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PSYB10H3 (700)
Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Course Code
Ingrid L.Stefanovic

Chapter 3
Social Cognition
Automatic Thinking
-thought that is unconscious, unintentional, involuntary and effortless
-Helps us understand new situation by relating them to our prior experiences.
-people formally use schemas, which are mental structure that organize our
knowledge about the social world.
-These mental structures influence the information we notice, think about, and
-Given a label, we fill in he blanks with all kinds of schema-consistent
-Typically very useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and
to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.
-the extend to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of our minds
and therefore are likely to be used when we are making judgments about the
social world.
-Schemas are accessible for three reasons:
1) Some schemas are chronically accessible due to past experience.
This means that schemas are constantly active and ready to use to
interpret ambiguous situations.
2) Schemas can become accessible because they are relation to a
current goal. For example if you are studying for a test in your
abnormal psych course, and need to learn about different kinds of
mental disorders, then this concept of mental disorders might be
temporarily accessible.
3) Schemas can become temporarily accessibly because of our recent
experiences. This means that a particular schema or traits is not
always accessible but happens to be primes by something people have
been thinking our or doing before encountering an event. For
example you saw an ad on the bus about alcoholism, and then as
soon as you see the guy next to you sit down, you think from the way
he is behaving, he is an alcoholic. This is so because that thought of
an alcoholic was fresh in your mind and hence readily available.
-The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a
schema, trait, or concept, making it more likely that you will use this
information to interpret a new eventsuch as the behaviour of the man on the
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