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85 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Three Laws of Robotics
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1. a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. a robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. |
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definition of LEARNING
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the modification of behavior by experience
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basic differences between Basic Hardware and Pavlovian and Skinnerian Software
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Basic - Respond
Pavlovian - Predict Skinnerian - Operate |
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Basic Hardware
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RESPONDING
- Sensation: the ability to discriminate stimuli - Reflex: Hardwired stimulus-response circuits - Habituation: The Circuit Breaker (decrease in response to a repeated stimulus) |
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Studying Learning in Aplysia
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Aplysia - marine snail
Studies of classical conditioning of the defensive withdrawal reflex. A light tactile stimulus that would normally not produce any defensive reflex in the animal, is repeatedly paired with a strong noxious stimulus, usually an electric shock. After a few pairings, the animal shows the defensive reflex to the light tactile stimulus. The nice feature that makes Aplysia so attractive for neurobiologists is its large brain cells (neurons). The cell body of one neuron can measure up to 1mm in diameter, which makes it relatively easy to study the physiology of these cells to find out how they accomplish learning. |
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Pavlovian Software
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Ivan Pavlov's "Classical Conditioning" : the fundamental form of prediction
- mice run BEFORE the cat appears (respond to cat's collar bell sound) - Cheese – unconditioned stimulus (UCS), Salivation – unconditioned response (UCR) - Pavlov introduced the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) – owner walking to place down cheese, Conditioned Response (CR) – salivating in response to footsteps |
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Costs of Learning - Blocking & Latent Inhibition
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Blocking: conditioning to a stimulus could be blocked if the stimulus were reinforced in compound with a previously conditioned stimulus. (can’t learn to reassociate responses to new stimuli)
Latent Inhibition: A stimulus that has not had any significance in the past takes longer to acquire meaning (as a signal) than a new stimulus. It is "a measure of reduced learning about a stimulus to which there has been prior exposure without any consequence." (if rat learns association of flashing light with nothing, and then cheese appears with flashing light, rat still does not respond to flashing light) |
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Skinnerian Software
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OPERATING
- Edward Thorndike & Whiskers – he put cat in Puzzle Box. When cat is in box – scratches, pushes, digs, meows, and eventually randomly presses lever that allows it to escape from Puzzle box. - The more experience they have in puzzle box, the faster/more often they will press the lever - Law of Effect Operant Conditioning. - B.F. Skinner & the Skinner Box > Applied to real life – smile when friend says “we”, frown when friend says “I”, friend will start saying “we” more > Skinner put daughter in Skinner box for positive reinforcement to guide her |
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Law of Effect
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“If the response in the presence of a stimulus is followed by a satisfying event, the association between the stimulus and the response is strengthened. If the response is followed by an annoying event, the association is weakened.”
in other words, ORGANISMS REPEAT WHAT WORKS |
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Positive vs. Negative Reinforcement
in operant conditioning |
Positive Reinforcement - provide something good
Negative Reinforcement - remove something bad |
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Positive vs. Negative Punishment
in operant conditioning |
Positive Punishment - provide something bad
Negative Punishment - Remove something good |
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Regression to the Mean
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Tallest man in the world’s children will probably be more near average height.
if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on a second measurement - To avoid making wrong inferences, the possibility of regression toward the mean must be considered when designing experiments and interpreting data |
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The Behaviorist Credo
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All behavior is a result of its reinforcement history
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Radical Behaviorism
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ALL behavior is a result of reinforcement history - “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant- chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” - John B. Watson
B.F. Skinner's Skinner box for his daughter |
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Extinguishing Behaviorism: The Denial of Nature
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The Denial of Nature:
- behaviorism leaves out appreciation of key role biology plays even in the acquisition of operant conditioning associations - biological preparedness: an innate (inborn) tendency to learn certain kinds of associations relatively easily. innate tendencies to learn associations that were important for their evolutionary ancestors to learn in order to survive longer and, hence, to reproduce more. For example, rats easily learn mazes, whereas humans generally are not good maze learners; and tend to easily get lost in mazes that rats probably would find easy to learn. may be linked to the fact that they evolved from (and are) burrowing creatures: it probably is important for burrowing creatures to easily learn to navigate maze-like burrows. |
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Extinguishing Behaviorism:
the Denial of Mind |
When Reward Backfires:
- No reward vs. unexpected reward vs. expected reward: If you reward a kid for playing, the intrinsic value of playing is lost, takes the fun out of play and makes it more like work. "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” - Mark Twain - no reward vs. small reward vs. large reward: people will work a lot harder for nothing than for 50 cents. but will work more for 5 dollars Reactance: "Please do not write on these walls" vs. "DO NOT WRITE ON THESE WALLS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES." People write on walls more in reaction to threat |
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Key Ideas for LEARNING
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- organisms come into the world with reflexes (biological preparedness)
- the ability to form associations enables organisms to predict the future - behavior is naturally selected by its consequences - punishment is often less effective than it seems - organisms inherit the wisdom of their ancestors, and if they have minds, they use them. |
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Expected Utility Theory
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Rene Descartes and Pierre Fermat
- Expected Utility of Any Action = Odds of Getting What You Want x Value of Getting What You Want |
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Errors in Odds
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When people are confused about the actual probability of events taking place
- How SHOULD we calculate odds? Item / total number of items - Availability Heuristic: people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. People vastly overestimate the number of people that die from natural disasters and underestimate the number of people that die from drowning and asthma - largely due to MEDIA ATTENTION - we read and hear about deadly storms/fires, not really about fatal asthma attacks - The Planning Fallacy: a tendency for people and organizations to underestimate how long they will need to complete a task. We are perennially overly optimistic |
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Errors in Value
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People are confused about value
- Comparing with the Past: Is a Starbucks cup of coffee worth $1.89? We don't think about all the other things we could get for $1.89 (comparing with the possible); we think about what it cost yesterday We should compare with the possible, but we compare with the past. - Comparing with the Possible: contrast effects: the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with a recently observed contrasting object. Real estate: show a shitty place before a nicer place that's above price range - Comparing over time: More people would go for one Snickers bar today than 24 Snickers bar in a year – we value things more in the present - Hyperbolic Discounting: the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are. - When we imagine far reward, we activate different areas of the brain than when we imagine near reward. Far: cerebral cortex Near: cerebral cortex AND limbic system • Emotional center comes into play |
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Key Ideas for DECISION-MAKING
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- making good decisions requires that we be able to predict the likelihood and value of future outcomes
- the predictions of human beings deviate considerably from the standards of Expected Utility Theory - we predict the odds of an outcome by the ease with which we can bring it to mind - we predict the value of an outcome by comparing it with the past and by miscomparing it with the possible. - we become impatient when rewards draw near. |
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Two meanings of consciousness
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1. subjective experience
> dissociating awareness and experience: • blindsight: phenomenon in which people who are perceptually blind in a certain area of their visual field demonstrate some response to visual stimuli - subjects can have no awareness whatsoever of any stimuli, but yet are able to predict, at levels significantly above chance, aspects of a visual stimulus, such as location; OR can have some awareness of, for example, movement within the blind area, but no visual percept. • Alexythimia : a state of deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions. individuals report feeling no emotions, though biology suggests they are experiencing them 2. awareness of subjective experience > Are we usually aware of our experience? • Zoning out – way more people probe-caught than self-caught • Insomniacs – we never ask ourselves, Am I awake? And answer No – why we often feel like we have been up all night – every time we ask ourselves if we are awake, we say yes |
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Awareness
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Dynamic vs. cognitive unconscious
dynamic - Freud. Mental processes and contents that are defensively removed from consciousness as a result of conflicting attitudes. "The term cognitive unconscious merely implies that a lot of what the mind does goes on outside of consciousness, whereas the dynamic unconscious is a darker, more malevolent place where emotionally charged memories are shipped to do mental dirty work. To some extent, the dynamic unconscious can be conceived in terms of cognitive processes, but the term cognitive unconscious does not imply these dynamic operations." Unconscious Processes – subliminal messages in advertising, seeing a face or the Virgin Mary in the clouds or in a grilled cheese, etc. |
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Control
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Failures of Control and Illusions of Control
- Failures of Control: > Smoking, high-fat food, sex : people who don’t want to smoke and yet they do, don’t want to eat high-fat food and yet they do, have protected sex and yet they have unprotected sex > "Mast-Strapping Strategies" – painting of Ulysses and the Sirens, strapping self to mast to avoid seduction > Alarm clock that goes off and then rolls away from you – so you have to get up to turn it off > The Stroop Task: name the color and don't read the word (the word "blue" in yellow text) > Ironic Rebound Effect: the unanticipated problems that arise when individuals strive to suppress particular thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, or emotions. In particular, these suppressed cognitions and feelings over resurface, even more intensely than before. "Don't think of a white bear" - Illusions of Control: > Shouting at the TV set: as though the TV is going to do what they want it to if they yell > Unconscious cause of Action --> actual cause of actions --> ACTION o Unconscious cause of Thought --> Thought --> Illusory cause of Action --> ACTION > Consciousness is Epiphenomenal – not actually driving our actions but an aftereffect of physical process in the brain/nervous system |
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Key Ideas for CONSCIOUSNESS
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- we can experience without being aware of our experience
- conscious awareness is limited because the mind is modular and most work is done by unconscious modules - conscious control is limited, prone to irony, beneficial, overestimated, and maybe even illusory (an illusion) |
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Why sleep?
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- Conservation -
means of conserving energy - all species have adapted to sleep during periods of time when wakefulness would be the most hazardous. animals that have few natural predators, such as bears and lions, often sleep between 12-15 hours a day; animals that have many natural predators have only short periods of sleep, usually getting no more than 4 or 5 hours. - Restoration: repair and reset lacking sleep leads to irritability, hallucinations, difficulty in speech and focusing, memory lapses, paranoia, diminished mental abilities Fatal Familial Insomnia: rare disease of the brain, mutated protein. The disease's genesis and the patient's progression into complete sleeplessness is untreatable and ultimately fatal. - Consolidation: Sleep is critical for the encoding of information, and the consolidation of information o Training: Individuals are asked to do a type of sequence with their non-dominant hand, and to do it 12 times - How many correct sequences can you type in 30 seconds? • In one version: training at 10 AM – test at 10 PM, retest at 10 AM. • Another: training at 10PM, test at 10AM, retest at 10PM • The biggest changes in performance occurred when individuals were retested after a night’s sleep. |
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Circadian Rhythm
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roughly 24-hour cycle in biochemical, physiological, or behavioural processes
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hypnagogia
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the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (i.e. the onset of sleep)
hypnic jerk: a sudden quiver or sensation of dropping |
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hypnopompic state
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postsleep consciousness
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REM sleep
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a stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and a high level of brain activity
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Stages of Sleep
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- Beta waves: awake
- Alpha waves: drowsy, relaxed - Theta waves: stage 1 sleep, lower-frequency waves - Delta waves: Stages 3 and 4, the lowest frequencies, the deepest sleep -REM: higher-frequency sawtooth waves, resemble Beta waves of waking |
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atonia
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waking up and being unable to move - due to paralysis of body by the pons (cuts off information to spinal cord during REM sleep except eyes and lungs)
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KEY IDEAS for Sleep & Dreams
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- sleep is the vital and periodic inactivity of the body
- sleep conserves energy, repairs brain damage, resets neurons, and allows the brain to consolidate memories - sleep is a rhythmic journey through different levels of brain activation - lucid dreams can be encouraged through regular daily reality checks |
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The Function of Emotion - Thoughts vs. Emotions
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Thoughts:
- Infinite - No signature expression - referential - generally controllable - unvalenced (without intrinsic attractiveness) Emotions: - finite - signature expression - not referential - generally uncontrollable - valenced (intrinsically attractive) |
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The Hedonic Principle:
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People are motivated to experience pleasure and avoid pain
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The Function of Emotion:
When you experience Aggression, you feel ---- Experience Loss, feel - Experience Ostracism, feel - Mating, Kinship - Food, Sex, Sleep - Positive Exemplification - |
When you experience Aggression, you feel Anger/Fear.
Experience Loss, feel Sadness. Experience Ostracism, feel Shame or Loneliness. Mating, Kinship - Love Food, Sex, Sleep - Pleasure Positive Exemplification - Pride. Emotion is a Fitness-O-Meter and Guidance System |
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Voltaire vs. Rousseau on Emotions
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Voltaire - emotions guide us poorly(Badly) - we listen to irrational emotion.
Rousseau - emotions guide us well (positively) - VMPFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) - emotions guide our decision-making for a reason Both Voltaire and Rousseau are right. |
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The Experience of Emotion - brain parts
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Cortex
Thalamus Amygdala Stimulus --> thalamus (ROUTER) --> amygdala (FAST EVALUATOR) or --> cortex (SLOW EVALUATOR) --> amygdala --> emotion Fast evaluator (amygdala) - BAD! Slow evaluator (cortex) - BAD ACTOR! Fast Arousal (stimulus) + Slow Interpretation = Emotional Experience |
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Misattribution of Arousal
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Capillano Bridge study
- Female Confederate (in cahoots with experimenter) meets Male Subject on bridge - Independent Variable: wobbly or sturdy - woman gives phone # - Dependent Variable: how many guys will call her back? o Individuals were 5 times more likely to call her back when they were on a swaying bridge than when they were on a sturdy bridge – they were misattributing the arousal from being on the wobbly bridge to the attraction of the confederate |
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Misattribution of Lack of Arousal
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Capgras Syndrome - the illusion that the people in your life are imposters - can't discriminate between a familiar face and an unfamiliar face
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The Peak-and-End Bias
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- Upon retrospect, people prefer long colonoscopy ending with 30 seconds of “almost out” stage – a LITTLE less painful – than short colonoscopy ending with full pain
o people remember what happened last o individuals’ memories for emotions is not very good |
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Prediction Errors are self-erasing
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Gore supporters thought they would be really unhappy if Bush won, Bush supporters thought they would be really happy
o Experience was true but not as dramatic as predicted o Memory of experience – more dramatic than experienced |
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KEY IDEAS of Emotion and Motivation
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- Emotion defines "good" and "bad"
- Emotion is a primitive fitness-o-meter - Emotions guide us both well and badly - The brain has both fast and slow evaluators - We may misattribute, mispredict, and misremember our emotions |
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Prenatal development - embryonic differentiation
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The process by which specialized and diversified structures arise during development of the embryo
- increase in cell types and specialization of body parts/organs/tissues |
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Prenatal development - fetal impact
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Teratogens are the broad range of substances (such as drugs and pollutants) and conditions (such as severe malnutrition and extreme stress) that increase the risk of prenatal abnormalities. These abnormalities include obvious physical problems (such as missing limbs) and more subtle impairments such as brain damage. A specific teratogen may damage the body structures, the growth rate, the neurological networks, or all three.
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Cognitive Development in Infancy and Childhood
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- Immanuel Kant:
Space & Time (physical world) Causality Category (categorizing objects that are like) Number |
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Infant Expectations about the Physical World
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- Occlusion (object blocking)
- Support (bigger solid objects hold weight) - Solidity (of figures, objects) - Kinetic Transfer (how objects move with each other) |
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Idealism
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perceptions are powerfully colored by ideas/beliefs
- people have different beliefs - Appearance-Reality distinction: things may look different than how/what they are - Conservation of Quantity: items spread out are not greater in quantity than items grouped together - Egocentrism – different people hold different beliefs, but you think everyone can hear what you hear, see what you see, think what you think - The False Belief Test – Sally and child both see marble in box. Sally leaves room, experimenter moves marble to drawer. - 3 year old says Sally will look in the drawer - 5 year old says Sally will look in the box children begin to pass the false belief test somewhere between ages of 4 to 6 |
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The Spotlight Effect
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participants forced to wear Barry Manilow t-shirt. Assume that 50% of people will remember they are wearing the BM t-shirt – but actually only 25% remember
- we all have embarrassing experiences and we feel like these embarrassing experiences will be etched in the minds of the people who witnessed them as deeply as they are etched in our own sarcasm in emails – we assume people will get it (another example of egocentrism) |
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reaching adulthood
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diminution in speed/raw ability, increase in expertise and compensatory strategies
Amygdala activity – decline in activation for negative information as you age – as people get older, they become less neurotic. |
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KEY IDEAS for Cognitive Development
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• Pregnant women should never drink or smoke. • Infants “know” more about the physical world than their
brief experience in it could possibly provide. • Children slowly discover that minds represent the world and that these representations can be idiosyncratic or wrong. • Egocentrism goes away—but not too far away. • Teenagers and older adults are happier than HBO would have you believe. |
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Shared Genes vs. Shared Environment
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– twins are a remarkable aid in understanding the contribution of genes & the environment (nature vs. nurture)
- comparing individuals (0%, 50%, and 100% shared genes) who shared no environmental elements, who shared wombs, shared rooms, and individuals who shared wombs and rooms o siblings raised apart show 24% correlation in intelligence while siblings (50% shared genes) raised together show 47% similarity – shows evidence for environmental impact o siblings raised together – 60% similarity, monozygotic twins raised togher – 86% similarity – shows impact of genetics |
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Four Genetic Myth-Conceptions
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1. "Of Genetic Origin" - the environment actualy interacts with genes to create behavior at every step.
2. Genes affect behavior by turning it on or off: genes actually influence the environments to which we respond (being an introvert - might make you have better verbal skills, because you might spend more time reading/writing) 3. Genes are destiny: nutrition affects physical appearance, intelligence, etc. 4. Genes explain differences in individual behavior: 50% differences in IQ between individuals can be explained by genes, 50% by environment |
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KEY IDEAS for Personality/Intelligence
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• Personality is a five-dimensional object
• Intelligence predicts many important outcomes. • Genes interact with environments at every stage of development to influence intelligence, and their effects on behavior are not always direct. • “How much of an individual’s intelligence is due to his or her genes?” is a dumb question. • Differences between the intelligence test scores of different groups does not mean that one group is inherently smarter than another. |
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Feeling Disorders
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- Anxiety and Fear
- Depression and Mania |
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Thought Disorders
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- Schizophrenia
- Dissociative Disorder |
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disorders within quadrant "High Arousal of Negative Emotions"
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- GAD
- panic disorder - phobia - ocd - ptsd |
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disorders within quadrant "High Arousal of Positive Emotions"
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- mania
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disorders within quadrants "Low Arousal of Negative Emotions"
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- depression
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
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a. Characterized by chronic, day-to-day, uncontrollable worry about what is to happen
b. Belief that bad things will happen and they have little control over it c. Benzodiazepines stimulate GABBA production |
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Panic Disorder
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a. Characterized by acute episodes; intermittent, extreme bouts of anxiety
b. Individual can feel helpless terror, can occur at unpredictable times and typically without a specific trigger – out of the blue c. Symptoms: labored breathing, heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, choking, dizziness, sweating, trembling, sense of doom and terror, depersonalization (the feeling of being outside of ones body), and derealization (the feeling that the world isn’t real) i. Similar symptoms to heart attack d. Often times lasts for a matter of minutes e. can lead to Agoraphobia: a fear of being in social situations – fear that they will have a panic attack in social situation |
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Phobia
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a. Fear that is out of proportion to objective danger
b. Hypervigilence for phobic object (constantly on lookout for phobic source) c. Spiders and heights – common phobias. RARELY if ever cause death. Much more likely to die in a car accident than by a snake bite e. Phobias more common with women than with men. There seems to be a genetic component to phobias f. One of the disorders that is the MOST responsive to therapy i. Systematic Desensitization: introducing the source of the phobia very gradually in the least threatening way possible and ever so gradually increasing the threat |
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OCD
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a. Also fear and anxiety of a specific object/thought of an object
- Obsessions: thoughts 1. contamination 2. violent and disturbing images 3. intrusive sexual thoughts and fantasies - Compulsions: actions 1. repeated hand washing 2. putting things in order 3. checking 4. very frequent praying that interferes with life 5. counting 6. repeating words silently b. men are just as likely to have this disorder as women |
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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
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a. Flashback associated with an actual genuine trauma
b. Some techniques useful to treating PTSD a. Flashback associated with an actual genuine trauma b. Some techniques useful to treating PTSD i. BETA blockers – reduce production of adrenaline – give BETA blockers to individuals who are in rescue operations- reduces emotional strength of the experience, makes the memories less vivid and reduces the number of individuals who experience PTSD a. Flashback associated with an actual genuine trauma b. Some techniques useful to treating PTSD i. BETA blockers – reduce production of adrenaline – give BETA blockers to individuals who are in rescue operations- reduces emotional strength of the experience, makes the memories less vivid and reduces the number of individuals who experience PTSD i. BETA blockers – reduce production of adrenaline – give BETA blockers to individuals who are in rescue operations- reduces emotional strength of the experience, makes the memories less vivid and reduces the number of individuals who experience PTSD |
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Depression
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in its milder forms – the common cold of mental illnesses
a. Disengagement from life – sense of hopelessness, self-blame, and absence of self-worth. Absence of pleasure b. Symptoms: i. Sad most of the day, nearly every day 1. loss of interest in normal pleasures 2. sleep difficulty 3. shift in activity level (up or down) 4. shift in appetite and weight (up or down) 5. fatigue and lack of energy 6. negative self-concept (worthlessness, guilt, etc) 7. difficulty concentrating or deciding 8. morbid or suicidal ideation c. Short forms of 5-HTT gene and 4+ stressful events = 43% of depression – Diathesis d. Long forms of 5-HTT gene and 4+ stressful events = 17% of depression – Stress i. Stressful events = Loss: social loss; rejection, death or divorce e. Vicious Cycle: Depression > Depressive Cognition & Action > Loss & Rejection > Depression etc. f. Responsive to drug treatments (SSRIs) and therapy (cognitive behavioral therapy – targets the cognitions that individuals have) |
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Bipolar Disorder
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a. Depression combined with Mania
b. Symptoms of Mania: i. Hypersexuality ii. Talkativeness and rapid speech iii. Flight of ideas, racing thoughts iv. Insomnia v. Inflated self esteem (special powers and insights) vi. Distractibility vii. Excessive hedonism c. High heritability d. Difficult to treat |
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Schizophrenia
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a. Incoherence, disintegration of thought, language, attention, and behavior – different from Dissociative Disorder
i. Disorganized thinking, formed, delusional, grandiose ideas, disturbances in mood, unusual, inexplicable mannerisms/behavior ii. Hearing voices iii. Touble focusing attention b. Typically strikes people in their youth between ages of 18-25 in men, a little older in women c. Hard to treat – approx 1/3 of individuals can recover from schizophrenia with medication i. Drug treatments have proven to be especially effective d. Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia – things you see in Schizophrenia but not in normals i. Delusions – false beliefs 1. grandeur (I’m the son of God) 2. persecution (I’m being hunted) 3. external agency (someone is trying to control me, someone has gotten into my head – aliens) ii. Hallucinations 1. most common form: auditory (individuals hear voices) a. Narration & Criticism b. Argument iii. Disorganized Speech and Behavior iv. Inappropriate Affect: Emotional responses that are out of context, such as laughter when hearing sad news. e. Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia - things you see in normals but not in Schizophrenics Lack of... i. Motivation ii. Social Engagement iii. Speech iv. Concentration v. Affect vi. Movement (Catatonia - marked decrease in all movement or an increase in muscular rigidity) |
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Causes of Schizophrenia
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Diathesis
- Heritability - Biological Markers of Vulnerability - Prenatal trauma (ex. toxins in mother's blood) Stress: - poverty - family dynamics |
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Dissociative Disorder
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- Dissociative Fugue: the sudden loss of memory for one's personal history, accompanied by an abrupt departure from home and the assumption of a new identity
- Dissociative Identity: shift between two or more identities that are distinctive from each other in terms of personal memories, behavioral characteristics, and attitudes; at different times each takes control of the individual's behavior |
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KEY IDEAS for Psychopathology
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- mental illness is physical illness with psychological consequences.
- mental illness requires diathesis and stress - Feeling Disorders are exaggerations of normal feeling and are relatively common - Thought Disorders are unrelated to normal thinking and are relatively rare. |
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Categorization vs. Generalization vs. Stereotyping
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Categorization: identifying a novel stimulus as a member of a category
Generalization: using information about a category to make judgments about a novel stimulus Stereotyping: identifying an individual as a member of a group and then using information about the group to make judgments about the individual |
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How can stereotyping, such a useful process, do so much harm?
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- inaccurate
- insensitive to variability - unconscious & automatic |
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How stereotypes are inaccurate
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Illusory Correlation: the phenomenon of seeing the relationship one expects in a set of data even when no such relationship exists - when people form false associations between membership in a statistical minority group and rare (typically negative) behaviors
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How stereotypes are insensitive to vulnerability
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Assimilation: the tendency to perceive to little intra-category variability (within category)
Contrast: the tendency to perceive too much inter-category variability (between categories) |
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How stereotypes are Unconscious & Automatic
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- murder of Amadou Diallo - prejudice
- IAT : Implicit Associations Test |
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The Perpetuation of Error with Evidence - social cognition
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- collecting evidence: look only for data that support your hypothesis
- interpreting evidence: interpret ambiguous data as support for your hypothesis - creating evidence: invent data that support your hypothesis - denying evidence: refuse to believe data that contradict your hypothesis |
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The Perpetuation of Error: Collecting Evidence
Sampling Bias Confirmation Bias |
Sampling Bias: when a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population are less likely to be included than others. It results in a biased sample
Confirmation Bias: tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. |
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The Perpetuation of Error: Interpreting Evidence
Perceptual Confirmation |
a phenomenon that occurs when observers perceive what they expect to perceive.
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The Perpetuation of Error: Creating Evidence
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy [or Behavioral Confirmation] Stereotype Threat |
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: the tendency for people to CAUSE what they expect to see.
Stereotype Threat: fear of confirming an observer's stereotype; ex. African American and white students were given a test. Students who were not asked to list their race performed well. African American american students who listed their race became anxious and performed poorly |
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The Perpetuation of Error: Denying Evidence
Attitude Polarization |
a phenomenon in which a disagreement becomes more extreme as the different parties consider evidence on the issue. It is one of the effects of confirmation bias: the tendency of people to search for and interpret evidence selectively, to reinforce their current beliefs or attitudes. When people encounter ambiguous evidence, this bias can potentially result in each of them interpreting it as in support of their existing attitudes, widening rather than narrowing the disagreement between them
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KEY IDEAS for Social Cognition
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- the tendency to categorize and generalize is a natural and important part of human nature, but it can go awry with stereotypes.
- stereotypes can be inaccurate as a consequence of heresy, exaggerating the frequency of rare behaviors, and failure to appreciate the variability of people. - stereotypes are insidious because they are often applied unconsciously - the perpetuation of stereotypes has much in common with bad science in which evidence is improperly collected, inappropriately interpreted, falsified, and counter evidence ignored. |
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The Hedonic Motive
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- rewards for good behavior, fees for bad behavior
- observational learning: the ability to learn by observing others being rewarded and punished - reactance: an unpleasant state that occurs when one feels that one's freedom is threatened -- "don't write on these walls under any circumstances" - people will be more likely to rebel and write on walls due to reactance vs. "Please don't write on these walls :)" |
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The Approval Motive
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- Normative Influence
a. norms: customary standards for behavior that are widely shared by members of a culture b. Normative influence: occurs when a person's behavior is influenced by beliefs about what is appropriate -- telling people how their power usage compared with that of their neighbors influenced their power consumption c. Norm of Reciprocity: we should benefit those who benefit us -- including candy in a bill can increase tip d. The Door-in-the-Face Technique: an influence strategy that uses "reciprocated concessions" - ask for something ridiculous/unreasonable first, then ask for what you really want. - Conformity: the tendency to do what others do a. Pluralistic ignorance: occurs when people mistakenly assume that others' behavior is normative - Obedience: the tendency to do what authorities tell us to do simply because they tell us to do it a. people were told to shock subjects - 62% went all the way to the XXX level of shock - cruel and unusual - due to obedience (when experiment was not carried out at Yale and experimenter wasn't wearing white lab coat, far fewer individuals took shock all the way to XXX - perception of authority) b. "The Banality of Evil" Hannah Arendt, Adolph Eichmann (The Holocaust) - when Eichmann was tried, he explain that he was just following authorities |
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The Accuracy Motive
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- Informational Influence: occurs when another person's behavior provides information about what is correct, real or true.
a. Belief: enduring knowledge of an object or event - Big Macs can be found beneath the golden arches. b. Attitude: enduring evaluation of an object or event - Big Mac is yummy c. Mass Delusion: occurs when a large group of people influence each other through their actions to adopt a mistaken belief. If everyone makes a sour expression when they look at the lemonade, everyone will think it is sour (informational influence) - Persuasion: occurs when a person's attitudes or beliefs are influenced by a communication from another person a. Cue: the manner in which the message is being delivered (subject of advertisement or persuasion) b. Content: the specific information that is being presented in support of the direction of persuasion Persuasion by content (systematic): - strength of arguments and evidence - systematic persuasion is most likely to be involved when people have the ability and motivation to process content. Persuasion by cues (Heuristic) - everything else - most common when people lack either the ability or the motivation to process content Politicians: - systematic "My policies make sense." - Heuristic "I'm a lot like you." The Sleeper Effect: participants were given a message that was either attributed to ConsumerReports or the manufacturer of the object in question - individuals were asked to indicate their attitude towards that product a. initially, people were much more persuaded by ConsumerReports than by reports from manufacturer b. four weeks later: NO DIFFERENCE between persuasion from ConsumerReports or manufacturer - you forget the source and come to believe facts that may have had no truth. Even if people aren't persuaded right away, the message lingers, and the difference between the credible/incredible source can dissipate over time - Consistency a. How to Determine Truth • Correspondence: proposition X is true if it corresponds to a state of the world. • Coherence: Proposition X is true if it is consistent with other propositions that are true. • Coherence is EASIER TO PERCEIVE than correspondence - thus, the desire for accuracy begets a desire for consistency. b. The Low-Ball Technique - often used by used car salesmen - get you to agree to a really low price, and then somehow raise it, and you agree because you want to be consistent with your first agreement c. The Foot in the Door Technique : many more agree to large request when there is a smaller initial request d. Cognitive Dissonance: an unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of their beliefs and/or actions (sentiment ≠ action) • we are motivated to reduce dissonance • the amount of dissonance we feel is proportional to the sum of the consistency and inconsistency in the system - Two Methods for Cognitive Dissonance Reduction: • Method 1. Remove inconsistency - I did X, so I must like X. • Method 2. Add consistency - I did X, I hate X. - Effort justification: occurs when a person values something because they have "suffered" for it - initiation activities, such as hazing. |
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KEY IDEAS for Social Influence
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- our motives make us susceptible to influence by those who can appeal to them.
- we want pleasure, but the effects of reward and punishment are not simple. - we want approval, and other people's behavior can tell us how to get it. - we want accurate beliefs and attitudes, which can lead us to... • use the behavior of others as a guide to what is true • be persuaded by what others tell us • enforce consistency among our beliefs, attitudes, and actions |
