social influence

Social psychology

studies the influence of our situations, how we view and affect one another. Scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to each other

major themes of social psychology

social thinking: beliefs.

• we construct our own social reality

• our soical intuitions are often powerful, somes dangerous/risky

social influence: culture, persuasion

• social influence shape behaviour

• dispositions shape behaviour

social relations: helping

• social behaviour is also biological behaviour

• relating to others is a basic need

psychological concepts are value judgements in these aspects

forming concepts (same set of responses, different labels)

labelling (terrorist/freedom fighter)

naturalistic fallacy (values when we move from objective statements to persecriptive statements of what ought to be)

hindsight bias

We often do not expect something to happen until it does, we then suddenly see clearly the forces that brought it about, and we feel unsurprised

Theory

integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Summarise and explain facts.

-          Effectively summarised many observations

-          Makes clear predictions, to:

o   Confirm or modify the theory

o   Generate new exploration

o   Suggest practical applications

Hypotheses

-          Allow us to test the theory

-          Give direction to research

-          Predictive feature can make them practical

Operationalisation

translate theoretical variables into specific observable variables

validity

does the measure test what it represents.

reliability

same result if repeated

4 potentially biasing influences of surveys

1. unrepresentative samples

2. the order and timing of the questions

3. the response options

4. the wording of the questions

Question to differentiate correlational and causal

can participants be randomly assigned to condition?

experimental realism

degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves the participants.

Mundane realism

degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations

Demand characteristics

cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behaviour is expected

good experiment should do this, ethically

-          Informed consent

-          Truth

-          Protect from harm

-          Confidentiality

-          Debrief participants

correlational research design advantage

often uses real-world settings

correlational research design disadvantage

causation often ambiguous

experimental research design advantage

can explore cause and effect by controlling variables and by random assignment

experimental research design disadvantage

some important variables cannot be studied with experiments