there are two types of social thinking that we engage in this refers to non-social thinking as well controlled and automatic processing it's really a continuum but i'm going to emphasize the two extremes automatic processing is processing or thinking that happens often without awareness it can be at the non-conscious or unconscious level it's relatively effortless sometimes that means it's involuntary that is it may be hard or impossible to stop it or to override it it's unintentional it's this stuff that goes on in the background just as you have multiple structures in your brain that deal with things like your body temperature your breathing your heart rate you never have to think about those things the same happens when we're talking about different kinds of social thinking for example you never have to think explicitly about forming an impression of somebody you don't have to set aside time in your calendar like and think well i just met this person i need 20 minutes to form an impression of them you formed an immediate impression of them within seconds you kept updating it perhaps as you got new information but you didn't intend or plan to do it you didn't think about doing it but you could immediately say i like that person i don't like that person here's characteristics i think this person possesses other examples would be stereotypes stereotypes are these schemas that are often at the cultural level like many schemas and so there's this network of knowledge about different groups we may know that they are not accurate to some extent but they still may be activated automatically and if they're activated automatically it's possible that they are then used and applied automatically as well effortless involuntary unintentional non-conscious at the other end of the continuum is more controlled processing sometimes called more deliberate processing this is more explicit cognition thoughtfulness this is when you whenever you have to plan something whenever you have to explicitly reason your way about something now there are a number of advantages to having these two systems it's efficient that is sometimes you can do some things one way some things another way you can even do two things at once for example you may have a very automatic process like driving for any experienced driver you don't have to think explicitly about using your turn signal shifting braking accelerating all these things just sort of happen due to extensive experience at the same time if somebody cuts you off or something you can suddenly move from automatic to controlled processing now you're very alert you're thinking explicitly on how to avoid an accident etc so you can shift from one to the other very quickly the automatic processing obviously allows us to save cognitive energy we like to do that we're cognitively lazy would be the bad way of saying it but cognitively efficient would be a better way of saying it perhaps and sometimes this may surprise you sometimes automatic processing leads to superior judgments or decisions now i have to emphasize this is limited this is for example things about liking or disliking as we'll see that involves your limbic system different part of your brain than most controlled processing how happy you are with something for example choosing this poster or that album the more you think about it you may be less satisfied or you may give a less accurate judgment but i would say 95 percent of the time or more it's that more controlled process the more deliberate processing after all isn't one of the main points of college to teach you how to think reflectively critically think about the sources of your information the quality of your information think about your own thinking and the biases that should lead i hope to better decisions better judgments better behavior not only better for you but better for society people who are always on automatic processing are just going with their gut level intuitions can you imagine they can vote for people that are not good for them not good for their country for example so controlled processing generally is superior but not always and of course it is more effortful it's more conscious deliberate therefore sometimes we try to get around get by without it here's a great example say the color not the word do it out loud right now everybody as quick as you can having difficulty try it again don't read the words say the color of each word chances are you just had a very difficult time doing this this is called the stroop task and the reason this is so difficult is the very automatic habitual processing is to read the words it's hard not to read the words if i gave this task to a three-year-old they would do better you know why because they can't read yet or if i changed these color words to a language you were not familiar with suddenly it would become easier but this interference happens because you are trying to override an automatic process with a more controlled or deliberate process focus on the color not the actual word now there's some neuroscientific evidence for these two systems different parts of the brain appear to be activated for different things specifically the amygdala which is part of the limbic system part of the more primitive set of brain structures is related to emotion so liking anger a lot of strong emotions especially more primitive emotions tend to be expressed when the amygdala is activated and it also is activated for these relatively automatic judgments especially good versus bad like versus dislike judgments if i ask you do you like this food do you dislike that person do you like this political candidate your amygdala shows activation as you are making that instantaneous automatic decision but for more controlled reactions that is sometimes you can't give a simple answer do you like this person do you dislike that teacher etc do you like this philosophy in that case when you're thinking more deliberately portions of your prefrontal cortex are activated that's more on the the outside the more advanced part of your brain so i encourage you to think about what are controlled versus automatic processes for each of you and notice that it can be different if you're just starting to drive then it's not an automatic process for you yet if you're a highly experienced musician picking up that instrument is at least sometimes an automatic process but not when you're trying to learn a new song but for a novice you have to think about every single detail that's a much more controlled process so what starts out is more controlled can become more automatic over time that's true even for some things that i teach i always like to shake things up add new topics and the first few times i teach things i have to be more controlled but then it might become more of an automatic process i've memorized some definitions some examples some illustrations now let's talk about one way that we use schemas one type of automatic processing this is called priming priming means to to activate something and specifically you're activating a schema and any schema that's been activated recently or that is frequently activated that's chronically activated is going to essentially rise to the top it's like using the the it's the top plate in your shelf and so it's most likely that you when you need a plate you'll pull that one out so what schemas are we most likely to use when we're making judgments decisions that's this idea of priming let me give a few examples you go to a horror movie you watch a horror movie and suddenly you see your bedroom a little bit differently are your curtains fluttering a little bit if you hadn't seen the movie perhaps that's just the heat or air conditioning maybe a windows open but after a horror movie now you're worried right there's somebody behind there not just any person but some kind of crazy serial killer some sort of ax murderer because that kind of murderous person that schema has been activated by watching the horror movie maybe you talk with your high school friend and you think about them you think about the old days and then you meet somebody new well perhaps your impression of this high school friend will now spill over and affect your impression of this new friend what this means is that we choose some kinds of schemas to activate in other words the tv shows we watch the people we talk to what our media diet is is under our control but there's also a great deal of randomness about what's primed or activated in our schemas conceivably even something you dream about could be a form of priming all right let's go back to what we covered in the previous slide cast do you remember i had you rate someone named donaldson donaldson was a risk taker talked about bungee jumping and skydiving and i asked you to rate donaldson so dig up those numbers you rated donaldson from one to ten on three characteristics and then added up the number so what's that total number between three and thirty if this were a live class i could show you the effect by basically pulling the crowd but this relates to something i did even earlier in the previous slide cast i asked half of you i think it was last names a through l to read words that included adventurous self-confident and independent that is more positive words that seem to apply to donaldson this risk taker but the other half of the alphabet group you read words that included conceited aloof and stubborn more negative views and so my hypothesis is that depending on which group of words you saw you gave donaldson a higher versus lower rating so see if that's true for you did you get the positive words and rate donald pretty donaldson pretty highly or did you rate them pretty you know him pretty low on those characteristics let's just assume that that activity worked but now let's talk about a real study this is a groundbreaking study that shows how you can activate schemas about concepts or traits or groups of people so this was by john barge and colleagues published in 1996 and they primed people with this idea of rudeness versus politeness and they did it in a very subtle way they just had people unscramble some words and make sentences so they were given five words and they had to take four of those words to make a complete sentence and you can see the example here now there was three conditions one got words related to rudeness so there was about 10 or 20 word sentences that they had to form some got rude words some had those rude words replaced with polite words and some had control or neutral words so the independent variable was this prime and there was three different conditions here then they were told to go to the hallway when they were done they actually thought the experiment was over but they had to talk to the experimenter in the hallway but the experimenter was busy talking to somebody else and completely ignored them for up to 10 minutes and so the sneaky dependent variable was whether and how quickly participants interrupted the experimenter and you can see what the hypothesis is right if you were primed with the schema of rudeness you probably were more likely to interrupt and do it quicker but if you were primed with the idea of politeness you are probably less likely that's exactly the pattern of results here so if you're poli primed with the idea of politeness only about one out of six people interrupted but if you were primed with the idea of rudeness over 60 percent with a control group being right in the middle fascinating stuff so some reflection questions for you what is going on in your mind to what extent do you control the schemas that are being activated what is your diet is it more simple more complex more positive more negative is it the equivalent of cognitive junk food versus health food how is it priming you are you watching movies or documentaries about heroes well you're probably more likely to be heroic and virtuous etc but if you're watching more shows about narcissism and selfishness or violence then those schemas are going to influence your behavior in that way as well and underneath it all is almost all of us are completely aware of these effects if you ask the people in these studies they will probably say no of course that couldn't possibly have influenced my behavior in that way but we know from hundreds of priming studies that behavior does change it's not necessarily dramatic it doesn't always influence everybody but it does influence us sooner or later