Exam 3: Social Cognition: How We Think About the Social World

If accurate judgments are our goal, we should use base rate information instead of the representativeness heuristic when __________.

According to the authors of your text, how is it best to characterize humans as social thinkers?

Jacob's friend Tom asks him, "Do you think I'm short-tempered?" Jacob had never really thought about how short-tempered or calm Tom was until he asked. Nonetheless, Jacob was able to provide him a quick answer. What social cognitive process was most likely involved in this judgment?

The representative heuristic is when __________.

When asked to guess whether Mark is from Montana or California, you guess California because more people live in California. You have used __________ in making your decision.

Research by Kahneman and Tversky (1973) presented by the authors of your text found that people do not use base rate information sufficiently, and pay more attention to __________.

Katarina meets a young man who has long hair, saggy pants, multiple facial piercings, and many tattoos. Katarina applies a schema from her past experience and immediately categorizes this young man as __________.

Research has demonstrated that metaphors about the body and social judgments influence how we think and the decisions we make. If that is true, the next time you are feeling lonely and as if the world is a cold, heartless place, what should you do and why?

Based on your reading of Chapter 3 (Social Cognition), who would you predict would be more frustrated: Katie, who missed an A by one point, or James, who missed an A by five points?

When Ashley first starts typing, she uses the "hunt and peck" method and finds typing very effortful. Now, after taking a typing class, she feels like her papers practically type themselves, once she figures out what she wants to say. This change in her typing reflects a shift from __________.

Consider information from the authors of your text about the availability heuristic. If you wanted to improve customer satisfaction survey ratings for your company, which of the following would you ask customers in terms of their suggestions for improvement?

Researchers had participants memorize a number of words before reading an ambiguous passage about a character named Donald. The words participants read influenced how they interpreted Donald's somewhat ambiguous behavior. The take-home message of this study is that thoughts have to be __________ before they affect our impressions of the social world.

Research demonstrated that physical sensation can activate metaphors that influence our judgments about unrelated topics. If you wanted students to take your petition seriously, you should present the information about it __________.

The authors of your text suggest that with respect to traditional gender differences in scholastic performance, one causal factor may be __________.

Counterfactual thinking can be either detrimental or beneficial to people's mental health. Counterfactual thinking can be detrimental because it __________ and beneficial if it __________.

The planning fallacy is the tendency to __________.

Aoi is from Japan. If you want her to think analytically, what will you have to do?

The self-fulfilling prophecy occurs because we often __________.

In Kelley's (1950) research about the guest lecturer, the researcher wanted to study the impact of __________ on the students' later impressions of the lecturer.

The mental shortcuts that people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently are called __________.