. ( this girl asks this question where what
if you are bad in math which is totally me). If someone is engaged in system one, does it mean
that they are using their emotions to make decisions? Not necessarily, intuitions feelings and
emotions are not necessarily the same things; a flood of emotions isn’t why you choose the
intuitive answer. You are not strictly system one or two. It seems like the theme is system two is
superior, it seems to echo these ideas that we learned about in lecture one and historical view that
cognition and reasoning is superior but is this really the case? This distinction might be trivial
Study: limit system two resources in participants. Its one thing to measure which system you rely
on but to say that this isn’t about math skills or confounds is by limiting system two resources. If
you take away someone’s ability to rely on system two you make them use system one and see
how they differ on certain outcomes. So they had two conditions, in one they had to memorize a
two letter sequence (GH) condition two had remember an eight letter sequence (BDREEMWL)
while doing other tasks in the experiment, you can see how this limits system two) so the idea is
those in condition one will use system two on the task because its more available to them and
those in condition two will use system one. so they had to memorize the letters and then asked to
complete this die rolling task, roll dice three times in a cup then the computer decides which roll
you will be paid on, but you don’t know which will be chosen, so everyone got told die number
one and no one sees what they are rolling, its hard because you would be tempted to say I rolled 6
rather than one. Who would be more moral, those using system one or two? Results: basically
pay attention that all blue are low load (system two) yellow is system one, they go on their guy
because no mental resource. Technically if everyone reports honestly then we should see that
rolls should be the same but we know people will cheat so this is not the case. If you look at
yellow bars symbolized by green trend line we see that the proportion is relatively the same it is
not effecting their decision, but in the low load condition, when they can use system two they
report higher rolls. This shows that when we do not have system two available we are fairer; we
operate on default which seems to be honesty. It’s a trivial distinction system one can lead to
good outcomes
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How do emotions affect our reasoning? Do emotions help or hinder our reasoning, there are two
views:
o Rationalist: if you pay attention to your emotions and beliefs you will make mistakes
when problem solving. Your emotions are a distraction and source of bias not useful to
rely on when making a good decision
o Anti- rationalist view: if you pay attention to your emotion and beliefs they will boost
reasoning capacity when problem solving, it will call attention to relative parts of the
problem
Study in the 1970s about motivated cognition: it asked participants about beliefs on capital
punishments, do you think its good and effective or not. Based on responses they were put into
two groups: pro capital punishment or anti capital punishments, then both these groups were
asked to give two read two pieces of evidence. Two articles with opposing views on capital
punishment, one suggested capital punishment was effective, and one suggested the exact
opposite, it was ineffective and so on. So basically they were confronted with this ambiguous
evidence, some of it supports your view and other that contradicts it. You should come to doubt
your beliefs a bit because you see something against your view. Then they were all asked how
well was each study conducted? Everything kept constant through the study so everything was the
same. So how is this related to emotion? We are talking about a belief which is cognition but
capital punishment is moral which has an emotional component, these moral judgments have
emotional component that influences how you see world. Results of the study: pro capital
punishment through pro-deterrence study was better and more convincing and those who were
anti capital punishment through that the anti deterrence study were better and more convincing.
But what is interesting is that after this was all done participants asked again to report on beliefs
on capital punishment whether it was right or wrong and all participants displayed more
conviction in their beliefs after being confronted with this “ambiguous” information. Os those
who said capital punishment is good after being confronted with evidence thought it was even
better after. Idea is that being confronted with ambiguous information is frightening to us and we
don’t like it so we believe in it more. This is also at play for modern day issues, we still have
these biases
Another study was run and there was a common belief among liberals that George Bush stopped
stem cell research even though this was not the case. Liberals were brought into the study and
asked “do you believe that George Bush banned stem cell research? And all said yes and then
they were shown evidence that he didn’t and asked again the same question and they all said yes
again even though he didn’t. It’s emotional
Is it the case that we never reason that we just like hearing what we want? We do reason but we
need to understand that reasoning is not a cold unemotional process. Are we not motivated to be
accurate about the world? Yes we do have this motivation but as human beings we have
competing motivation and moral ideals are at the top of the hierarchy so our motivation to be
right outweighs motivation to be accurate. This is where emotions come in and skew cognitions
and how we see the world. We have strong emotional attachments to moral issues and it biases
out thinking. If we think about reasoning as an accurate process and intended to get us to the truth
then yes emotions do screw us over in this regard because they make us not care so much about
the truth
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Document Summary
Some of the ways in which emotions impede cognition and make them more or less reliable. Duel process theory: rough over view of how our minds work, theorists have suggested that the distinction is trivial because they are interrelated. Still useful to think about a distinction to tease apart certain outcomes. So the two systems are system one and two. We can think of system one like do i want pizza verses system two when i ask which university should i go to. Because we do not always have sufficient time or mental resources to engage in effortful processing! A lot of the decisions we make we do not really need system two, we can use system one and not be taxed of resources. The idea is that system one is default but can be overridden when system two is needed. We can use system one because it is always there and user friendly.
