Social Psych. CH2

Social Psychology Notes: 

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Social Psychology

• Is the study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in a social context

• Involves affect (feelings), cognition (thoughts), and behavior

• Doesn’t refer to immediate social context

Themes of Social Psychology

1. The power of the situation

2. How individuals are influenced by their interpretation of social situations

• Predicting behavior is a function of the person and the situation

Connections with Social Psychology

• Social psychology is a “hub” discipline that connects both within and outside of psychology

• We can address questions that involve contrasting perspectives such as personality, clinical, and sociological perspectives

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Problems with looking to experts:

• People lie

• People are often wrong and overconfident 

Problems with figuring it out yourself: 

• Our perspective is limited 

• We fall victim to confirmation bias

• We might alter the phenomenon by observing it

The Theory-Hypothesis-Research Cycle:

• Question: What brings people together in romantic relationships 

• Theory: An explanation for how and why variables are related to each other 

• Hypothesis: A specific prediction that derives from the theory 

• Research: A process of making observations to test hypotheses 

↳ data support or fail to support hypotheses NOT prove or disprove 

Unethical Research Examples:

• Stanford Prison Experiment 

• Little Albert 

• Milgram Shocking

 Ethical Concerns:

• Harm to participants→ mental and physical 

• Deception (lying)

• Harms are balanced with benefit 

Unit 2: The Methods of Social Psychology

Questions to answer

• Is there a regional culture of honor in which people are more accepting of crimes that were committed to defend one’s honor

• What are the benefits of conducting a longitudinal study spanning decades

• A study took place to see if jobs were more open to hiring those who committed manslaughter as direct result to their honor being threatened

↳ fictional man hit other man with pipe as a consequence of him saying his partner slept with him and the man who died started the assault first

• Businesses in the south were more open to hiring this individual 

Hindsight Bias→ the tendency to believe after learning the outcome 

• Makes us believe that we knew the answer beforehand 

Question: Which of the following is true about the relationship between social psychology and our intuitions about human behavior?

Answer: Social psychological research can contradict our intuitions because we are not always consciously aware of the causes of our behavior.

Question: Zied was told that people tend to like things that are more familiar to them, as compared with things that are more novel. If Zied were exhibiting the hindsight bias, which of the following would be his response if he were then asked if he could have predicted this?

Answer: “I knew that people like familiar things more than novel things.”

Thought Experiment→ An experiment that can be described, but not actually performed

• Familiarity breeds liking

• When reminded of the inevitability of death, individuals look towards the values they hold dear

↳religion and patriotism towards their country

Hypothesis→ prediction about what will happen under certain conditions

• Tested by studies which examine predictions about what will happen in a certain setting→ artificial set up

EX: When people work hard to get something and it turns out to be disappointing, they will be motivated to find hidden benefits

• This example is supported by dissonance theory→ when two thoughts are inconsistent with one another, the individual will do substantial mental work to achieve cognitive consistency

Theory→ explanation for a phenomenon

• Theories lead to a greater understanding of natural phenomena 

• Are supported by empirical data 

EX: Bacterial adaptation to drugs is understood in terms of evolutionary theory

Observational Research: 

• Charles Darwin was the first to exhibit observational research when he went to the galapagos and observed the naturally occurring genetic patterns of finches 

↳ this led to his theory of evolution by natural selection 

Participant Observation→ involves observing phenomena at close range 

↳ an anthropologist living with a group of people for a long time to note what they do and come up with guesses and explanations 

Observational Research Methods:

• Archival research→ looking at evidence found in archives and databases to form theories etc

• Surveys→ asking people questions using interviews or questionnaires

↳ can use a variety of sample sizes 

• typically random in order to prevent bias

• Convenience sampling is not random and does not effectively extinguish bias from the data set making it unreliable

Correlational Research→ measuring two variables to see if there is a relationship between them

• Can look into the strength of the relationship between two variables 

• Are an experimenters best option when a study could be deemed too unethical to pursue

• Correlation is not causation

Experimental Research→ enables researchers to make inferences about why there is a relationship between two variables

Self Selection→ when an investigator has no control over any particular participant's level (EX: IQ, test score, etc.)

Longitudinal Studies→ involves collecting measures at different points in time from the same participants 

↳EX: investigator collects how many hours a teen plays video games each week, then once that teen reaches adulthood measure amount of criminal behavior that they participate in 

Natural Experiment→ events occur that the experimenter believes will have causal implications for some outcome 

Criteria for Sound Research

External Validity→ indication of how well the results of a study pertain to conditions outside of the laboratory

↳ When you are unable to generalize the results to real-life situations, you have poor external validity

• One of the best ways to ensure external validity is to conduct field experiments

• Field Study→ an experiment that involves collecting data outside of the laboratory usually with participants who are unaware of their role in a study

Internal Validity→ refers to the likelihood that only the manipulated variable produced the results found in the experiment

↳An experiment lacks internal validity when there is another variable that is unaccounted for could have caused the results found in the experiment

• Requires for the experimental set up to be realistic, so the participants don’t second guess the scenarios realisticness 

Reliability→ the degree to which a measure gives consistent results on repeated occasions or the degree to which two measuring instruments yield the same or similar results

• The degree of consistency when something is measured more than once

↳test-retest reliability→ do you get the same results when you take an IQ test twice

↳interrater reliability→ do two observers agree in how they rate the charisma of a world leader or the kindness of a classmate?

• Ability tests are expected to have a retest correlation of .8 or higher

• Interrater reliability is expected to have a correlation of .5 or higher

Measurement Validity→ correlation between the outcome and the outcome the measure is supposed to predict 

• The accuracy of which something is measured

↳EX: IQ test validity is measured by finding the correlation between grades in school/performance in jobs and the IQ test score 

Statistical Significance→ measure of the probability that an outcome occurred by chance alone

↳a finding achieves statistical significance when the probability of finding by that chance is less than 1 in 20 or .05

• Determined by:

1. The size of the difference between results obtained from participants in the experimental condition and the control condition of an experiment/ the strength of the relationship between the variables in a correlational study

2. The number of cases in which the finding is based

↳ the larger the difference or strength of the relationship and the number of cases, the greater the statistical significance

Replication→ involves the reproduction of research results by the original researcher or a replicator 

↳some results do not replicate, therefore they are not valid

Open Science→ ensures that the scientific research is sound and the reported results are likely to be replicated

Institutional Review Board→ a committee that examines research proposals and makes judgements about their ethical appropriateness 

↳An IRB includes at least one scientist, one non scientist, and one person who is not affiliated with the institution

Deception Research→  when researchers intentionally mislead participants about the purpose or procedures of a study

↳ raises ethical concerns

Basic Science→ the study of how the world works

↳ want to find out the phenomena in its own right rather than using another finding to solve the real world problem 

• 1 part

• Can give rise to theories that can lead to interventions or efforts to change certain behaviors 

Applied Science→ applying other scientific methods/findings in order to solve a problem or answer a question

• 2 parts