1. Introduction + Research Methods

Lecture 1–2 + Chapter 1

Social psychology

Scientific study of how social situations and people influence thoughts, feelings, and behavior

Power of the situation

Behavior can be strongly shaped by social context rather than personality alone

Construal

How an individual interprets a situation

Fundamental attribution error

Overweighting dispositions and underweighting situations when explaining others

Schema

Organized knowledge structure guiding perception and interpretation

Stereotype

Schema about a social group

Automatic processing

Fast relatively effortless processing without deliberate control

Controlled processing

Slow deliberate effortful processing

Theory of mind

Understanding that others have their own beliefs intentions and perspectives

Naturalistic fallacy

Assuming what is natural is therefore morally desirable

Independent self-construal

Defining oneself primarily through personal attributes and goals

Interdependent self-construal

Defining oneself through roles and relationships

WEIRD sample

Participants from Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic societies

Hypothesis

Testable prediction about a relationship

Theory

Organized explanation that generates predictions

Operationalization

Specific procedure for measuring or manipulating a construct

Independent variable

Variable manipulated or used to predict an outcome

Dependent variable

Measured outcome

Random assignment

Placing participants into conditions by chance to reduce confounding

Experimental design

Manipulates an IV to test causal effects on a DV

Correlational design

Measures association without manipulating variables, cannot by itself establish causation

Correlation coefficient

Statistic describing direction and strength of a relationship

Third-variable problem

An unmeasured factor could explain an observed association

Reverse causation

The apparent outcome might instead cause the apparent predictor

Confound

Factor that differs across conditions and offers alternative explanation

Internal validity

Confidence that the IV caused the observed DV effect

External validity

Extent findings generalize to other people settings or times

Construct validity

Whether a measure/manipulation captures the intended construct

Random sampling

Sampling population members by chance to improve representativeness

Demand characteristics

Cues that suggest expected participant behavior

Experimenter expectancy

Researcher expectations inadvertently influence participants or results

Double-blind procedure

Neither participant nor interacting researcher knows assignment

Attrition

Participants dropping out of a study

Experimental realism

How engaging and psychologically impactful the situation is

Mundane realism

How closely procedures resemble everyday life

Regression to the mean

Extreme measurements tend to be followed by less extreme measurements

Milgram obedience experiment

Authority can elicit harmful obedience in an experimental setting

Levels of analysis

Different explanatory levels for behavior such as biological psychological interpersonal and cultural factors

Research cycle

Develop a theory derive a testable hypothesis operationalize variables collect data draw conclusions and replicate

Operational definition

Specific measurable or manipulable version of an abstract construct

Self-report measure

Participants directly describe their own thoughts feelings attitudes or behavior

Behavioral observation

Researchers record observable actions rather than relying on participants reports

Physiological measure

Measure of bodily responses used to study psychological processes

Positive correlation

Higher values of one variable tend to accompany higher values of another

Negative correlation

Higher values of one variable tend to accompany lower values of another

Correlation does not imply causation

An association alone cannot establish which variable causes the other or rule out a third variable

Random assignment vs random sampling

Assignment places participants in conditions to reduce confounds, sampling selects people from a population to improve representativeness

Replication

Repeating a study to evaluate whether its findings are reliable