Social Beliefs and Judgements

The process of using information to understand others and the social world is called social cognition, which is composed of the cognitive process by which we attempt to understand others and the social world. One issue addressed by social cognition is how self-esteem predicts self-judgment. Thinking of alternative scenarios during unpleasant events is a feature of social cognition. A primary reason that people spend time thinking about other people is because they have to make judgments about other people. In making judgments about others, cognition is closely linked to affect. 

Heuristics

	Heuristics are  mental processes in social cognition that act as shortcuts to decision making by saving cognitive effort.
	They are decision-making rules that save mental effort.
	They are used in social cognition because they save cognitive effort in processing.
	They are useful as a balance between early decision making and cognitive processing.

Representatives Heuristic

	When we make attributions about individuals based on their similarity to members of a particular group, we are using the representatives heuristic.
	It is used by people to make decisions about others based on their similarity to members of a particular group.
	Most heuristics are more often accurate than not.
	Although often accurate, the representatives heuristic can lead to overlooking base rate information.
	The representatives heuristic can lead us to make inaccurate judgements because when using it, we rely primarily on a stereotype.

Availability Heuristic

	The availability heuristic bases a decision on how easily an example of something is brought to mind.
	The reason that most people think that there are more English words beginning with "k" than have "k" as the third letter is because it is easier to think of words that have "k" as the first letter.
	The availability heuristic addresses the ease with which something is brought to mind.
	Support for the availability heuristic was found when people felt more assertive when they could easily remember a few times when they had been assertive.

False Consensus Effect

	The false consensus effect suggests that people overestimate the proportion of people who agree with them on a given topic.
	An explanation is that the belief that others are like us protects our self-esteem. It is explained by the availability heuristic because the opinions of our friends are both more like ours and easier to bring to mind than the average opinion.
	It is least likely to apply to highly desirable attitudes, when people may be motivated to stand out from the crowd in some positive way. Of course, I’m not like everyone else.

Priming and Automatic Priming

	The priming effect is an external procedure that increases the probability that a particular category of information will be available in memory. Ex. Mike walks to school every day early in the morning. One day, he reads about the high rate of mugging in his neighborhood. For the next week Mike takes the bus. Mike's perceptions of the danger of walking have been influenced by the availability heuristic which has been influenced by priming. Ex. After watching a scary movie, many people react strongly to stimuli that would previously have had little impact upon them. (What’s that dark shape? What’s that creaking noise?)
	Automatic priming unconsciously processes influences on the availability of particular categories of information.
	Spontaneous trait inference occurs when we receive information about others and tend to form immediate impressions about their underlying characteristics. Spontaneously generated trait inferences influence future perception through priming.
	Self-generated priming is evidenced by the finding that people will be influenced in their perceptions of another by a list of trait descriptions previously available to them.
	Priming influences decision-making heuristics.
	Biases in cognition are maintained because they reduce the amount of cognitive effort used to make judgements about others.

Consistent Versus Inconsistent Information

	Information is more likely to grab our attention if it is inconsistent with our viewpoint. "Madonna says that she would retire and devote her time to charities." "Newt Gingrich says he has lost interest in politics and is going to grow roses instead." Television news reporters are too liberal/conservative.
	The tendency to pay more attention to unexpected information can bias recall by making such instances more available in memory. This unexpected information influences the availability heuristic.
	The comparative ease of recall of unexpected information can influence perceptions of the base rate. Ex. Plane crashes recalled could influence the perception of the base rate of plane crashes.