PSY 161 Lecture 11: Social Cognition

• School: University of Rochester
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 161
• Professor: Professor Elliot

Document Summary

Motivated to makes sense of the world by seeing ordered patterns (foundational premise) Social world loaded with information (sense and perceptual system are bombarded) We have a limited capacity to process information. Judgement of a person"s behavior based on their personal qualities. You see them behave a certain way and you assume it"s because of their personality. Attributing someone"s behavior to their personal qualities rather than the situation. Fundamental attribution error: bias toward dispositional (person-based) inferences. Easy to attribute person"s behavior to an internal cause. More effortful to come up with a situational explanation. We rush to the dispositional inference when we see someone behave a certain way. Told that debater freely chose/was forced to write the essay. Given an essay told either the person"s had the choice to write the essay or been forced to do it you read it and rate how much the person liked or disliked castro.