Methods and Paradigms (1)

what is social psychology

scientific study of the way in which peoples thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

principles of contemporary social psych

• The power of the situation

• The importance of cognition and construal

• The power of the person

• The importance of biological processes

• The applicability of social psychological principles

• The scientific method

social psychology

• The role of the situation/social influence

  • Avoids the Fundamental Attribution Error

• Psychological process shared by most people that make them susceptible to social influence

• Experimental methods are often used

personality psychology

• individual differences

• private, internal funtioning

• correlational methods are often employed

dispositions

internal factors such as beliefs, values, personality traits or abilities that guide a person’s behaviour

peoples temple in jonestown 1978

• 900+ ppl mass suicide

• situational forces: isolation group pressure fear and obedience to authority

• dispositional forces: beleif in jones vision and loyalty to the group

evolutionary psychology

A relatively new branch of psychology that seeks to investigate the potential role of genetic factors in various aspects of human behaviour

social neuroscience

an integration of biological and social perspectives that explores the neural and physiological bases of social and emotional behaviour

kurt lewin

the situation = field of forces

nazi germany forces

Obedience to authority

Fear of punishment

Group norms

Sense of duty

milgram study

65% continued to shock despite severe harm

power of the situation

samaritans study

• less likely to help when in a hurry

• power of the situation

fundamental attribution error

• i assume is a bitch because she cut me off, not that shes rushing to the hostpita

• Tendency to overestimate the role of personality and to underestimate the role of situations when explaining other people’s behavior

channel factors

Small situational factors can have large influences on behavior by guiding behavior in a particular direction

construal

Interpretation and inferences made about a stimulus or situation

• bro its a fucking guess why do we need to give it a fancy name

can govern behavior

• How we interpret a situation will influence how we act in that situation

  • People are more likely to cooperate in a study carried out by trustworthy scientists

ross and samuel 1993

wall street vs community

more aggressive w wall street game cuz name

schemas

how u organize content in your mind (stereotypes )

stereotypes

duh

automatic v controlled processing

automatic is involuntary and uncounsioc

controlled in conscious and deliberate and can ovverride auto

hindsight bias

after we know the outcome

operationalization

translate theoretical variables into obseravlen an measubale behaiviors

test test reliability

same test twice, repeated measurments

internal consistency reliability

same across items

inter rater reliability

same across raters

content (face) reliability

does the test represents all faces of a given construct (all aspects)

criterion validity

predictive: effectiveness of a measure in predicting an outcome based on other variables

Concurrent: the tests ability to distinguish between groups that it should theoretically be able to distinguish between

experimental validitiy

internal: is the change in dependent acc cuz the manipulation of the indepentednd

external:the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations/people. (higher means more generalizable)

construct validity

confirms that the test actually measures what its supposed to, not other vafriables