Exam 5: Social Cognition

Fritz Heider analyzed the ways in which people explain everyday events, in terms of either ____ factors.

People from collectivist cultures emphasize ability, whereas people from individualistic cultures emphasize effort.

Social psychologists use the term ____ to refer to a process by which a given stimulus activates mental pathways, thereby enhancing their accessibility.

Raquel buys stock in two different companies. She makes $2,000 from one of these investments, but loses $3,000 on the other one. If you ask Raquel about her stocks, she makes self-serving attributions, saying, "I was very clever to invest in that first company, but I just had bad luck losing so much money with the other one." In other words, she makes ____.

Describe the four most common mental shortcuts that people use and provide an example of each.

If a moderately liberal person watches a lot of liberal news media television and listens to liberal news radio programs, her viewpoints will probably become more liberal.

The so-called "gambler's fallacy" refers to the ____.

People who have severe brain damage sometimes approach objects in the world as if they are seeing them for the first time. That is, instead of seeing a "chair," for example, these people see "a wooden object with four legs." Similarly, instead of seeing two dogs, such people might see "a small black animal with fur and a large brown object with its tongue hanging out." One might conclude that people with this kind of brain damage ____.

Research demonstrates that, in counterfactual thinking, people engage in far more ____ than ____.

When buying a new car, people tend to look at both statistical information and case history information. Research shows that they tend to be more influenced by ____.

Thinking about thinking is called ____.

Most people spend relatively little time talking and communicating with other people but much more time with their own private thoughts.

The belief that people can control totally chance situations is the ____.

In a famous early study in social psychology, fans of two rival football teams were asked to watch footage of an actual game that was very close. Researchers found that fans of the two teams literally "saw" different games; things that were deemed "out" by fans of one team, for example, were deemed "in" by fans of the other. This was early evidence of the phenomenon known as ____.

People who receive extremely low scores on IQ tests almost always perform better the second time around. This pattern can be attributed to statistical regression.

The term "cognitive miser" was coined to refer to ____.

Dr. Canne wants to encourage Kirk to lose weight. He tells Kirk, "If you don't start working out soon, you are going to die young and leave your children without a father!" Dr. Canne is using a ____.

Social psychologists term the way information is presented to others ________________, whereas politicians call it ________________.

Research indicates that people are especially likely to engage in the false consensus effect when it comes to ____, and especially likely to engage in the false uniqueness effect when it comes to ____.

The term ________________ was coined to refer to people's general unwillingness to do much extra conscious thinking (i.e., people's mental laziness).