Module 2

Did you know it all along?

 

 

Anything seems commonplace, once you know the answer

 

How does this affect how we do social psychology?

We often find our judgesments affect by previous experience or expectations.

Anchor Bias - the tendency to resist changing our expectations, diagnosis, prediction we hold when assessing new information.

Effect of Vivid Memories - Similiar to the availability heuristic, we use information available to us to form conclusions about new problems.

Was you guess of the inclass exercise based on what you thought you remembered to be true?

 

Example from text:  Arthur Schlesinger’s The American Soldier

 

Education

Are these true or false? Statements and assumptions

 

Better educated soldiers suffered more adjustment problems than less educated soldiers. (Intellectuals were less prepared for battle stresses than street-smart people.)

 

Southern soldiers coped better with the hot South Sea Island climate than Northern soldiers. (Southerners are more accustomed to hot weather.)

 

White privates were more eager to be promoted to noncommissioned officers than Black privates.

(Years of oppression take a toll on achievement motivation.)

 

Southern Blacks preferred Southern to Northern White officers

(because Southern officers were more experienced and skilled in interacting with Blacks).

 

Actually, these statements are not supported by evidence. One we heard the statements we could find reasons to have believed they would be true.

 

Hindsight Bias

 

Is social psychology simply common sense?

 

Hindsight bias is the tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one’s ability to have foreseen it, also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon