SOCPSY - 1 INTRODUCING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social psychology

Science that studies the influences of our situation with how we view and affect one another.

• Social thinking

• Social influence

• Social relations

Three pillars of social psychology

Evolutionary psychologists

Stated that our inherited human nature predisposes us to behave in ways that helped our ancestors reproduce and survive.

Social neuroscience

Interdisciplinary field that explores the neural bases of social and emotional processes and behaviors and how these things affect our brain and biology.

Culture

Enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and handed down generation to generation.

Social representations

A society’s wide held ideas and values including assumptions and ideology that help us make sense of our world.

Defining the good life

Values influence our ideas of how best to live, like Maslow being guided by his own values.

Professional advice

Psychological advice reflects the advice giver’s personal values.

Forming concepts

Hidden values seep into psychology’s research-based concepts and cultural definitions of mental health.

Labeling

Value judgements are often hidden within our social psychological language.

Hindsight bias

“I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon,” error in judging the future’s foreseeability and in remembering the past events.

Theory

An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Ideas that summarize and explain facts.

Hypothesis

Theories also imply testable prediction/s called _______________.

Correlation

Asking whether two or more factors are naturally associated.

Experimental

Manipulating some factor to see its affect on another.

Status-longevity question

Illustrates the most irresistible thinking error made by social psychologist.

Coefficient

The degree of relationship between two factors.

Advanced correlational research

Can suggest cause-effect relations.

Time-lagged techniques

Reveal the sequence of events.

Statistical techniques

Can also give researchers the influence of third variables.

Random sample

Obtaining a representative group, one in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion.

• Unrepresentative sample

• Order of questions

• Response options

• Wording of questionss

Potentially biasing influences (4)

Unrepresentative samples

The importance that the sample represents the population under study matters greatly for accuracy of results.

Wording of questions

Survey wording is a delicate matter, subtle changes in the tone of a question can have marked effects on the results.

Random assignment

The great equalizer; eliminates all extraneous factors and creates equivalent groups.

Control

Manipulating variables

Independent variables

By varying just one or two factors at a time, we can pinpoint their influence.

Logic of experimentation

By creating and controlling a miniature of reality, we can vary one factor and then another and discover how those factors, separately or combines, affect people.

Replication studies

Repeating a research study, often with different participants in different settings to determine if the finding could be reproduced.

Mundane realism

Laboratory need not to be like everyday behavior which is mundane or unimportant.

Experimental realism

It should engage the participants to psychological processes.

Demand characteristics

Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected.

Informed consent

Ethical principle requiring the research participant be told enough to enable them to choose whether to decide to continue or back out.

Debriefing

Post experimental explanation of the study to the participants. It usually discloses deception and often queries participants of their understanding and feelings.