SocPsy Midterm

textbook chapters 1-3 and class material

What is Social Psychology?

The Systematic study of nature and the causes of human social behavuour (what people do and how they do it)

Key Themes

• Social Thinking

• Social Influences

• Social Relations

Social Thinking

• Construct our own social reality

• powerful social intuitions

Social Relations

• social behaviour is biological behaviour

• Relating to others is a basic need

Core Concerns

• Impact one individual has on another

• impact the Group has on an individual

• impact the individual members have on a group

• impact one group has on another

• the impact of social context and social structure on groups and individuals

Symbolic Interactionism

• Understanding the world as the product of the everyday interactions of people

• people act towards things based on the meaning those things have for them

SI Looking glass self

• imagine how we appear to others

• imagine the other persons reaction to our appearance

• respond with a feeling

group processes

• dependance on one another

• “us”

• rules, roles, power structure

Social exchange theory

• cost benefit ideology

• maintains relationships

Social structure and Personality

• relationships between groups of individuals

• ie social class, religion, family etc.

Cognitive Perspectives

• mental activities (memory)

• Cognitive processes (intervening factor btw external stimulation and behavioural responces)

Cognitive Concepts

• cognitive structure (cognitions are interrelated and affect behaviour)

• Schemas

Evolutionary Theory

Social behaviour is linked to our genes (Darwin)

Naturalistic Fallacy

what it is vs what ought to be??

hindsight bias

convincing oneself after an event that they accurately predicted it before It happend

what is empirical research?

The systematic investigation of observable andWh measurable phenomena in the world

why is empirical research important ?

• relies on objective evidence rather than personal opinions or assumptions.

• helps to validate theories, make informed decisions

• ensures accuracy, reliability, and credibility

Strength of surveys

cheap, private and clear

weakness of surveys

problems with self-report

what are surveys?

• self-report

• group info

• good for sensitive info

What are field studies?

• observation of everyday life in action

• unobtrusive

• participant observation

benefits of field studies

• real world benefits

• in-depth understanding

• private and sensitive matters

weaknesses of field studies

• concent

• time consuming

• how data is recorded

Ethnography

• non-participant observation

• moves beyond technical knowlledge

What is content analysis?

studying documents to identify themes and infer based on said themes (form of archival research)

benefit of content analysis

• cheep

• less of a time commitment

• socio-historic archives

weaknesses of content analysis

• level of control over quality of info

• difficulty creating reliable and valid study

• inconsistent or missing information in archives

experiment

• manipulating some factor to see effect on another

• high level of control

• indépendant variable must be manipulated

• participants must be randomly assigned

benefits of experiments

• high level of internal (lab) and external (field) validity

• more research control

weaknesses of experiments

• limits to what can be studies

• ethical concerns

• expensive

• subject and experimental effects

• low external validity

What are research ethics?

set of rules and regulations researchers must follow when preforming research

Why are ethics important?

• to protect participants

• must be volunteers

• have informed content

• avoid harm

• ensure confidentiality

ethical issue example

Stanford Prison experiment

• violation of harm principle (connected but not informed)

What is the self

sense of self as individuals and personal identity

I

• active self

• impulsive

• responce to me

Me

• passive self

• socialized self

Generalized other

conception of attitudes and expectations held in common by members of organized groups with whom they interact

Play stage

child imitating roles they see enacted by adults

Game stage

child taking on the roles of those around them, understanding these roles and anticipating actions and behaviours of others

Role Taking

process of imaginatively occupying the position of another person and viewing the self and the situation form the other persons perspective

the looking-glass self

• self as a social object

• perception based on the perception of others perceptions

• acquired through social relationships

spotlight effect

over estimating the extent to which others attention is aimed at us

illusion of transparency

overestimating others ability to be aware of our emotions

self and culture

• individualism - western cultures - independent self

• collectivism - eastern cultures- interdependent self

self-esteem

our sense of self worth

high self esteem result

better performance or narcissism or more positive outlook

low self esteem result

high levels of anxiety and loneliness, more problems in life

self-Efficacy

how competent we feel at a task

self-serving bias

seeing ourselves as better than average (diminishing failures and accepting credit for success)

What is Identity?

meanings attached to self by ones self and others

• role identity

• social identity

role identity

your job at work, mother, father

social identity

high school social cliques

multiple identities

we have many and some are more prominent

situated self

conception of who we are in relation to the people around us

identity silence / hierarchy

which identity is more prominent or frequent

self presentation

the process by which individuals attempt to control the impressions that other form of them in social interactions

authentic self presentation

the real you

ideal self presentation

how we want to be seen

tactical self presentation

more thought out and consistent with who you are associating with

frames

set of widely understood rules or conventions prating to a transient but receptive situating that indicates which roles should be enacted and which behaviours are proper (subjective)

impression management

conscious decision to contra information in an interaction and influence interactions

Goffman and Dramaturgy

frontstage - how we appear to others, want to be seen

backstage - how we really are, authentic self

Ingratiation Strategies

1. opinion confomity

2. other enhancement

3. supplication (of information)

4. selective self-presentation

aligning actions

results form an impression management fail

• how we neutralize this fail

  • use disclaimers (before) and accounts (after)

stigma and spoiled identities

• an attribute, behaviour, reputation or identity which is socially discrediting in some way

  • discredited (hard to conceal)

  • discreditable (not obvious needs an outing)

• Goffman

coping strategies for stigman and spoiled identities

• concealment

• remedy the stigma

• overly pleasant

social perception

constructing an understanding of the social world from the data we get through our sense.

the process by which we form impressions of other peoples traits and personalities

cognition

the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning

Rosenhan’s Experiment

• 8 grad students went through mental screening and got deemed ‘sane’ 

• Went into a psych hospital and said they ‘heard voices’  

• Acted normal once inside hospital 

• no one noticed they where sane

• attached with labels for future

Rosenhan’s experiment findings

• once you’ve been labels as something its hard to get rid of that label

• Changed the structure of mental hospitals as a whole 

• Staff used their surroundings and cognitive structure to understand these people as insane 

• The staff didn’t expect to meet researchers - they expected to meet mentally ill people 

priming

activating of an association (unconscious)

Automatic processing

ie schemas, emotional reactions

controlled processing

conscious effort, attention, and focus to complete a task or solve a problem

• deliberate and intentional thinking, .

overconfidence phenomenon

errors in memories

schemas

cognitive framework that helps us organize and interpret information

person schema

individualized, dependent on indiviual, for someone wh know, when the dont act according to our schema we know something is wrong

self schema

when we think about ourselves

group schema

• broad

• more sterotypes

• social groups

• negative or positive

role schemas

blueprint of a certain role (from own experiences)

event schemas (scripts)

idea of how we talk and engage bases on a situation

conformation bias

more eager to confirm our own beliefs and less eager to disprove them

Implicit Personality Theory

• The inference of concurrence of personality traits based on another personality trait 

• Infer the coexistence of additional personality traits based on one 

• Teachers who work with gifted children would assume that the student was also socially deficient 

• If children's grades aren't high, people assume that they’re bad kids 

why we use schemas

help us organize and understand and recall and process things

disadvantages of schemas

• more accepting of info that fits into current schemas

• fill in missing information that fit into pre-existing schemas

• reluctance to change schemes

the halo effect

• Tendency to infer a number of positive attributes based off of one 

• Often comes with attractiveness  

impression formation

• Process of creating a coherent picture of someone based on many sources of information 

• Overall opinion of a person 

Trait centrality

• Certain traits ranking high in our perception of a person, affecting our overall impression of them 

• Impacts other traits associated with a person 

• Impacts overall impression 

• Also impacts how we presence the other traits associated with the person 

self-fulfilling prophecy

• If someone labels us as something, we internalize those traits 

• When we act towards someone based on our impression of them and they reflect that impression back to us 

  • They react in ways that confirm our original impression

heuristics

• A mental short-cut that helps us choose that appropriate schema 

  • Availability 

    • Recently experienced  

• Representativeness 

  • Take a few characteristics and apply them to a particular category

attribution theory

• The process we use to infer the causes of someone’s behaviour 

• In doing so, we are able to act effectively in the situation and make inferences about their future actions or behaviour 

• We rely on our own common-sense understanding 

• Dispositional 

• Internal characteristics 

• Situational 

• Environmental factors 

fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overestimate the importance of personal (dispositional) factors and underestimate situational differences (environmental factors) 

focus of attention bias

focusing on certain aspects of the person or situation, we may ignore other influencing factors

actor-observer difference

The tendency to attribute our own behavior to external factors (acting as an actor), while attributing others' behavior to internal factors (observing them as an observer).

what is an attitude

a belief or feeling related to a person or event and a resulting behaviour tendency

• Affects (feelings)

• Behaviour

• Cognition (tendency)

can be implicit (subconscious) or explicit (conscious)

Cognition (component of attitude)

beliefs about attitudes (perception)

evaluations (component of attitude)

feelings about something

behavioural disposition (component of attitude )

response to our evaluations

affect-based attitude

hard to change with cognitive reasoning (i.e. irrational fear of spiders)

cognition-based attitude

towards environment (i.e. choosing to buy thrifted clothes for environmental purpose and not trends )

Instrumental Conditioning

source of attitude where a direct experience (+ or -) form the attitude