Psychology 2070A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Social Cognition, Barnum Effect, Counterfactual Conditional

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Erin Heerey

Document Summary

Controlled thinking - effortful and deliberate, long thoughts, lots of consideration, etc. Automatic analysis of our environments, based on our past experiences and knowledge of the world. Automatic thinking: thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless. Schemas: mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world themselves and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember. Schemas are typically very useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. People with korsakov"s syndrome have difficulties forming schemas, and everything they encounter is inexplicable, confusing, and unlike anything else they"ve known. People who lose the ability to have continuity and relate new experiences to their past schemas end up inventing schemas where none exist. Schemas are particularly useful when we encounter information that is confusing or ambiguous because they help us figure out what is going on.