chapter 7 ~cognitive psychology~ information processing amber gilewski tompkins cortland community...
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Chapter 7~Cognitive Psychology~ Information processing
Amber GilewskiTompkins Cortland Community College
• Cognitive Psychology: the study of mental processes
• Understanding the way people process information about environmental problems is crucial for understanding their responses to them
• Cognitive and perceptual biases, errors, and shortcuts, cause us to overact to some hazards and under-react to others
Humans are visual-dependent • Sight uses a greater part of the human brain
cortex• Leads people to rely heavily on visual
information– Seeing is believing– Out of sight, out of mind
• Visual dependency has been exploited by all sides of the environmental debates
Change blindness • Visual scenes can change radically without
being noticed because of constraints on the ability to:– Process – Retain – Compare information, from one moment to the
next
PBS – Change Blindness
Irrelevant information • Too much information can produce GIGO
(garbage in-garbage out) if the information is confusing
• Many reasoning difficulties come from being distracted by or using irrelevant information
Greenwashing• Inaccurate and irrelevant information is displayed
in an attempt to make companies appear environmentally conscious
Planet 100: Top 5 Eco-Contradictions
One way that people actively pursue irrelevant information:
Confirmation bias - When testing hunches against incoming data, most people make the mistake of looking for confirming rather than disconfirming information
• Representativeness heuristic:– The tendency to judge an event as likely if it
represents the typical features of its category• Availability heuristic: ----The tendency to form a judgment based on that which is readily brought to mind• Comparative optimism:
– A cognitive bias that leads individuals to believe they are less vulnerable than other people
– A heuristic that helps people feel good about themselves, in spite of their behavior or circumstances
• False consensus: – A heuristic that helps people maintain positive self-
esteem by convincing themselves that many others engage in the same undesirable behaviors that they do
• False polarization: – The tendency to perceive the views of those on the
opposing side of a partisan debate as more extreme than they really are
• Framing effects:– Are induced when the same information is structured in
different ways DECISION MAKING & HEURISTICS ACTIVITY
• Rank in order the following hazards according to your perception of the health risk each poses:– Radiation– Persistent organic pollutants– Pesticides– Global warming– Hazardous waste sites– Population growth
• Professional risk assessment:1. Population growth2. Global warming3. Persistent organic pollutants4. Pesticides, hazardous waste, and radiation
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