 This is lecture four. In this lecture, we'll be talking about social perception. So how do we perceive people around us in our social world? But in this first part of the lecture, we'll first be talking about how information is presented to us. General information, overall information, not only information about people. Because that's very important and our mind is biased and sometimes how we perceive information influences everything and that can be very subtle. In order to illustrate this, I will start this part of the lecture by giving you a memory test. So there it goes. This is a very simple test. All you need to do is listen to me. I will speak out loud and I will say several words and your task is very easy. It's to remember the words, as many words as you can remember, okay? So I'll be naming the words right now one by one slowly and your task is to remember the words. Please don't cheat. Don't write them down. Then it doesn't work. So no pen and paper, no notes on your phone. Just listen to me and try to use your memory and I'm going to test how good your memory is. Okay, there we go, right? Bike bag, cookie jar, rooftop, fridge magnet, tree root, stepfather, thermometer, chocolate chip, bird droppings. Okay, then we'll continue. Okay, we're just going to continue with it. I'm going to come back to this. So what I'm going to talk to you about right now and that has to do with your memory test are order effects. The order in which information is presented to us impacts our memory. And in order to illustrate this, I will give you another example. I will ask you a question. So let's imagine you applied for a job and it's actually your dream job. You would really love to have the job and you wrote the letter, your motivation letter, your major CV, you send it in and to your big surprise, you get invited for an interview. You get a phone call and the person on the phone says to you, you're invited for an interview, but there are nine other candidates. You are the first person that we call. When do you want to come in for the interview? Do you want to be the very first person to come into the interview, maybe somewhere in the middle or the last person? Okay, let's imagine a scenario. Okay, when do you want to go in for the interview? The best answer actually is given by the memory test. So now you can for yourself write down the answers to the question, which words do you remember? So I will give you some time. You can pause the video also if you need more time. Please write down the words that you remember from the memory test. Okay, so I hope you wrote them down. If not pause the video. I will continue now and I will tell you which words I said out loud. So which were the words that you had to remember? There they go again. Okay, biteback, cookie jar, rooftop, fridge magnets, tree roots, stepfather, thermometer, chocolate chip, bird droppings. Which words did you remember? Well, there's a high like view that some words are very relevant for you. Maybe you have a stepfather. Maybe you love chocolate chip cookies. So these are the words that are because these schemas are chronically activated. Remember, we talked about this in lecture three, they're easier to remember because they sort of you can attach them to the schema that's already activated. But for the other words that are pretty random words that are not relevant for you, are not automatically activated, there's an order effect. And that means that the words that you are most likely to have remembered are either the words that I said in the beginning, biteback, cookie jar, rooftop, or the words at the very end. So thermometer, chocolate chip, and bird droppings. Are those words that you remembered? It's actually more likely that you remembered those words than the words somewhere in the middle. Fridge magnets, tree roots. These are the words that are most likely to be forgotten. And that's also what the research showed. So this is with a comparable memory test. You see that words that are recalled are mostly the words either in the beginning of a line of words or at the end. And this is called either the primacy or the recency effect. And the primacy effect means that words in the beginning of a sequence or general information in the beginning of a sequence is easier to remember. The reason for this primacy effect is that the words or the information you get in the beginning is a higher likelihood that these words are thoroughly processed and end up in your longer term memory. So you have a fresh sort of a clean slate then. And these words sort of are remembered better because you can move them to your long term memory faster. For the words at the very end, you also remember them better. That's called the recency effect. And in the end of the sequence, those words are remembered better because there's a higher chance that this information is still available in your short term memory. So this has to do with how memory works. And the information in the very middle, the intermediate information, that's most likely to be forgotten. So that's also the answer to the question. If you get invited for a job interview, would you rather be the middle in the beginning or in the end? Both the beginning is good or the end, but try to prevent being the middle candidate because there's a higher likelihood that you'll be forgotten by then. So this is an example of an order effect with general information. But we also know that order effects and especially the primacy effect also applies to people. So if we hear information about a person, the very first words that this person uses, for example, to describe their personality, is remembered best. So for example, here you see two dating profiles from Kate and Dieter. And they both describe themselves in different ways. And Kate starts off by mentioning that she's funny or that humor is something that's really important to her. And Dieter starts by saying something about that she is sporty. And these traits are probably remembered best. So keep this in mind while you're updating your dating profile on your dating app. So primacy effect also applies to people. So the order in which information reaches us matters. Information that we get first is better remembered as well as information that we received last. But there's more. For example, the negativity bias. And negativity bias means that information that is about negative events is, for us, easier to notice. It's better processed and it's also remembered better. We are, as people, sort of cautious. We're always on the lookout for danger. And that steers our attention. So this is actually not so good for us generally. It's not very good for our mood. So there can be a lot going on in your life that's very positive. But one thing might be going bad. And that can change everything. That can change your entire perspective on how you're doing, for example. We tend to zoom into the bad and sort of ignore the good, which is, yeah, again, not really good for our mood. It's also that if we're going about our lives, we notice dangers. We notice how things can go wrong, that we might get bitten by a dog or fall off the stairs or fall off a slide. And this also can be explained from a evolutionary perspective. Because, of course, being on the lookout for dangers is something that can help us keep us alive. Making sure that we see that dangerous dog or making sure that we are aware of the risks that are there in the surroundings that helped us in the past. So that's also why this negativity bias persisted. However, it also has some bad consequences, especially when it comes to feedback that we receive. And I think we can all relate to this. You can get, for example, if you gave a presentation, for example, in my case, if I give a lecture, a lot of people often say that they enjoyed the lecture. But there's always some people that didn't or had criticism and negative feedback, which is completely fine. Of course, you should always feel open-minded and free to speak your mind. But this negative information, this negative feedback always comes in much harder than the positive words. So you can hear all positive words and praise. But then this one person saying something negative, that's what we remember and that's what we seek out. So this negativity bias is helping us in a way, but it's also hurting us in other ways. Then finally, the media and politicians are also well aware of the fact that the way information is presented to us is steering our judgments. And people in marketing use this, for example, in selling us their products. For example, we know that a phone charger that retains 95% of the energy in your phone is of course sold better than one that says the phone charger that loses 5%, even though the information is completely the same. I'm pretty sure the green batteries, phone chargers are sold better than the brown ones. And politicians use spin framing, use a specific presentation of information in a valenced way, so either in a positive or a negative way to sell us their ideas. For example, operation enduring freedom, that's the official name used by the U.S. government for the war in Afghanistan that was used. And this has a very positive ring to it, right? Enduring freedom. Who would be against enduring freedom, right? So this is sort of a smart tactic that they use to sell us their political agenda. And also in the media, this used a lot of spin framing also when it comes to stereotypical information. So here you see two front pages of magazines. On the one hand, you see the children of 9-11. And the other hand, you see the children of Bin Laden. You see that there's quite a difference there. And these images are also one of the roots of why stereotyping and prejudice remains, because these images are used and they reinforce a certain stereotype, which is very detrimental in many regards. Spin framing is also often used in tabloids when people, especially magazines, like junk magazines basically, want us to either like or dislike a certain person. Especially the British tabloids are really quite famous for this. For example, if you compare the information that they gave out surrounding, for example, the pregnancies of either Kate Middleton or Meghan Markle to princesses of the United Kingdom, the presentation of information was completely different. So Meghan Markle was always mocked in the media. She got very negative feedback just by just going about her life. For example, holding her bump while she was pregnant. She was mocked. She got very negative feedback. Also on generally their behavior, for example, when Kate Middleton and Prince William did not visit the Queen for a specific family occasion, it was very understandable. The Daily Mail said, of course, they have busy lives and the Queen understands this while when Meghan Markle and her husband did not visit the Queen on a special occasion, they get a lot of backlash. And this had huge consequences because the way the media presents us this information, of course, really impacts the judgment that the people have on these public figures. And for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the consequences were really big because they decided to step back as senior members of the royal family because they just couldn't handle it anymore. It was too bad. So the media has a lot of power in this regard by using spin framing, presenting information to us in a valenced way. So we now saw that the way information is presented to us, either by the order in which it's presented or in the way the story is sold to us, impacts us. And it's really, really hard to stay objective when information is presented. The only upside of all this is that while we know this now, this can be helpful. So you can be more on guard for, for example, the negativity bias, the order effect, and also be more on the lookouts when you experience spin framing in the media.