• how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and decisions about self and social world.

• Judge likelihood of events based on availability. Things brought to memory more easily are assumed to occur more frequently

1. False concensus:
• Validating our opinions & beliefs by overestimating agreements, ignoring disagreements
2. Priming effects:
• Earlier experiences can influence subsequent impressions or thoughts

• initial attitudes lead us to respond positively or negatively

• judge membership in a group by how well that instance (member) fits description (against a prototype)

1. Base-Rate Fallacy:
• we ignore base-rate information. Over-rely on descriptive info but ignore relevant statistical info in making judgments
2. Gambler’s Fallacy:
• when we assume the independent events follow a certain representative pattern (ignoring chance, probability).
3. Regression toward the mean:
• Extreme events are followed by less extreme. Failure to take into account an adequately large sample of events.
     Example

4. Dilution Effect:

• information that is irrelevant to the representativeness of a decision reduces the effect of relevant info.

D. Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

• information we use to establish a starting value (or anchor point) tends to be more influential in our decision than subsequent information.

1. Contrast effects:
• extreme comparisons shift our evaluations in the opposite direction.
2. Framing Effects:
• we let the way in which information is presented affect the judgments we make

• we judge the probability of an event by the ease or difficulty of mentally picturing that event

1. Counter-factual thinking:
• Imagining alternative scenarios, or how things might have been different. Especially with negative events.
2. Hindsight biases:
• "I knew it all along." Overestimating our ability to foresee actual consequences.
3. Perseverance effect:
• simulations making our beliefs resistant to change, and even if disconfirmed, we go on believing it is true.

• tendency to believe the world is basically fair; people get what they deserve and deserve what they get (Lerner, 1980).

• tendency to place more faith in our judgment than it is justified.

• we look for supporting evidence only (Snyder & Swann, 1978).

• We focused on what is convenient and saves us the most energy