PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes

W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz

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%20Behavior).pdf

Cognitive Foundations of (antisocial) Behavior

Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Psychology: Explores the operation of mental processes related to perceiving, attention,
thinking, language, learning, problem-solving, and memory, mainly through inferences from
behavior. Involves the study of internal mental processes – all of the workings inside your brain.
Behavior: The way in which someone conducts oneself or behaves. Anything that an organism does
involving action and response to stimulation. Multiple actions become a behavior
Conduct: To cause (oneself) to act or behave in a particular and especially in a controlled manner.
Connected to actions

Actions
Actions: Microlevel
Action: A thing done. The accomplishment of a thing usually over a period of time, in stages, or with
the possibility of repetition
- A self-initiated sequence of movements, usually with respect to some goal
- Often voluntary actions initiated by the agent’s will to achieve a specific goal (action
intention)

Actions: Microlevel [Action levels, completed due to Intention  (leads to the) Action, Ideomotor
Theory]
- On the microlevel of singular body movements, intentions/ goals are directly translated into
actions via action effect anticipation
Actions: Macrolevel [Dissociations of Intention and Behavior, Rubicon Model, Principle of Least
Effort]
- On the macrolevel of implementing action strategies, things get more difficult: multiple
options need to be weighed, different principles of behaviour apply, and not all are
conductive to our goals
- Keeping things simple and thus close to the micro level helps!

Action Level EX: Keeping balance/ moving both legs/ steering with arms etc.  Cycling from home to
uni.  Going to class
Intention Levels EX: Going to class  Learning about psychology  Working as a psychologist

(How to go) From Intention to Action

*Wanting to Write an E on the Screen EX

PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes
W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz
2 Phases:
- Action  Effect  Learning
- (Action   Effect)  Doing

Ideomotor Theory
Ideomotor Theory: ‘An anticipatory image, then, of the sensorial consequences of a movement … is
the only psychic state which introspection lets us discern as the forerunner of our voluntary acts’
(William James, 1890)
Action   Effect

From Micro to Macro Level

The Rubicon Model of Action Phases

- One uses motivational processes pre-and-post the action phase and volitional, or one’s will,
during the completion and planning of the action (Pre-decision phase) to the Volitional (Pre-
action phase and then the action phase) back to Motivational (Post-action phase)
(Gollwitzer, 1990)
PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes
W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz
Principle of Least Effort: The basic behavior hypothesis that an organism will choose a course of
action that appears to require the smallest amount of effort or expenditure of energy.
Every organism tries to conserve energy. If we have two fair options in front of us we will lean
towards the one that takes the least amount of effort/ energy. If you want someone to complete an
action, make it as easy as possible or the option you want them to choose the easiest option
Ironic Effects (Wegner 2009): ‘How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion
- The “precisely counter intentional error”
- Applies to unwanted thoughts and behaviours, you end up doing them
o You try so hard not to do something... you do it
- Showing prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) in situations in which people try to be
fair and unprejudiced, in moments of stress or other mental load
*Ironic Effect EX: Asked to make pendulum not go forward and back

Why Ironic Effect Occurs

When we want to suppress a though or behavior, we engage in two processes:
1. A conscious, effortful process aimed at producing what we want to achieve (i.e. distractions,
wanted behaviors, etc.)
2. An unconscious, ironic monitoring process that looks for the unwanted state
- Mental load (stressors, cognitive tasks) interferes with the first process
o Ideomotor Theory (Effect activation  Motor activation)

Intention-Behavior Gap
- Intentions account for only 20-25% of the variance in behaviour
- Stronger intentions are more likely to be realized than weak intentions
- Intention strength = “degree of firmness/ commitment”
- Also often accompanied by higher temporal stability (persistence) and less pliability
(resistance) to disruption
Strategies (Gollwitzer, 1999):
(Macro) The distance between goal setting and goal attainment is often long – how can we make
goals more effective in motivating behaviour?
1.) Set specific goals, not vague goals  better feedback and self-monitoring
 Ideomotor theory
2.) Control the environment, so fewer distractions can derail an ongoing goal pursuit
PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes
W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz
3.) Implementation Intentions: “When situation x arises, I will perform response y”
a. Pre-define effective goal-directed behaviour as well as good opportunities to
exercise it; when the situation arises the behaviour is automatically activated and
easier to realize
i. If the weather is good, I will run twice a week Monday and Fridays.
b. Switch from conscious and effortful control of goal-directed behaviours to automatic
activation controlled by selected situational cues  ideomotor theory
c. Helpful for difficult-to-implement as well as especially effortful goal-directed
behaviour. For things that are easy to implement you don’t quite need to implement
as many strategies

Attitude Vs. Behaviour

Attitude
Attitude: “A relatively enduring and general evaluation of an object, person, group, issue, or concept
from negative to positive.” Attitudes provide summary evaluations of target objects and are often
assumed to be derived from specific beliefs, emotions, and past behaviours with those objects.”
Behaviour Relations
- General attitudes correlate well with behavioral patterns, but not with specific behaviours
- Attitudes towards specific behaviours correlate with specific actions
- Generally attitudes based on vested interest, own instead of second-hand experience
Attitude – Behaviour Relations: MODE Model (Fazio, 1986, 1990, 1995)

Cognitive Biases
Cognitive Biases: Expectations, Biased perception, Stereotype threat, Patient effect, Pygmalion effect,
Hawthorne effect
Expectation Effects
- A lot of cognitive biases are based on Expectations. Looking at someone or a situation y’all
are in, you may expect certain things of them. Seeing a photo of a busy street you expect it
to be loud. Someone dressed sporty you expect them to be athletic or enjoying working out;
these assumptions and heuristics can be completely wrong
- Expectancy effects are based on heuristics that allow us to function even in situations in
which we have little information; however, they are often error-prone
- Expectancy effects are individual and situational – they are hard to predict
- Expectancy effects will be especially effective if reality (perception) and expectation are not
too far apart.
PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes
W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz
Biased Perception (Aviezer et al. 2008)

- Despite an expressive reaction, we interpret and have different biased perception based on
other contextual cues
Stereotype Threat (Schwarz et al., 2016)
Stereotype Threat: The situation in which one is aware of (a) negative stereotype(s) about one’s
group and is concerned about confirming this stereotype and being judged b/c of this stereotype.
- Stereotype threat can lead to performance decrements. We are so busy and concerned with
what other people think that what we are do
Stereotype Threat EX
- Women/ queers being bad at math
- Asians/ Americans being loud and abrasive

A Patient Effect
PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes
W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz
A Patient Effect: Belonging to the group ‘patients’ and respective negative expectations lead to
performance decrements and lower pain thresholds; they feel pain more readily than the control
group, they expect and do do worse.

Pygmalion Effect
Pygmalion Effect: Expectations of an evaluator regarding the performance of the individual being
evaluated effects that performance.
- EX: First reported in a teacher/ classroom situation where teachers were led to believe that
particular students were particularly likely to improve over time. Although these students
improved indeed more than other students who had not been predicted to improve.
- Teacher may be biased and grade in a different light (no real dif.), the teacher may treat
them differently or give them more time in teaching
Hawthorne Effect
Hawthorne Effect: Investigating a specific question may affect outcome measures associated with
that question simply as a consequence of the investigation itself.
- This effect was first reported in a study on worker productivity in the Hawthorne Works of
the Western Electrical Company in Chicago during the ‘20s and ‘30s. They tried to get people
to be more productive by changing lights etc.
Interim Summary: Cognitive Biases
Strategies to help:
- (1) The more experience people have in certain situations the more their expectations are
based on experience rather than second-hand anecdotes or false heuristics
- (2) Being aware of how expectancy effects influence oneself as well as others helps mitigate
effects
PSYC330 – 23S1 (Forensic Psychology) Notes
W2 (Cognitive Foundation of Antisocial Behavior) Dr. Katharina Schwarz