Myers Chapter 3: Social Beliefs and Judgement

Class 9/16/2014 Chapter 3: Social Beliefs and Judgments How Do We Perceive Our Social World?  Priming: activating and awakening of particular associations in memory o Priming one thought (even w/o awareness) can influence another thought or action o Often our thinking and acting are subtly primed by unnoticed events o Ex. Watching a scary movie alone at home can activate emotions that cause us to interpret furnace noises as possible intruders; Depressed moods prime negative associates o Priming effects still surface when the stimuli are presented subliminally (too briefly to perceived consciously)  Much of our social information processing is automatic (unintentional, out of sight, and w/o our conscious awareness)  Embodied cognition: the mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments o Physical warmth accentuates social warmth, and social exclusion literally feels cold  Perceiving and Interpreting Events: our impressions of one another are more often right than wrong; t he more we know people, the more accurately we can read their minds and feelings o Political perceptions: b/c social perceptions are very much in the eye of the beholder, even a simple stimulus may strike two people very differently o Our perceptions of othe rs: people’s preconceptions about people make them see people very differently o Others’ perceptions of us: spontaneous trait transference: when we say something good or bad about one another, ppl spontaneously tend to associate that trait with us  Belief per severance: persistence of one’s initial conceptions, such as when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives – surprisingly difficult to demolish a falsehood once the person conjures up a rationale for it o Our beliefs and expectations powerfully affect how we mentally construct events o Usually beneficial but can become prisoners of our own thought patterns – the more we examine our theories and explain how they might be true, the more closed we becom e to info that challenges our beliefs  Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our Worlds: we construct memories at the time of withdrawal thus using our current feelings/expectations to combine info fragments and often unconsciously revise our memories to suit our current knowledge o Misinformat ion effect: incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event, after witnessing an event and receiving misleading info about it