Social cognition is how people think about themselves and the social world, or more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use information to make judgments and decisions. | Social cognition Chapter 5 Social cognition Social cognition is how people think about themselves and the social world, or more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use information to make judgments and decisions. The assumption is that people are generally trying to form accurate impressions of the world. Because of the nature of social thinking, however, people sometimes form erroneous impressions. Social cognition How do we make decisions? What to eat and wear? Who to see and how to spend one’s time and money? How we make decisions are based on two factors: Automatic thinking: A quick decision-making process that occurs unconsciously or “without thinking”. A this level our decisions are effortless and unintentional. We use shortcuts, known as heuristics (rules of thumb), which save us time, but can lead to misjudgments. Controlled thinking: A effortful and deliberate, pausing to think about self and environment, carefully selecting the right course of action. Automatic thinking What types of shortcuts do we make that can lead to errors in thinking about the world and in reaching decisions? Intuition Availability Representativeness Base-rate fallacy Anchoring and Adjustment Counterfactual thinking intuition The most common shortcut we use in making decisions is relying on our instincts or intuition instead of relying on more objective information. Example: Employers believe they can do a better job of judging a person’s future performance through interviews than they can by using more objective measures, such as test scores, past experience, and education levels. Also, even experts who rely on commenting about political or economic events occurring and the accuracy of their opinions are no more accurate than non-experts. What does this tell us about following the financial advice from an investment professional? Availability Heuristic Availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman 1973) is a mental shortcut in which we make a judgment based on . | Social cognition Chapter 5 Social cognition Social cognition is how people think about themselves and the social world, or more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use information to make judgments and decisions. The assumption is that people are generally trying to form accurate impressions of the world. Because of the nature of social thinking, however, people sometimes form erroneous impressions. Social cognition How do we make decisions? What to eat and wear? Who to see and how to spend one’s time and money? How we make decisions are based on two factors: Automatic thinking: A quick decision-making process that occurs unconsciously or “without thinking”. A this level our decisions are effortless and unintentional. We use shortcuts, known as heuristics (rules of thumb), which save us time, but can lead to misjudgments. Controlled thinking: A effortful and deliberate, pausing to think about self and environment, carefully selecting the right course of action. .
