PSY 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Availability Heuristic, Snickers, Impression Formation
16 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
The study of how we interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world. Focus on cognitive processes used when thinking about social targets. Final reaction (if no capacity or no motivation: the human advantage. We get both automatic (non-conscious) and controlled (deliberative) processing. Conscious, rational analysis can account for more information but is a slower process. In most cases, we prefer to use as few cognitive resources as possible. When we can solve problems without effort, we will frequently do so. Both motivation and free cognitive capacity are necessary to engage in deliberative thought. Conditioning and other learning processes create a vast mental warehouse of stored associations, memories, knowledge, and experiences. We (effortlessly, unintentionally, uncontrollably and unaware) draw on this information to interpret others. Use of stored information in organizing and interpreting spontaneous reactions is not exhaustive. We only activate a subset of available knowledge. The activated subset will determine what spontaneous reaction we have.
