1) EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL PSYCH

What are some issues with social experiments?

• Lack ecological validity

• Use of confederates

What is ecological validity? Why is this an issue?

• Modelling social phenomena in a controlled lab environment

• Not always an accurate representation of normal contexts

Why is the use of confederates an issue with social experiments?

• Confederates are actors who play the role of someone in a study

• They aren’t always convincing!

• Use of online, virtual confederates seems more reliable than using in person confederates

What is a construct?

• An attempt to capture a pattern of behaviour

• Hard to capture due to vagueness

Give some examples of constructs

• Depression

• Racial prejudice

• Self-esteem

What is an operational definition?

• An attempt to identify a way to capture a construct

• Can be quantitative or qualitative

• Very in reliability

• e.g defining ‘intelligence’ as an IQ test score

What are 3 exceptions to an operational definition?

• Height

• Weight

• Age

What are explicit operationalisations?

• Conscious and deliberate

• Self-reported by the participant

• e.g survey

What are implicit operationalisations?

• Unconscious and automatic

• Gut reactions or impulsive decisions made by the participant

• e.g behavioural tasks, natural observation, facial expressions etc

What is a contemporary issue in social psychology?

Exploratory analyses

What are exploratory analyses?

• Attempt to find patterns in collected data

• With no prior hypotheses to guide analyses

What is HARKing?

Hypothesising After the Results are Known

Why is HARKing harmful?

• Questionable research practice

• Violates assumptions of the scientific method

• Findings may be type 1 error (false positive)

What is publication bias?

Tendency to favour publishing studies with significant results rather than those with non-significant or null results

What are examples of other questionable research practices?

• ‘Cherry picking’ data that supports the hypotheses or omitting data points (selective reporting)

• Mining data for statistically significant associations (p-hacking)

• Fabricating data

What is the Open Science Framework (OSF)?

• Launched in 2012

• Allows for preregistration, uploading materials, and data sharing

What is preregistration?

Publicly documenting your research plan (hypotheses, methods, analysis steps) in a online registry before collecting or analysing data

Who is Brian Nosek?

• Leader in implicit measurement and biases

• Co-founded the OSF

• Leads several replication efforts

What is a multi-lab replication?

• The same experiment, using the same pre-registered protocol, is run simultaneously in many different labs/groups of researchers

• Data from all labs is pooled

Why is biology important in social psychology?

• Spontaneity of responses

  • Allows for greater construct validity

  • Resistance to social desirability

What are the 2 major systems in the body?

• Central nervous system (brain, spina cord)

• Peripheral nervous system (heart, blood vessels)

Describe the neurovisceral integration model (Thayer & Lane, 2009)

• Interconnectedness and influences among systems

• Thought processes, the brain, the heart (each impact the other)

What is emotion regulation (thought processes) mediated by?

Activation of the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala

What is heart rate variability (HRV)?

• Minor fluctuations between heartbeats

• Reflects ‘tug-of-war’ between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system

What is sympathetic nervous system responsible for?

Fight/flight

What is parasympathetic nervous system responsible for?

Rest/digest

What does a higher resting HRV indicate?

• Higher HRV means more fluctuations

• Better emotional regulation