Question

Social Psychology

Topic 6:

1a). Explain how illusory correlations, hindsight and overconfidence, self-confirming diagnoses and clinical intuition versus statistical prediction impact treatment and intervention.

2a). Describe the cognitive processes related to depression, loneliness, anxiety and shyness and health, illness and death and explain how these cognitive processes impact psychological disorders, treatment and overall health.

3a). Explain the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, its association (or not) with eyewitness confidence, its contamination by misinformation effects, and ways to increase eyewitness accuracy and educate jurors.

4a). Explain how defendants' attractiveness and similarity to jurors may bias jurors, and how faithfully jurors follow judges' instructions. 4b). Describe how verdicts depend on how the individual jurors process information.

5a). Identify possible psychological consequences of climate change. Summarize and explain the gap between scientific and public understandings of climate change.

6a). Explain social psychology's contribution to our understanding of changing materialism: To what extent do money and consumption buy happiness? 6b). And why do materialism and economic growth not bring enduringly greater satisfaction?

Answer 1

1a). Social phenomena and clinical judgments are highly impacted by illusory correlations, hindsight and overconfidence, self-confirming diagnoses. Illusory correlations consist of relationship perceptions. Sometimes, perceptions can be formed such that a correlation is set between the events, actions or behaviours. For instance, based on experiences, certain people develop a belief system that urban people are rude or arrogant. Hindsight on the other hand is the ‘knew it all along’ phenomena whereby no predictable basis is used to claim the same. All these aspects together create the cognitive system of an individual which thereby determine how the intervention would be planned. This means that depending on the nature of cognitive errors and distortions, the intervention and treatment plans would be created in order to facilitate change in the individual.

2a) Psychological disorders like depression, anxiety, shyness, loneliness, health, illness and death are closely linked to how an individual tends to view or perceive situations/events in life. This comprises of many aspects while talking in psychological terms. Both the genes and environment tend to play a role in how an individual forms their personality, perception and unique lens to view life in general. While some people inherently have greater thresholds or resilience, others may be low on it and may need very little forms of trigger to be thrown off guard or to begin using defense mechanisms in order to maintain a psychological balance or equilibrium. Intrapsychic conflicts have their unique impact on different individuals depending upon all these factors. Full blown psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, loneliness may have begun at smaller levels of cognitive distortions which have ultimately led to maladaptive belief systems that are core to the person’s individuality eventually. This means that their respective coping mechanisms and strategies were not enough to deal with the stimulus in connect.

3a) Research explains that mock juries are often unable to distinguish between a false and accurate eyewitness testimony. The confidence level of the eyewitness is taken in correlation with the accuracy of testimony presented. This is often misused and exploited, which is why the need to harder trials and deeper and more comprehensive investigations are required before any judgments are made in this regard.