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Illusory Correlation

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Definition: The belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not.
Related Study: Chapman and Chapman (1971) first asked numerous clinicians about which specific test responses on the part of their clients were indicative of which specific pathological correlations. Their study showed that although projective testing is not helpful in the diagnosis of mental disorders, some psychologists continue to use such tests because of a perceived, illusory, correlation between test results and certain attributes. An example of a projective test is the "Draw a Person" test that asks patients to draw a person on a blank piece of paper. Some psychologists believe in a correlation between drawing a person with big eyes and paranoia. No such correlation exists, and when data that is deliberately uncorrelated is presented to college students they find the same illusory correlations that psychologists believe in.
Real world example: Stereotypes- People overestimate the core association between variables such as stereotyped groups and stereotypic behavior

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Planning fallacy

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Definition: The tendency for people to be unrealistically optimistic about how quickly they can complete a project.
Related Study: Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross (1994)- conducted a number of experiments on people’s estimates of completion times. In one study, students enrolled in an honors program were asked to predict as accurately as possible when they would turn in their theses. They were also asked to estimate what the completion date would be “if everything went as poorly as it possibly could.” Fewer than 1/3 of the students finished by the time they had estimated. More remarkably, fewer than ½ finished by the time thy had estimated under the assumption that “everything went as poorly as it possibly could.”
Real World Example: Students often confidently assert that they will have all assignments done well in advance of an exam so that they can calmly and thoroughly review the material beforehand. As students well know, however, it is distressingly common for calm review to give way to feverish cramming.

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Primacy effect

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Definition: The disproportionate influence on judgment of information presented first in a body of evidence.
Related Study: Schwarz, Strack, and Mai (1991) asked respondents to report on their marital satisfaction and their general life satisfaction. Some were asked the marital question first. For these respondents, the correlation between the 2 questions was .67. This order made marital satisfaction quiet salient for respondents, and thus it was very much in their minds when they came to answer the general life satisfaction question. When the order was reversed, the correlation was only .32.
Real World Example: Lawyers scheduling the appearance of witnesses for court testimony, and managers scheduling a list of speakers at a conference, take advantage of these effects when they put speakers they wish to emphasize at the very beginning or the very end of a long list.

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Recency effect

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The disproportionate influence on judgment of information presented last in a body of evidence.
Order in which items are presented can have powerful influence on judgment. Sometimes the information presents first exerts the most influence, a phenomenon known as a primary effect. On other occasions, it is the information presented last that has the most impact, a phenomenon known as a recency effect.
Study: Solomon Asch (1946)- asked people to evaluate a hypothetical individual described in the following terms: intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious. The individual was rated favorably because of the two very positive terms that began the list.
Second group read the same trait adjectives in the opposite order and formed a much less favorable impression. Thus, there was a substantial primacy effect(disproportionate influence on judgment of information presented first in a body of knowledge). Traits presented at the beginning of the list had more impact than those presented later on. First impressions matter a lot. An initial response can constrain the way a person responds later on. Just like in but once initial positive impression is formed; it is easy to gloss over the person’s stubbornness and envy.
Recency effects, in contrast, typically result when the last items are easiest to recall. Information remembered obviously receives greater weight than information forgotten, and so later items sometimes exert more influence on judgment than information presented earlier.
Still order effects arise because the initial information affects how later information is construed. All the traits in Asch’s experiment have different shades of meaning, and how each is construed depends on the information already encountered. Take the word “stubborn.” When it follows positive traits such has intelligent and industrious, one interprets it charitable, as steadfast or determined.

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Representativeness heuristic

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The process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes, or between cause and effect. The use of representativeness heuristic thus reflects an implicit assumption that “like goes with like.” A member of a given category ought to resemble the category prototype; an effect ought to resemble its cause. The representativeness heuristics is generally useful in making judgments about people and events. Assessing whether or not someone is gay by how much he resembles a prototypically gay man is perfectly fine- as far as it goes.
Biased judgments can arise from false assessments of how representative an individual is of a group category or how common those in the group are in the general population.
Although people often resemble the prototypical member of their group, and effects often resemble causes, leaning exclusively on similarity judgments to reach likelihood estimates can lead to errors.
The problem with the representativeness heuristic is that a strong sense of resemblance can blind us to other potentially useful sources of information. One such source of useful information, known as the base-rate information, concerns information you have about relative frequency. Related theory is Base-rate information which is the information about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in the population.
The Resemblence between Members ans Categories:Base-Rate Neglect:
Study: Kahneman & Tversky (1973) conducted a study in which participants had to decide which academic discipline he chose to study in graduate school after they read a description of Tom in high school:
Participants either rated how similar Tom was to a student in each of the 9 academic disciplines, how likely it was that Tom was to chose to study in one of those disciplines, or (those not shown the description of Tom) the % of all graduate students in each of the 9 areas.
The participants’ ratings of 9 academic disciplines or ratings of Tom’s similarity to students in each discipline.
Findings: the ratings for which discipline Tom chose to study were almost identical to the ratings fir which type of student Tom most strongly resembled; base-rate information about how many students there actually are in each discipline had relatively no influence on the ratings of Tom’s similarity to prototypical students in the discipline to study in that field.
Base-rate information is more likely to be considered if it relates to a cause for a behavior, or if the person making the judgment is encouraged to take a broader perspective.

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Frustration-aggression theory

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The theory that frustration leads to aggression.
From generalized to Targeted aggression:
When we cannot aggress against the actual source of our frustration, we may lash out against a weak, vulnerable, or “safe” target (like a member of a stigmatized group).
Studies found: Hovland & Sears (1940) found a negative correlation between the price of cotton & the number of lynchings of black men in the South.
Hepworth & West (1988) showed that all lynchings (of blacks and whites) increased with lower cotton prices, but that the relationship was stronger for lynchings of blacks.

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Minimal group paradigm

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an experimental paradigm in which researchers create groups based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria, and then examine how the members of these “minimal groups” are inclined to behave towards one another.
Study: Tajfel, Voils, Bundy, Flament, 1971. People estimated the amount of dots projected on a screen, and were randomly assigned to either an overestimator or underestimator group. They did not meet the other people in their group. In the second part of the experiment they individually assign points that are redeemable for money to people. All they knew about each person is what group they were in. People tend to favor their ingroup members, despite there being such minimal group guidelines. This shows we are easily put into “us vs. them” mentalities.
Real world example: The Robbers Cave groups created an “us vs. them” mentality even before any real competition happened. Intergroup hostility can develop because of the mere fact that another group exists. (a non-experimental example may not be applicable because of the definition)
Related theory: Realistic group conflict theory (the minimal group paradigm may happen before competition over resources)

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Outgroup homogeneity effect

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the tendency to assume that within-group similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups. For example, you may think they all think, act, and look alike. We don’t. We generalize ingroup members less because we have more interactions with them and encounter more variability; we have more stereotypical views of outgroup members because we don’t encounter as much disconfirming evidence. People see more variability of habit and opinion among members of the ingroup than they do among members of the outgroup.
Study: Princeton and Rutgers students were shown a videotape of other students making a decision, such as whether to listen to rock vs. classical music or whether to wait alone or with other participants during a break in an experiment. Half of the students from each school were told that the students in the tape were from Rutgers; half were told they were from Princeton. Afterwards, the participants estimated the % of students at the same university who would make the same choices as they had seen on the tape. The participants assumed more similarity among outgroup members. For example, Princeton students who thought they had watched a Rutgers student were willing to generalize that behavior to other Rutgers students. In contrast, Princeton students who thought they had watched a Princeton student were less willing to generalize.
Real world example: A person who does not play videogames may assume all video game players have few social skills.
Related theory: Self-fulfilling prophecy. Our stereotypic beliefs created through the outgroup homogeneity effect may lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.

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Emotion-congruence perspective

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Definition: This theory maintains that moods and emotions are connected
nodes, or areas, in the associative networks of the mind, and that the
content of the mood or emotion influences judgments of other events or
objects.
Idea: In memory there are pathways devoted to each emotion, in which past
experiences, images, related concepts, labels, and interpretations of
sensations are all interconnected n a semantic network. When you
experience a particular emotion, everything associated with that emotion
should be more accessible and ready to guide judgment.
Thus: We should be better able to learn material that is congruent with
our current emotions, because that material is more readily integrated
into active memory structures, and more easily retrieved at the time of
recall.
Research: Participants were hypnotized to feeling either happy or sad;
then they were read a brief story of two college student one who is doing
well and the other who is doing poorly. In a memory test the next day,
participants who were feeling happy remembered more facts about the
student doing well and participants who were sad remembered more
information about the student who was doing poorly.
More Examples: Specific emotions also influence social judgment in
emotion-congruent fashion. For example anger lead people to blame others
for various actions and to be acutely sensitive to unfair actions whereas
sadness leads people to attribute events o impersonal, situational causes.
Anger lead people to judge unfair events to be more likely in the future
whereas sadness makes loss seem more likely. Fear leads people to become
overly pessimistic and to overestimate risk in the environment.

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Encoding hypothesis

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Definition: the experience of different emotions is associated with the
same distinct facial expressions across culture (If emotions are
universal)
Research: Ekman and Wallace Friesen Showed photos of 6 different facial
expressions/emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and
surprise) to participants in various countries (Japan, Chile, Brazil,
Argentina, U.S.) Each expression was represented by a different person.
The participants were asked to select one term that best described the
emotion from a choice of the six emotional terms. Accuracy rates for the
matching a term with the correct face were 80-90%. Research Flaws:
Participants in the first wave of study had been exposed to Western Media
which in tern produced the universality of judging emotion,.
Further Research: Ekman and Friesen went to Papua New Guinea (tribal group
that still lived in Stone Age conditions and had little to no Western
contact). Used a paradigm called the Dashiell method and devised an
emotional appropriate story for each of the six emotions. He held up
pictures of three emotions after telling the story and asked participants
to choose which picture best described the emotion of the story. In
another example he asked the participants to display the emotions of the
story on their won face. Accuracy rates again were between 80-90%.

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Feeling-as-information perspective

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Definition: Theory that assumes that since many judgments are often too
complex for us to roughly review all the relevant evidence, we rely on our
emotions to provide us with rapid, reliable information about events and
conditions within our social environment.
Two Assumptions: 1) emotion provides us with rapid, reliable information
about events and conditions within our current social environment. 2) Many
judgments that we routinely make are too often complex for us to
thoroughly review all the relevant stimuli.
Research: Effects of a bright sunny days and gloomy overcast days on our
emotions. Condition 1: Asked participants about their mood and life
satisfaction. Condition 2: Asked “how’s the weather down there” before
asking participants about their life satisfaction. At the end of both
conditions asked how happy they felt at that moment. Result: Condition 1:
(asked about mood and life satisfaction) people were happier when called
on sunny than overcast days and indicated great life satisfaction.
Condition 2: when asked about the weather participants tended to discount
the relevance of their feelings related to weather, and thus reported
equivalent levels of life satisfaction whether it was a sunny or gloomy
day.

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Two-factor theory of emotion

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Definition: a theory that says that there are 2 components to emotional
experience: undifferentiated physiological arousal and a person’s
construal of that state of undifferentiated arousal
Related Study: (Schachter and Singer) – Participants were told that this
experiment concerned the effect of “Suproxin” on vision. Participants
either got a shot of epinephrine (adrenaline) which elevates SANS activity
or a placebo saline solution. Those receiving the epinephrine were
divided into 2 groups: the epinephrine-informed condition and the
epinephrine-ignorant condition. A participant (actually a confederate),
who allegedly has also received the shot of “Suproxin” waits with the
participant. In the euphoria condition carried out a variety of
exhilarating activities (crumpling up sheets of paper and shooting them in
the trash can, making a paper airplane etc). In the anger condition, both
the confederate and the participant, who are sitting across a table from
each other, are asked to complete the same five-page questionnaire and the
confederate makes obscene comments and eventually stomps out of the room.
Schachter and Singer coded the extent to which the participant showed
euphoric or angry behaviors like those of the confederate, and they had
participants report how angry and happy they felt on a questionnaire
administered after the experiment. Results: (1) participants felt
happiest when they were physiologically aroused but didn’t expect to be
aroused by the shot, and (2) they were then placed in the euphoria
condition, which lead to a positive construal of their arousal. In
contrast, participants felt particularly angry when they were
physiologically aroused from the shot of epinephrine but did not expect to
be aroused by the shot, and the anger condition provided an anger-related
interpretation of their arousal. In addition, a surprise finding:
informed participants, who knew that the shock would produce arousal, were
actually less emotional than placebo subjects who received no injection.
Real World Example: drinking too much coffee in the morning will make you
tense and jittery at lunch. If you’ve forgotten that the coffee is the
source of your tension, you might experience your jitteriness from the
coffee as anger toward your roommate who is sleeping in late after keeping
you up the night before.

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Bystander intervention

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efinition: helping a victim of an emergency by those who have observed
what is happening; it is generally reduced as the number of observers
increases, as each individual feels that someone else will be likely to
help
Related Study: (Darley and Latané) – College students sat in separate
cubicles discussing the problems associated with living in an urban
environment. They engaged in this conversation over an intercom system.
In one condition, participants were led to believe that their discussion
group consisted of 2 people. In another condition, the conversation was
among 3 people. And in a final condition, the audience was the largest:
the conversation apparently involved 6 people. In the first round of
comments, the future victim described his difficulties adjusting to urban
life and mentioned that he had problems w/ seizures from time to time,
especially under stress. On his second turn, he became increasingly loud
and incoherent, choking and gasping. He then fell silent. Result: 85% of
the participants who were in the 2-person condition, and hence the only
witness of the victim’s seizure, left their cubicles to help. 62% of the
participants in the 3-person condition and 31% of the participants in the
6-person condition attempted to help the victim
Real World Example: the Kitty Genovese murder