Social Psychology CCC Dual Enrollment Quiz 1

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people.

How does one person influence/feel about a setting. It is everywhere, on the news, social media, and daily life

Social Psychologists

study why we are often helpful to other people, and why we may at other times be unfriendly or aggressive.

Study both thecbenefits of having good relationships with other people and the costs of being lonely.

Study what factors lead people to purchase one product rather than another, how men and women behave differently in social settings, how juries work together to make important group decisions, and what makes some people more likely to recycle and engage in other environmentally friendly behaviors than others.

Study more unusual events, such as how someone might choose to risk their life to save that of a complete stranger.

History

The science of social psychology began when scientists first started to systematically and formally measure the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of human beings (Kruglanski & Stroebe, 2011). The earliest social psychology experiments on group behavior were conducted before 1900 (Triplett, 1898), and the first social psychology textbooks were published in 1908.

Around for a very long time, humans are social in nature, lived in groups, share everything, which Is whey we have an advantage then most animals

Kurt Lewin

“the father of social psychology” because he initially developed many of the important ideas of the discipline, including a focus on the dynamic interactions among people. (1940-50)

Leon Festinger

In 1954, he edited an influential book called Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, in which he and other social psychologists stressed the need to measure variables and to use laboratory experiments to systematically test research hypotheses about social behavior. He also noted that it might be necessary in these experiments to deceive the participants about the true nature of the research

worked with cognitive dissonance and studied group dynamics

World War 2

Social psychology was energized by researchers who attempted to understand how the German dictator Adolf Hitler could have produced such extreme obedience and horrendous behaviors in his followers during the World War II. The studies on conformity conducted by Muzafir Sherif (1936) and Solomon Asch (1952), as well as those on obedience by Stanley Milgram (1974), showed the importance of conformity pressures in social groups and how people in authority could create obedience, extent of leading people to cause severe harm to others. (1930-40s)

Stanford Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo, in his well-known “prison-study” (1973), found that the interactions of male college students who were recruited to play the roles of guards and prisoners in a simulated prison became so violent that the study had to be terminated early.

Zimbardo was interested In social roles, pretended to study prison, random assignment to guards/priosners, act like their roles, guards tortured prisoners

Studies about obedience/behavior

People go out and act they know is wring, but follow obedience (Stanley Milgram) Bendural gives lessons on social learning, uses science to study human nature. Behavior is obersvable, because you cannot directly see the human mind, some psychologists challenged this. (the doll experiment where kids observe adults hit dolls, the kids do the same)

bendural states that we learn by observing other people

20th century

In recent years insights from social psychology have even been used to design anti-violence programs in societies that have experienced genocide.

Saw an expansion of social psychology into the field of attitudes, with a particular emphasis on cognitive processes. During this time, social psychologists developed the first formal models of persuasion, with the goal of understanding how advertisers and other people could present their messages to make them most effective. These approaches to attitudes focused on the cognitive processes that people use when evaluating messages and on the relationship between attitudes and behavior. Leon Festinger’s important cognitive dissonance theory was developed during this time and became a model for later research

1970s-1980s

Social psychology became even more cognitive in orientation as social psychologists used advances in cognitive psychology, which were themselves based largely on advances in computer technology, to inform the field. The focus of these researchers, including Alice Eagly, Susan Fiske, E. Tory Higgins, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross, Shelley Taylor, and many others, was on social cognition, an understanding of how our knowledge about our social worlds develops through experience and the influence of these knowledge structures on memory,information processing, attitudes, and judgment.

Furthermore, the extent to which humans’ decision making could be flawed due to both cognitive and motivational processes was documented

21st Century

In the 21st century, the field of social psychology has been expanding into still other areas. Examples that we consider in this book include an interest in how social situations influence our health and happiness, the important roles of evolutionary experiences and cultures on our behavior, and the field of social neuroscience: the study of how our social behavior both influences and is influenced by the activities of our brain.

Social psychologists continue to seek new ways to measure and understand social behavior, and the field continues to evolve. We cannot predict where social psychology will be directed in the future, but we have no doubt that it will still be alive and vibrant.

Cognitive Psychology

thoughts, process, and how people think/percive/memory. interested in how other people are affected by memory (in relation to people), and perceptions and beliefs about people. the scientific study of internal mental processes like attention, memory, perception, and problem-solving.

Sociology

social structures, interested in people/group levels of people, their focus is in the individual (how does it impact/change them), focuses on the individual.

the scientific study of human society, social behavior, and the patterns of relationships within groups and institutions. How people act and communicate with each other in everyday life, from small groups to global networks.

Personality Psychology

the scientific study of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make each person unique. Similar to social psychology

They focus on the individual, but the difference is how the behavior is explained.

Personality Psychology: emphasis on internal attributes and differences between individuals

Social Psychology: emphasis on what people have in common and general rules

First experiment and first textbook

Triplett (1898) – social facilitation /inhibition

William McDougall(1908) - first book

The social animal

We are social animals with evolutionary adaptions, with the ABCs (Affect, behavior, cognition)

The power of the situation

the power of the situation affects a person

situationism vs dispositionism

Situationism: the theory that human behavior is determined by the immediate environment and social context rather than internal personality traits

Dispositionism: the view that human behavior is caused by internal, personal factors like personality traits, beliefs, and temperament, rather than external situations

Phylogeny (How are we social animals?)

humans have lived and evolved in groups throughout ever since humans have been…born

Ontogeny (How are we social animals?)

from the candle to the grave, we are always surrounded by humans, humans are born and depend on people, we learn everything which is how we survived, by other people

Behavior (How are we social animals?)

most behavior is social in nature, following norms and such

Evolutionary adaption

The assumption that human nature, including much of our social behavior, is determined largely by our evolutionary past, established to live in group, we always depend on other people.

Social behaviors are heritable (studies how genetic differences between people account for variations in social behavior, attitudes, and interpersonal traits), There is variation in social behaviors, and Some social behaviors confer better fitness.

Self vs other concern

evolutional provided us to protect and enhance the self and those close to us

self: the fundamental motivation to protect, enhance, and prioritize one's own personal interests, well-being, and desires, such as kin selection and groups that we are apart of

Other: motivational orientation and desire to increase another person's welfare, because of the development of feelings like empathy we got from evolution

Social influence

Social environment creates social influence

the process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors,

and through which we change theirs.

Social Influence creates social norms (typical ways of behaving), and different cultures have different norms

Affect, Behavior, Cognition (ABCs)

feelings, how people act, and how people think

Social Cognition (C)

thoughts, is cognition that relates to social activities, how we perceive, interpret, remember, and use information about themes of other people

Social Affect (A)

Mood is the positive or negative feeling in background of everyday life

Emotions are brief, often intense, mental and physiological state to something in an environment

Social Exchange (B)

human exchange goods, services etc, the exchange of emotional support, human activities, and other social outcomes, how humans act, behavior.

reciprocal altruism

Adaptations for providing benefits to non-relatives can evolve as long as the delivery of benefits is reciprocated at some point in the future. An evolutionary biology and psychology concept where an individual helps a non-related person or organism with the expectation of receiving a similar favor in the future