Psychology 2070A/B Chapter 3: Textbook Chapter 3
20 Nov 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Chapter 3 - Social Cognition
A. On Automatic Pilot: Low-Effort Thinking
• Automatic Thinking: Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless
o Relating our past experiences and knowledge of the world to the new situations.
o Racial Profiling: Official action toward people based on their race, ethnicity, or national origin
instead of their behavior.
a. People as Everyday Theorists: Automatic Thinking with Schemas
• Schemas: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around
themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.
o What we use to organize what we know about the social world and interpret new situations.
• Characteristics:
o Information relevant to a particular schema is processed more quickly than information
unrelated to it.
▪ Experiment – Gardner, MacIntyre, and Lalonde @ 1995
• Asking English-speaking students living in Quebec to rate the characteristics of various
groups. (E.g. English Canadians, French Canadians, Male, Females)
• Participants were faster when rating the stereotypical characteristics of each group than
when rating its nonstereotypical characteristics.
• E.g. Male → rugged, impatient, talkative → Rated faster than irreligious, artistic, impolite
o Tend to fill in the blanks with schema-consistent information.
▪ Experiment - Kunda, Sinclair, and Griffin @ 1997
• Asking students at the University of Waterloo that person A is either a salesperson or an
actor, people would tend to fill in the blanks about that person’s characteristics by our
schema-consistent information.
▪ Pros: Efficient information processing Cons: Stereotypes?
i. Stereotypes about Race and Violence
• Schemas → often referred to as stereotypes.
o Experiment #1
▪ Goal: Evaluate the effects of people’s stereotypes about African-Americans and crime
▪ Findings: If you were shown pictures of black faces before an objection quickly flash, you
are more likely to identify that object as a crime object than given pictures of white faces.
(The converse is also true.)
o Experiment #2 – Mirror the kind of dilemma that police officers encounter in real life.
▪ Asking non-black participants played video game that is in real-life setting. They will see
a photograph of either an African or a Caucasian holding either handgun or a random
object. Within half a second, participants need to decide whether to shoot him
Non-Threatening Object
Threatening Object
Do not Shoot
+5 points
+10 points
Shoot
-15 points
-20points
▪ Findings:
• Shooter Bias – People made relatively few errors when a black person was in fact
holding a gun but also that they made the most errors, shooting an unarmed person,
when a black person was not holding a gun.
• When the men in the picture were white, they made about the same # of errors no
matter what they are holding.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Stereotypes are also triggered automatic thinking about race and crime.
o Experiment #1 – Researchers @ UBC
▪ Participants who are sitting in a dark room have negative stereotype of black people
came to mid more quickly than sitting in a light room.
• Especially for participants that viewed the world as a dangerous place.
o Experiment #2
▪ Participants who associated black men with danger were faster to respond to fight-
related words when in the closed-in booth.
▪ Those who held the same stereotype but were in an open field were faster to respond to
escape or flight words.
o Reasons:
▪ People respond too quickly that they had little time to control their reactions or think
about what they were doing. (b/c they are responding by using automatic thinking)
▪ Similar stereotypes to aboriginal people
ii. Cultural Determinants of Schemas
• The content of our schemas is influenced by our culture.
o Example: Interviewing the Scottish settler and a local Bantu herdsman in Swaziland.
▪ Both men had been present at a complicated cattle transaction that had transpired a year
earlier.
▪ Findings: The Scottish had very little memory about his transaction to the point that the
help of documents are needed; however, the Bantu herdsman could remember all the
details regarding to the cattle and the dollar value.
▪ Reasons: Cattle are the central part of the Bantu economy and culture that Bantu have
well-developed schemas about cattle.
iii. The Function of Schemas: Why do we have them?
• If one thing that happened is so inconsistent with a person’s schemas, that person will highly
likely to convince himself that what he saw/heard is wrong, and start to adjust their memory with
his schemas
o E.g. The host Wallin mispronounced the last name of the chancellor as shit in an official
event; However, people at home could not believe his mistake to the point that they thought it
is only due to the vacuum cleaner is on.
• Reasons to have schemas:
o Help us organize and make sense of the world
o Fill in the gaps of our knowledge, especially when we encounter information that is confusing
or ambiguous.
▪ Experiment – Harold Kelly @ 1950
• Telling students from different sections of an economics class that a guest lecturer is
coming in. A note is provided about the information of the guest lecturer with either
a description as a very cool person to a very warm person
• Rate the professor after a 20 minutes class discussion
• Findings: Students who expected him to be warm gave him significantly higher
ratings and involved in more class discussion than others
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Asking english-speaking students living in quebec to rate the characteristics of various groups. (e. g. Male rugged, impatient, talkative rated faster than irreligious, artistic, impolite. They will see a photograph of either an african or a caucasian holding either handgun or a random object. Within half a second, participants need to decide whether to shoot him: experiment #1. If one thing that happened is so inconsistent with a person"s schemas, that person will highly: e. g. The host wallin mispronounced the last name of the chancellor as (cid:498)shit(cid:499) in an official: experiment harold kelly @ 1950, telling students from different sections of an economics class that a guest lecturer is coming in. The availability heuristics: availability heuristics: a mental shortcut whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind, problem, participants were told a list of famous and non-famous names. Those words are either related to cooperate or compete (control condition).
