Psychology 2070A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Autobiographical Memory, Counterfactual Thinking, Social Cognition

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Kelly Olson

Document Summary

Social cognition: the study of how information about people is processed and stored, including: Using schemas and stereotypes to make judgements about other people. Memory for our own experiences and behaviours (autobiographical memory) Thinking about how events could have been different (counterfactual thinking) Schemas: mental representations of objects or categories, which contain the central features of the object or category as assumptions about how the object or category works. When an ambiguous object is encountered, we try to classify it. Stereotype: set of characteristics that a perceiver associates with members of a group. Confirmation bias: notice supporting information, interpret ambiguous as supportive. Actor influenced whether ambiguous acts were high or low in aggressiveness. Self-fulfilling prophecy: acting a way based on stereotype that ultimately incurs those stereotypes acting out in that person. Availability heuristic: estimating the likelihood of events by the ease we can think of instances in our minds.