SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGMENTS

HIGHLIGHTS
① Perceiving our social world
② Judging our social world
③ Explaining our social world
④ Expectation of our social world
#1. PERCEIVING
• Priming: activating particular associations in memory.
• Priming reveals how one thought can influence another thought or action
unconsciously.
• Much of our social information processing is automatic.
#1. PERCEIVING
• Our first impressions of one another are more often right than wrong,
and the better we know people, the more accurately we can read their
minds and feelings.

Proof of how ‘dangerous’ is our preconceptions:

A
• Sports fans perceive referees as partial to the
other side,
BIRD
• Presidential candidates nearly always view
news media as unsympathetic to them.
IN THE
THE HAND
 #1. PERCEIVING

• Kulechov effect
#1. PERCEIVING
• Belief perseverance: persistence of one’s initial conceptions, as
when the basis for one’s belief is discredited but an explanation of
why the belief might be true survives.

#1. Risk-prone – brave – successful

#2. Cautious – have fewer accident – unsuccessful

The theory is
challenged

The belief that risk-prone people is braver exists.

Our beliefs and expectations powerfully affect how we mentally construct

events.
#1. PERCEIVING
• Constructing Memories
• Is this true:
• “Memori disimpan di ‘laci-laci’ dalam otak, di mana kita dapat mengambilnya suatu
hari dibutuhkan. Namun beberapa di antaranya bisa saja hilang di laci, dan itulah
saat kita lupa.”

• WRONG.
• We construct memories at the time of withdrawal. Memories are formed
when we retrieved them.
• We reconstruct our distant past by using our current feelings and
expectations.
• Misinformation effect: incorporating ‘misinformation’ into one’s memory of
the event, after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information
about it.
#2. JUDGING

• INTUITION
• “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”
• – Pascal

• Our thinking is partly controlled (reflective, deliberate, and conscious) and partly automatic (impulsive,
effortless, unconscious).
• Examples of automatic thinking:
• Schemas (mental template): guide our perception and judgment
• Emotional reaction: happen before there is time for deliberate thinking
• Given expertise, people may intuitively know the answer to a problem (ex: piano playing, golf, friend’s
voice on phone)
PSYCHOLOGY
#2. JUDGING
• Overconfidence phenomenon: the tendency to be more confident than correct – to overestimate
the accuracy of one’s belief.
• Some examples:
• Planning fallacy – Most people overestimate their plan. (ex: expenses, build stadium)
• Stockbroker overconfidence – overconfidence of “sell!” and “buy!” time
• Political overconfidence
#2. JUDGING
• Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions
#2. JUDGING

• Negativity bias: a tendency to be more influenced by negative, rather than positive information, about
oneself.

100 pujian “cantik” hilang

dengan 1 komentar “gemuk”
#2. JUDGING

• How to anticipate overconfidence?

1. Prompt feedback
2. “Unpack” a task and estimate the time required for each
3. Think of one good reason why their judgments might be wrong
• Order these 4 cities according to their crime rates:

• Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis

#2. JUDGING

• Heuristic (mental shortcut): a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgments.
• Representative heuristic: tendency to presume that something or someone belongs to a particular group
if representing a typical member. ------- discounting other important information
• Availability heuristic: cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in
memory. -------- overweighting vivid instances; fearing the wrong things
 Availability Heuristics

• Representative Heuristics
#2. JUDGING

• Counterfactual thinking: imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but did
not.

• Seorang mahasiswa mendapat nilai B pada mata kuliah yang menurutnya mudah. Ia bisa saja: menyesal
karena tidak dapat A, atau beruntung karena tidak dapat C.

• When we have barely escaped a bad event, we easily imagine a negative counterfactual and therefore feel
“good luck”.
#2. JUDGING
• ILLUSORY THINKING
• Illusory correlation: perception of a relationship where none exists, or of a
stronger relationship than actually exists. (ex: conceive after adoption,
pregnancy cravings & sex of the child)
• Illusion of control: perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one’s
control or as more controllable than they are.
• Gambling -- attribute wins to their skill and foresight
• Regression toward the average – statistical tendency for extreme
scores or behavior to return toward one’s average.
#3. EXPLAINING

• Attribution theory: the theory of how people explain others’ behavior by attributing it to:
• Internal, dispositional attribution: person’s traits and disposition
• External, situational attribution: environment

• We often infer other people’s action are indicative of their intention and dispositions.
• Normal or expected behavior tells us less about the person than does unusual behavior.
#3. EXPLAINING
• Harold Kelley (1973) Theory of Attribution

• Consistency: how consistent is the person’s behavior in this situation?

• Distinctiveness: how specific is the person’s behavior to this particular situation?
• Consensus: to what extent do others in this situation behave similarly?
#3. EXPLAINING

• Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and
overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior. (ex: kelas jam 7 dan kelas jam 2)

• WHY?
• Actor-observer difference
• The camera perspective bias
• Perspectives change with time
• Self-awareness
• Cultural differences
#3. EXPLAINING
• WHY?
• Actor-observer difference – we observe others from different perspective than we
observe ourselves
• When we act, the environment commands our attention.
• When we watch others, the person occupies the center of our attention.
• The camera perspective bias
• Lassiter & others (1986, 2005): when camera focused on the suspect, the confession is
genuine, but when focused on the detective, the confession is more coerced.
• Perspectives change with time
• Self-awareness effect
• Attention focused to oneself, making people more sensitive to their own attitudes and
dispositions.
• Cultural differences
BRAINSTORMING

• IS IT WESTERN / EASTERN CULTURE THAT IS MORE LIKELY TO DO INTERNAL

ATTRIBUTION?
BRAINSTORMING

• WHICH ONE IS BETTER:

• INTERNAL / EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION?
 • “Mereka memang pemalas.” Tidak simpatik

“apakah kalau kita di situasi seperti

mereka, kita benar-benar dapat lebih simpatik
baik dari mereka?”
#4. EXPECTATION

• Self-fulfilling prophecy: a belief that leads to its own fulfillment.

 QUESTIONS?
“I like coffee because it gives me the illusion that I might be awake.”
– Lewis Black