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Summary SLK 220: Chapter 4 - Choices and action
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- SLK 220 (SLK220)
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- University Of Pretoria (UP)
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[Psyched-up-Nika’s Notes]072 522 1600
University of Pretoria, 2021
SLK 220 Notes
Retrieved from R.F. Baumeister, B.J. Bushman. Social Psychology.
,University of Pretoria, 2021
Chapter 4 – Choices and Actions: The
Self in Control
4-1 What you do and what it means (p104)
◌ Skinnerian behaviourism: learning from reward and punishment.
Human behaviour is guided by ideas; therefore, it depends on meanings (religion moral values) Skinnerian
behaviourism failed with humans because it does not define what meaning does to behaviour.
Culture is a network of meaning – humans who live in cultures act based on meaning.
The importance of ideas what you do depends partly on what it means, this reflects the broad theme that
inner processes serve interpersonal functions.
Meaning depends on language and is therefore learned only through culture. For example; some religions
condemn eating beef – when a person understands the meaning of this rule in their religion, they will adhere
to it.
Thinking helps people make use of meaning.
William James (father of American psychology) “thinking is for doing”. Thinking evolved to help creatures
make better choices and guide their behavior.
Conscious thinking is for communicating, but communicating contributes to doing also.
One of the most basic uses of thought is to perform actions mentally before doing them physically. You can
imagine yourself running a race, or asking someone for a date, or giving a talk in front of an audience, and
these imaginary exercises seem to pave the way for really doing them.
As people imagine something, it becomes more plausible and likely to them.
a) Making Choices
Two steps of choosing
1. Reducing the full range of choices down to a limited few. This step is quickly, it involves the risk of good
choices to be left out.
2. More careful comparison of highlighted options. The assumption is that people perform a mental cost-
benefit analysis for each option; looking at the good and bad sides.
[Psyched-up-Nika’s Notes]
, University of Pretoria, 2021
Money Matters – How Money can trick you into making bad decisions
Money differences are quantitative: a matter of degree.
The other difference is qualitative: some feature is present or absent.
People tend to overestimate the impact of quantitative differences on happiness, relative to qualitative
differences.
The reason for this is based on the difference between how one thinks while deciding versus how one
experiences life. When you are deciding, you compare the two options (such as two different flats). You think
about them both at the same time. But once you live in one of them, you stop thinking about the other one.
The fact that you saved a certain amount of money by renting the cheaper flat will vanish from your daily
awareness. But whether you can walk to work or must drive half an hour in rush-hour traffic will affect you
nearly every day. Even though you stop comparing it to what your life would have been like in the other
option, that feature remains to intrude on your daily experience.
Thus, when choosing between options, people tend to focus on quantitative differences. But after you have
made your choice, you live with what you chose, and the option you did not choose is probably gone from
your life.
Remember to focus on what you will live with, not just what scores higher on paper when you compare.
Influences on Choice: Patterns that guide people’s choices
1. Risk Aversion: people are more affected by possible losses than possible gains.
Irrational vs Rational: research shows that people were often rational, but when they were not, their
irrational behaviour was aimed at avoiding losses. That is, people seemed more worried about losing
than they were attracted by the possibility of winning.
In decision making, the greater weight given to possible losses than possible gains.
2. Temporal Discounting: A second influence is that what happens right now weighs more heavily than
what might happen in the future.
In decision making, the greater weight given to the present over the future.
3. The Certainty Effect: Some features of a decision involve possibilities and odds, whereas others are
certain. This tendency to place too much emphasis on definite outcomes. (The color of a car is certain
where the safety of a car is not)
People might prefer to focus laws and expenditures on trying to reduce risks from 1% to 0% rather
than other interventions that might reduce risk from, say, 8% to 4%. Reducing risk from 8% to 4% will
save many more people (four times as many) than reducing risk from 1% to 0%.
4. Keeping Options Open: Some people prefer to postpone hard decisions and keep their options open as
long as possible.
[Psyched-up-Nika’s Notes]
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