Social Psychology Week 1

Intro + Self-concept

Violent Extremism

LT assumption driven by MI HOWEVER no differences in rates of MI and psychopathology has little explanatory role. Cinical sci doesn’t explain how ‘normal’ people can engage in destructive behaviour and how to remedy these. INSTEAD various individual and social factors driving VE

Core Tennet of Social psych

Social psych takes an interactionist perspective (person x situation)

Social Psychology

study of how individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviour are influenced by real/imagined presence of others. Relies on scientific method

The individual: ABCs of social psych

Affect, Behaviour, Cognitions

Social context

influence may be due to real/imagined presence of others - behaviour influenced by considerations of others’ opinion, emotions experienced thinking about various events/people

Present social psych

Interest in distinguishing automatic vs controlled processes and understanding dynamic.

Bio and evolutionary perspective: social neurosci, behavioural genetics, evolutionary psych.

Multicutural/cross-cultural research. Fake dichotomy of basic and applied - often see effects LT

Why study social psych?

Becoming an informed global citizen, understanding more about self and helping in various domains of everyday life, prevent negative outcomes from occurring in society

Self-concept

Sum total of beliefs about self. Made up of self-schemas: beliefs about oneself that guide processing of self-relevant info. People self-schematic on important dimensions (espec. when extreme and opposite is untrue)

Source 1: Introspection

Self knowledge through looking inward at own thoughts/feelings. BUT do this less than we think, can lead us astray, can be limited in what it tells us, relies on conscious thought

Wilson & Schooter, 1991 Jam Study

Participants tried different jams. ½ listed reasons before rating, ½ gut reaction. Compared ratings with expert’s. Findings: those with reasons agreed less with experts

Wilson & Kraft, 1993 Students in relationships study

½ reasons why going the way it was, ½ wrote about unrelated topic. Finding: reasons more likely change minds about how they felt about the relationship

Reason Generated Attitude change

reasons that come to mind can differ from our “gut” feelings BUT we assume reasons reflect feeling even if don’t

Affective Forecasting

Overestimate strength/duration of emotional reaction. Mechanism: lack recognition of psychological coping + overlook effects of other life experiences

Source 2: Influence of social context

Identify with what makes us unique in a given situation. Roles we play influences self-concepts. Success/failures

Source 3: Influence of other people - Social comparison theory

Process for evaluating self through comparisons with others - most often used when uncertain about our self-evaluation + compare ourselves with similar others

Upward and Downward Social comparison

Upward: compare with better to determine excellence. SM - upward comparison - present ‘best selves’: seems others are doing better than us → unhappy. Downward: compare with worse to protect self/maintain self-esteem.

Source 4: Perceptions of our own behaviour: Self-perception theory

When internal cues are difficult to interpret, people use own behaviour to gain insight BUT only in absence of compelling situational pressures/strong pre-existing thoughts/feelings about something

Self-perceptions of motivation

Intrinsic - within a person. Extrinsic - outside person. Large reward/fearsome penalty decreases intrinsic motivation by leading to external attributions. Absence of external explanations, behaviour attributed internally

Overjustification effect

Tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with reward/other extrinsic factors. Study: no reward, unexpected reward - do it longest (think we like it), expected reward - do it for least time

Should rewards NOT be offered?

Not necessarily: rewards good when unexpected/bonus, praise better when offered for effort not ability, rewards better for good performance rather than conditional for fulfilling task alone

Self-esteem

affective evaluation of our self-concept