SOCIAL COGNITION (CONTINUE…….):Counterfactual Thinking, Confirmation bias

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Lesson 19

SOCIAL COGNITION (CONTINUE.......)

Aims

To introduce how past events and expectations affect our social thinking.

Objectives

· To discuss the how our recollection of past events can affect our social thinking.

· To describe how do our expectations shape our social thinking.

· To help students use this knowledge in their personal life through activities and applied social

psychology lab.

What are some ways of thinking about the past?

Hindsight bias

· The tendency, once an event has occurred, to overestimate our ability to have foreseen the outcome

· Fueled by our desire for making sense

· Does not occur for very unusual and bizarre events

Counterfactual Thinking

Counterfactual reasoning involves imagining alternative outcomes (what if thinking).

Most likely when people experience unexpected or negative events.

"Downhill" changes more easily imagined than "uphill" changes

People engage in counterfactual reasoning to make themselves feel better and to help prepare

themselves for the future.

Sometimes not only ineffective in emotional coping but also downright unproductive; study by

Davis et al. (1996) of people who had lost spouse or child. People who indulged themselves in

imagination how the tragedy could have been averted by mentally undoing things preceding it felt

more distressed and guilty.

How do expectations shape our social thinking?

· False consensus

· Confirmation bias

· Self-fulfilling prophecy

· Just world belief

· Learned helplessness

The False Consensus effect

· The tendency to exaggerate how common one's own opinions are in the general population (Gross

& Miller, 1997; Muller et al., 2002).

· Based on the belief that our opinions are fairly typical

Ross, Greene, & House' stuy (1977)

· The researchers asked students the following question: "Would you walk around campus for thirty

minutes wearing a large sandwich board saying EAT AT JOE'S!" (Traders Joe is a famous US

take-away)

· Then they were asked to estimate the number of students who would make the same choice

· Students agreed to do so estimated that 62% will agree and those who disagreed estimated that

67% will not agree.

Social Psychology (PSY403)

Figure 1 illustrates this study:

Ross, Greene, & House (1977)

Explanation of the FCE

· The availability heuristic: "our

self concepts serve as the lens

through which we view others

(Kulig, 2000): Our own self-

Estimated consensus to wearing

beliefs are easily recalled from

sandwich board

memory making them most

accessible (available) when we

100

judge whether others agree with

· False-uniqueness belief: The

tendency to underestimate how

common one's own desirable

traits ad abilities are in the

general population. It appears

to be a product of the self

Agreed

Disagreed

serving bias which is a

Decision

tendency to more often attribute

positive than negative traits to

ourselves

Confirmation bias

This selective attention inhibits problem solving when our solution is incorrect.

· The tendency to seek information that supports our beliefs while ignoring disconfirming

information

· When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will (Lincoln, 1809-1865)

· For a man always believes more readily that which he prefers (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)

· Synder & Swann (1978) asked research participants to find out whether the person they were about

to interact was an introvert or extravert. Consistent with the confirmation bias, the questions that

participants asked were biased in the direction of the original question.

· Usually caused by taking cognitive shortcuts, but may also be due to our desire to get along with

others; asking matching questions (Lyens, 1990)

The Self-fulfilling prophecy

The process by which expectations about a person or group leads to the fulfilment of those expectations

IQ improvement as a function of the

Rosenthal & Jacobson' study (1968)

self-fulfilling prophency

· Teachers told that `tests' had

revealed certain students were

Bloomers

100

`bloomers' and should improve

Other students

substantially over the year

· The 20% `bloomers' were actually

randomly chosen

· IQ tested 8 months later

· Would

teachers'

expectations

enhance the achievements of the

selected pupils?

Figure 2 illustrates this study in the

10 IQ

20 IQ

30 Q

following:

points

gained

Social Psychology (PSY403)

The development of self-fulfilling prophecy

has been explained in Figure 3 as given

below:

Perceiver acts toward the

Target based on the

The Just-World Hypothesis (Lerner, 1980)

Step 1

expectations

· A belief system in which the world is

perceived to be a fair and equitable

Step 2

Perceiver forms

place, with people getting what they

Expectations about

deserve

the target

Target interprets the

· Provides an illusion of control `if we

perceiver's actions and

Step 3

responds so that his behavior

are good people good things will

is Consistent with perceiver's

happen to us'

expectations

Advantages:

· Related to good psychological adjustment (Ormel & Schaufeli, 1991), improves relationships

(Lipkus & Bissonnette), 1996 and reduces stress (Lipkus et al., 1996).

Disadvantages

· Defensive attribution (Shaver, 1970)

· Blame victims for their own misfortune to retain the belief that bad things only happen to bad

people (and so a similar tragedy will not befall us!)

· qualified by similarity (Burger, 1981)

· What happens when people believing in a JW encounter contradictory outcomes? Like Earthquakes

or 9/11. If the event was truly without personal fault, people with BJW often respond with revenge

(Kaiser et al., 2004)

Expecting failure breeds helplessness

· The passive resignation produced by repeated exposure to negative events that are perceived to be

unavoidable. In human beings first reactions are of anxiety, however as the extent of uncontrollable

events increases and they begin to feel helpless, anger is replaced with depression.

· First discovered in animal research (Seligman & Maier, 1967)

· Not everyone experiences it, but people's attributions about the causation of initial lack of control

determines the outcome (Abramson et al., 1978)

Applied Social Psychology Lab 1

· How do you explain negative events in your life?

· Pessimistic vs. optimistic explanatory styles: habitual ways to attribute negative/positive events to

internal, stable, global /external, unstable, specific causes (Nolen-Hoeksma, 1992; Sweeney et al.,

1986)

· The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose

(Khail Gibran, Lebanese poet, 1883-1931)

· Archival study about college graduates describing their wartime experience classifying their

pessimistic style in 1946; not at that time but by the age of 45, when life became more variable,

those having pessimistic explanatory style in their youth showed more health related problems

(Peterson et al., 1988)

· Archival study showed positive correlation b/w pessimistic style and health problems (Peterson et

al., 1988)

· Optimists have better immune system

· Use of Cognitive therapy to change self-attributions: keeping a diary of success and failures, and

identifying how you contributed to your successes and failures; train to engage in self-serving bias.

Social Psychology (PSY403)

Applied Social Psychology Lab 2

After 9/11 FBI office was flooded with calls reporting possible suspects. Keeping in view that virtually

every suspect had an Arab descent, answer the following questions.

1. What cognitive heuristic was employed in these social judgments? (Answer is representativeness

heuristic)

2. Why people were relying on this heuristic? (Answer is availability heuristic)

Reading

4. Franzoi, S. (2003). Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 5.

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