Psychology 2070A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Kevin Chappell, Autopilot, The Automatic

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Taylor Kohut

Document Summary

There are two types of social cognition: automatic thinking and controlled thinking: on automatic pilot: low-effort thinking. We do things by engaging in an automatic analysis of our environments based on our past experiences and knowledge of the world. Automatic thinking is thought that is generally nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless. People use schemas: mental structures to organize knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember. Schemas affect the way we process information. Information relevant to a particular schema is processed more quickly than information unrelated to it. We tend to fill in the blanks with schema-consistent information; given a label we fill in the blanks with all kinds of schema consistent information which can be useful but it can also have deleterious effects like stereotyping. Studies have shown that even the physical environment can trigger automatic thinking about race and crime.