Psychology 2070A/B Chapter 3: Chapter 3 Text Notes

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Taylor Kohut

Document Summary

Automatic thinking: generally unconscious, unintentional, effortless schemas: mental structures that organize our knowledge about the social world. These mental structures influence the information we notice, think about, remember. What a librarian or engineer is like or what people usually do at a restaurant. Our schemas contain basic knowledge and impressions that we use to organize what we know about the social world and interpret new situations. Schemas influence the way in which we process information. Information relevant to a particular schema is processed more quickly than information unrelated to it. Participates were faster when rating the stereotypical characteristics of each group than when rating its non-stereotypical characteristics. We also tends to fill in the blanks with schema-consistent information. John the lawyer vs. john the construction worker. Participants were asked to generate examples of aggressive behavior that each john might perform. Schemas can be referred as a racial stereotype.