Answer to Question 1
Answer: Automatic thinking is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and relatively effortless. Two major forms of automatic thinking are schemas and heuristics. Schemas are mental structures that people use to organize their knowledge about the social world. They are often activated without awareness and without intent. When we cannot immediately process information with an existing schema, we use heuristics, or mental shortcut strategies, to solve problems and to determine which schema is most applicable. Heuristics, too, are often used automatically, unconsciously, and unintentionally.
Answer to Question 2
Answer: Not only do people fail to revise their inaccurate schemas in response to disconfirming information; people sometimes use their erroneous schemas to guide their own behaviors. Their schema-generated behaviors, in turn, cause other people to behave in ways that support their initially incorrect schemas. (Note: Students provide their own example; they should identify both an incorrect schema and the ways in which perceivers' behaviors change the behaviors of others.)
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