They are especially useful when we encounter ambiguous information, for they give us a cognitive structure with which to interpret the confusing information.
Click card to see definition 👆. Tap card to see definition 👆. Schemas are cognitive structures that we use to organize our knowledge of the social world; they often take the form of themes, subjects, or scripts. Schemas are adaptive in providing continuity and in helping us relate new experiences to old experiences.
Second, priming can work through unconscious processes so that certain schemas become more readily accessible. Third, evidence by Dijksterhuis (2004) suggests that when the unconscious mind is working on a decision task, people can actually make better decisions than if they had been consciously processing the task.
Rumination has been linked to depression, suggest ing that counterfactual thinking may lead to depression if people focus only on the mistake. According to Daniel Wegner (1992, 1994), successful thought suppression depends on the interaction of two processes, one automatic and the other controlled. Explain.
Automatic processing involves thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and relatively effortless. Two major forms of automatic processing are schemas and heuristics. Schemas are mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about the social world.
The representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut whereby people classify something based on how well it represents the typical case; unfortunately, people often underutilize base rate information in favor of deciding how typical an individual case is of the overall category.
Unconscious processes are involved in several aspects of social thinking. First, it is a key part of the "cocktail party" effect, in which people may be consciously attending to one conversation, but change attention if they suddenly hear their name or a topic that pertains to them in another conversation.