PSC 152 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Bias Blind Spot, Scientific Method, Social Cognition
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Social Cognition
● Psychology as science
○ Psychological knowledge based on
■ Data - carefully collected, unbiased, replicable
■ Not intuition, experience, doctrine, popular consensus, testimonials, focus
groups, etc.
○ Scientific method
■ Pose question
■ Background research
■ Construct hypothesis
■ Design study to test hypothesis
■ Collect & analyze data
■ Draw conclusions
○ Why use scientific method?
■ Intuition & common sense can be faulty
● Ex: bystander effect
■ Biased interpretation of evidence
● Naive realism - people think they perceive the world “objectively”
as it truly is
● Biased interpretation of evidence
○ Presidential debate (2004) - who won the debate?
■ ABC News Poll
● Overall
○ Kerry - 44%
○ Bush - 41%
● Kerry supporters
○ Kerry - 85%
○ Bush - 2%
● Bush supporters
○ Kerry - 1%
○ Bush - 84%
■ We see what we want to see
● Why use scientific method?
○ People not usually aware of own biases
■ Deny having them
■ Bias blind spot - “you’re more biased than I am”
○
● Estimate # of deaths per year in US
○
○ Number of deaths /year
■
● Overestimation of rare events
■
■
● Why use scientific method?
○ Influence of vivid anecdotes (availability heuristic)
○ Availability heuristic
■ Things more accessible in minds are seen as happening more often than
events less accessible in our minds
● Primary empirical methods of psychology