Exam 3: Social Cognition

Tversky and Kahneman (1974) provided participants with personality descriptions of engineers or lawyers and asked them to choose whether the individual was a lawyer or engineer. Out of a supposed sample of 100 engineers and lawyers, half of the participants were told that there were 70 engineers and 30 lawyers, while the other half were told that there were 30 engineers and 70 lawyers. What was the main finding of this study?

Automatic and controlled processing are thought to be housed in the same areas of the brain.

We are more likely to respond to negative stimuli and filter out positive stimuli when:

Suppose you have developed a new weight loss drug which, on average, helps overweight and obese individuals lose up to 15% of their body weight. Using information about the framing heuristic, describe both an effective and ineffective way of marketing your new product and explain why one strategy is likely to be more successful over the other strategy.

Heuristics are useful mental shortcuts but they also have drawbacks. What could be considered one disadvantage of using the availability heuristic?

John likes to read books and spends a great deal of time in the library. The tendency to conclude that John is more likely to be a university professor than a mechanic is an example of using the _____________ heuristic.

People with damage to what part of the brain show problems with automatic responses in fear conditioning but not problems with controlled processing?

Your textbook indicates that patients who have damage to the prefrontal cortex show difficulty with ___________.

Peter has a gambling problem. Using the concept of the illusion of control, how can Peter's gambling problem be explained?

How does mood influence the way we remember and learn information? Describe at least two ways in which mood affects cognition. If you had an important decision to make, would it better to be in a positive or negative mood? Why?

Tversky and Kahneman (1974) provided participants with personality descriptions of engineers or lawyers and asked them to choose whether the individual was a lawyer or engineer. Out of a supposed sample of 100 engineers and lawyers, half of the participants were told that there were 70 engineers and 30 lawyers, while the other half were told that there were 30 engineers and 70 lawyers. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) found that participants did not consider information about the ratio of engineers to lawyers when making their judgments. In other words, participants failed to take into account which of the following?

What can we conclude from research looking at the 'hot hand' in basketball?

The ____________ is a small structure found in the medial temporal lobe of the brain and is believed to be involved in automatic processing.

You believe that bad things are more likely to happen to other people but good things are more likely to happen to yourself. This is termed ______________.

Schemas are universal across cultures and are very much the same in every person.

When you arrive at your first university class you find a seat, take out your notebook, and begin to record information the professor writes on the board. Previous experience of being a high school student helped you determine what to do in this situation. In social psychological terms, the cognitive structure that guided your behaviour is commonly known as ______________.

What is the perseverance effect? Provide an example and explain how it relates to stereotyping.

Medvec and Savitsky (1997) found that individuals on the borderline of a grade (e.g., 89 percent) reported:

What could be considered a potential shortcoming of a schema once it is activated?

Work by Tversky and Kahneman suggests that providing descriptive information about people results in a greater use of base rate information.