On Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:05:27 -0700, Julie Osland wrote:
>Dear Tipsters,
>
>I've been invited to give a guest lecture [2 hours is allotted] to upper
>level honors students at my university on a topic related to content in
>Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow."

I haven't read Kahneman's book but I assume that it is mostly
about the research he did with Tversky and some of the follow-up
work.  I point this out because there is other research in these
areas that Kahneman may not include, such a Gigerenzer's critique
of K&T work and the social cognitive research on biases and priming.

>My plan is to cover heuristics --anchoring and adjustment, availability,
>and representativeness and perhaps also delve into a bit of the priming
>literature.  I have a good set of examples and activities to do with the
>students for the heuristics, but >little to none for the priming portion.
>Ideas and suggestions for in class priming activities would be greatly
>appreciated.

The social cognitive literature has a fairly good set of examples you
can use.  John Bargh, the social psychologist who had promoted the
idea that priming effects occur with social cognitive processing
and behavior, describes some of these in his Psychology Today column
where he counters objections to some of the priming research he has
been associated with; see:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-natural-unconscious/201205/priming-effects-replicate-just-fine-thanks
You could follow up on the references he provides.

Benedict Carey's 2007 NY Times article on "Who's minding the mind"
may also be helpful with the research that it reviews:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?_r=1

Also, the Implicit Association Task (IAT) is part priming/part automatic
processing situation.  If two concepts are associated in memory or if
a concept is associated with an automatic evaluation (e.g., White people
are good; Black people are bard), then seeing one of the stimuli (e.g.,
a White person) will invoke the automatic association (positive evaluation).
Mahzarin Banerji has done the most work in this area and you can take
a look at her website for the many different issues this task has been
applied to::
http://implicit.harvard.edu
Here is an episode of Scientific American Frontier where she shows Alan
Alda a couple of different versions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RSVz6VEybk
And here is a NY Time Op-Ed that focuses on some of the implications of
the IAT, White Racial Stereotype version:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21blow.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=%22A%20Nation%20of%20Cowards?%22&st=cse

>My second plea is related to the distinction between controlled (thinking
>slow) and automatic (fast) processing. I thought it might assist in
>grabbing the attention of these upper level honors students if I had quotes
>(from any type of literature or media), snippets of song lyrics, movie/tv
>clips, images, etc. that related to either one or both types of processing.
> But I am coming up empty. Again, ideas and suggestions would be
>appreciated.

It is unclear to me how you defining controlled and automatic processing.
The classic Schneider and Shiffrin paradigm defines automatic processing
as growing out of extensive experience with a particular type of processing;
so, for a child, reading is effortful, consciousness heavy process while for a
college student reading is automatic and requires little conscious directions
(that is, if one is reading something like a magazine or a novel like "50 Shades
of Gray").  In the social priming literature, there is automatic activation of
associated concepts or concepts and evaluations or other processes.  It is
unclear how much training one needs to develop an association (e.g., "White
people are good", "Black people are bad") nor how much awareness is required
depending upon the larger sociocultural context in which one grew up in and
is currently functioning.

-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]

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