Introduction to Social Psychology: Methods and Paradigms

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core principles, historical studies, cognitive concepts, and research methodologies introduced in Lecture 1 of Social Psychology.

Social Psychology

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

Dispositions

Internal factors such as beliefs, values, personality traits, or abilities that guide a person's behaviour.

Evolutionary Psychology

A branch of psychology that investigates 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's Field of Forces

The concept that people move and behave in social situations as a function of the surrounding 'field of forces,' meaning the situation itself acts as a field of forces.

Milgram Experiment

A landmark obedience study where $65\%$ of participants administered the maximum shock level of $450\text{ volts}$ to an unresponsive learner when instructed to proceed by an authority figure, illustrating the power of the situation over personal dispositions.

Good Samaritan Study (Darley & Batson, 1973)

A study demonstrating the power of the situation in which seminary students told they were in a rush helped a person in distress far less often ($10\%$) than those told they had plenty of time ($63\%$), overriding their helpful religious dispositions.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overestimate the role of personality and underestimate the role of situational factors when explaining other people's behavior.

Channel Factors

Situational factors that appear small or insignificant but exert large influences on behavior by guiding actions in a specific direction.

Construal

The active interpretation and inferences made about a stimulus or social situation, which ultimately govern how people behave in that situation.

Wall Street Game vs. Community Game Study (Ross & Samuels, 1993)

An experiment showing that whether a game was called the 'Community Game' or the 'Wall Street Game' dramatically influenced cooperation levels, whereas participants' pre-identified competitive or cooperative personality traits did not predict cooperation.

Schema

A generalized cognitive structure of knowledge about the physical and social world, including expectations about how to behave in different situations.

Stereotype

A schema applied to a specific social group that can influence interactions with members of that group and make social interactions more efficient, though often incorrectly applied.

Automatic Processing

Cognitive processing that is involuntary, fast, and unconscious, often grounded in intuitive emotional responses.

Controlled Processing

Cognitive processing that is conscious, systematic, and deliberate, capable of overriding automatic reactions.

Independent View of Self

A conception of the self common in Western cultures as an autonomous, distinct entity separate from others and defined by unique personal attributes.

Interdependent View of Self

A conception of the self common in non-Western cultures as fundamentally connected to others and embedded within social groups, roles, and relationships.

Scientific Method

An approach to understanding the world involving systematic observation, measurement, experimentation, and formulation, guided by core values such as accuracy, objectivity, skepticism, and open-mindedness.

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to believe, after an outcome has occurred, that one could have accurately predicted or already knew the result.

Theory

A body of related propositions intended to describe, organize, and explain some aspect of the world.

Hypothesis

A testable prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances, typically structured in an if-then format to give theories practical value.

Operationalization

The process of translating abstract theoretical variables into observable, concrete, and measurable behaviours or operations.

Reliability

The degree to which a test or measurement consistently produces the same results when measuring the variable of interest.

Test-Retest Reliability

A measure of consistency determined by administering the exact same test to the same participants across repeated measurement occasions.

Internal Consistency Reliability

A measure of reliability that evaluates whether different items designed to measure the same construct yield consistent results.

Inter-Rater Reliability

The degree of agreement and consistency across different independent raters or observers scoring the same behavior.

Measurement Validity

The degree to which a test or instrument accurately measures the specific variable it was designed to measure.

Content Validity (Face Validity)

The extent to which an instrument adequately covers the entire range and components of the concept being measured.

Internal Validity

The confidence that changes in the dependent variable are specifically caused by the manipulation of the independent variable, rather than by uncontrolled confounding factors.

External Validity

The extent to which the experimental findings of a study can be generalized to real-life settings, other contexts, and other populations.

Naturalistic Observation

A field research technique where an investigator systematically observes and records measurements of people's ongoing behaviour in natural environments without intervening.

Structured Observation

A research technique where an experimenter cues specific behaviours of interest and observes participant responses in a controlled laboratory setting (e.g., Bandura's Bobo doll experiment).

Archival Analysis

An observational method in which researchers examine and code accumulated cultural documents, such as diaries, novels, magazines, and newspapers.

Survey Methods

Research techniques where a representative sample of people are asked structured questions about their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviours via interviews or questionnaires.

Experience Sampling

A type of survey method where participants systematically report their ongoing experiences, emotions, or thoughts at regular, specified time intervals in their natural daily routines.

Psychophysiological Methods

Techniques that assess the relationship between physiological indicators (e.g., heart rate, EEG, fMRI) and physical, cognitive, social, or emotional behaviour.

Correlational Methods

Research techniques where two or more variables are systematically measured to assess whether and how strongly one variable predicts another without establishing causation.

Correlation Coefficient

A statistical value (such as Pearson's $r$) that ranges from $-1.0$ to $+1.0$, indicating the strength and direction of the linear relationship between two variables.

Cross-Sectional Study

A correlational research design that examines and compares different naturally occurring cohorts or groups (such as different age groups) at a single point in time.

Longitudinal Study

A research design that tracks and tests the same group of individual participants repeatedly over an extended period to assess age-related changes.

Experimental Methods

Research designs in which participants are randomly assigned to different conditions that are held identical except for the manipulated independent variable, allowing researchers to make causal claims.

Random Assignment

The procedure whereby every participant has an equal chance of being placed in any condition of an experiment, distributing individual participant differences evenly across groups.

Independent Variable (IV)

The variable that an experimenter manipulates or alters to determine whether it produces a causal effect on an outcome.

Dependent Variable (DV)

The variable that a researcher observes and measures to assess whether it is affected by changes in the independent variable.

Mundane Realism

The degree to which the physical setting and procedures of an experiment resemble events and tasks encountered in everyday real-world life.

Psychological Realism (Experimental Realism)

The extent to which experimental situations, tasks, and psychological processes are meaningful, absorbing, and realistic to the participants involved.

Meta-Analysis

A statistical technique and structured literature review that pools and analyzes empirical quantitative data across multiple independent studies on related hypotheses.

Basic Research

Research conducted primarily to gain knowledge and theoretical understanding of a phenomenon for its own sake rather than for immediate application.

Applied Research

Research designed to apply existing empirical psychological understanding directly to solving practical real-world problems or creating social interventions.

Research Ethics Board (REB)

An institutional university committee that reviews and evaluates all proposed research protocols to ensure they meet strict ethical standards and protect human participants.

Informed Consent

The ethical standard requiring that participants be provided sufficient information about study procedures and potential risks to voluntarily choose whether to participate.

Deception (in Research)

The practice of misleading participants about the true hypotheses or purpose of an experiment to preserve psychological realism and avoid demand characteristics, requiring explicit justification and later debriefing.