social cognition final exam with verified solutons

consistency seeker- People try to justify their actions and have a consistent identity. •Naive scientist- Social actors make inferences based on available evidence. •Cognitive miser- People are lazy, and cognitive resources are limited. •Motivated tactician- Like cognitive miser, but if properly motivated people can be deliberate and logical •Activated actor- The environment primes us, setting off scripted behaviors and schemas that are often largely automatic. 5 views of social thinkers •"Dual-mode" means there are two general systems of thinking: automatic (system 1) and controlled (system 2). •This idea is extremely influential across psychology, including social cognition. •When processing familiar situations or stimuli, people have a rapid and automatic initial response (system 1). Sometimes people can control or inhibit those automatic processes (system 2). For example, changing a bad habit requires willpower. Dual modes In February 1999, four white police officers killed an unarmed Black immigrant (Amadou Diallo) who was reaching for his wallet. Police officers thought he was reaching for a gun. There have been many similar cases since then, prompting protests. real-world relevance •Research by Payne et al. (2001) investigated the roles of automatic and controlled processes in visual identification of weapons when racial categories are primed. •They were also interested to what extent automatic and controlled processes relate to explicit racial attitudes. •Experiment 1 investigated whether priming with White vs. Black faces influenced response times to weapons. •Hypotheses: 1.Participants would respond faster to guns when primed with a Black face compared with a White face. 2.This would be an automatic process, rather than a controlled process. 3.Explicit racial attitudes would only correlate with automatic bias in individuals who have a low motivation to control their prejudice. They teased apart the contributions of automatic and controlled processes by comparing the response times to congruent and incongruent trials. Participants identified guns faster than tools overall. There was also an Payne et al. research •When White police officers enter into a stereotyped situation with a suspect (a black suspect who may or may not have a gun), AND they are under pressure to make quick, life-or-death decisions, their actions are likely to show racial bias. •This bias could be helpful if the suspect really does have a weapon. But if he doesn't, it can result in tragedies. •Two potential solutions: •(1) minimize automatic associations between Black people and guns (exposure to other races), or •(2) increase cognitive control (train, react count backwards from 10, slow down) General Discussion