History and Crises of Social Psychology Notes

History and Crises of Social Psychology

Introduction

• Acknowledgment of traditional owners of the land.
• Brief recap of the previous week's lecture on the definition of social and community psychology.
• Social psychology is the scientific attempt to explain how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by living in a society.
• Discussion of social connection and the interaction between environmental and positional characteristics.
• Distinction between collectivistic and individualistic perspectives and between first and second order change.
• An overview of the topics to be covered this week: history, crises (replication crisis), and early theory (social facilitation and social inhibition).
• The history section will primarily take a Western perspective, while acknowledging the existence and importance of social psychology in other cultures.
• The importance of recognizing that social and community psychologies are embedded in society, reflecting events in world history.
• Reminder to take notes and think critically about the ethical implications and real-world applications of the theories and experiments discussed.

Development of Social Psychology

• Before the formal history of psychology, diverse civilizations explored human behavior through philosophy, art, and religion.
• Examples include Indian theories of social character and moral action, Egyptian philosophies, and Chinese Confucianism focusing on moral codes.
• Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle emphasized society's role in shaping individuals.
• Comte questioned how individuals are both the cause and consequence of society.
• The formal beginning of psychology is marked by Wilhelm Wundt's establishment of the first psychology lab in 1879.
• Wundt, credited as the father of modern psychology, initially studied human consciousness.
• Wundt viewed psychology as both a natural and social science.
• Norman Triplett is often credited with conducting the first social psychology studies, leading to the concept of social facilitation.
• Controversy exists regarding whether Triplett's experiment was truly the first in social psychology.
• Collectivist work was also done by John Dewey, who focused on shaping societies to fit the people in them.
• The first social psychology textbooks were published around 1908 by McDougall and Ross.
• Floyd Allport is considered the father of experimental social psychology.
• Growing concerns arose regarding psychologists' focus on individuals as the source of social problems, neglecting societal conditions.
• This concern became more prevalent during the Great Depression, leading to collectivistic thinking about social support and community ties.
• The Great Depression was seen as a cause for racial prejudice, antisemitism, and world tensions.
• Sumner highlighted the use of intelligence tests to demonstrate the inferiority of African Americans.
• Sumner argued for considering socioeconomic structures, and historical intergroup relationships to explain the intelligence differences between racial groups.

Social Psychology in the Mid-20th Century

• Inspired by World War II, social psychology focused on understanding atrocities, conformity, obedience, and aggression.
• Experiments were conducted in laboratories to observe behavior under controlled conditions.
• Leon Festinger refined the experimental approach to studying behavior and stressed the need to measure variables and deceive participants if needed.
• Psychology was influenced by Skinner and behaviorism, emphasizing preconditioned behaviors and mental states.
• The cognitive revolution challenged behaviorism by highlighting the ability of people to think.
• Kurt Lewin emphasized that individuals perceive the world through their own biases, motives, and personal situations.
• Subjective experiences are more critical than objective experiences.
• Lewin popularized the interactionist perspective, which views behavior as a function of the interaction between the person and the environment.
• Lewin advocated for practical applications of social psychological research, such as supporting the war effort and resisting propaganda.

Shift Away from Collectivism

• Psychologists shifted away from collectivism and addressing the needs of oppressed groups, reacting to the needs of powerful groups.
• This shift has been attributed to anticommunist sentiments, which led to some social psychologists being labeled as communists.

Confidence and Crisis in Social Psychology

• The 1960s-70s marked a period of great confidence in social psychology, with famous studies like Milgram's obedience experiments and Zimbardo's prison simulation.
• A major crisis emerged as researchers questioned the real-world applicability of laboratory findings.
• Efforts were made to make research more applied by advising governments, military, and law enforcement on shaping human behavior.
• Political questioning arose regarding whom psychology should serve, those in power or those facing inequalities.
• Ethical concerns about the treatment of participants arose due to the distress caused in some experiments.

Strengthening Social Psychology

• From the mid-1970s onward, social psychology was strengthened through pluralism, methodological diversity (correlational research, field studies), and diverse participant recruitment.
• Psychologists realized the limitations of studying primarily white, college-aged men.
• Researchers from different countries found that many theories didn't apply in their contexts, leading to the indigenization of social psychology.
• The development of new ethical standards, including informed consent, and an emphasis on social cognition and thought processes.
• A liberation movement within social psychology aimed to reorient the field toward serving the needs of oppressed groups.
• Social psychologists adopted a more collectivist perspective, focusing on creating societies that benefit the masses.

Social Facilitation

• Social facilitation concerns how the presence of others influences individual behavior, specifically in terms of performance changes.
• Norman Triplett's observation of cyclists revealed different speeds in unpaced, paced, and paced competition races.
• Average:times:per:mile:for:unpaced:race = 2:minutes:and:30:seconds
• Average:times:per:mile:for:paced:race = 1:minutes:and:55:seconds
• Average:times:per:mile:for:paced:competition:race = 1:minutes:and:50:seconds
• Triplett proposed theories like suction theory, shelter theory, hypnotic suggestion, encouragement theory, brain worry theory, automatic theory, and dynamogenic factors.
• Triplett's experiment with children reeling in a fishing line showed mixed results, leading to the conclusion that the presence of other people arouses competitive instinct (dinomogenic factors).
• Floyd Allport termed this effect social facilitation, the tendency for the presence of others to enhance performance.
• Triplett's focus was competition, while Allport's involved other people being present.
• Animal performance also improves when other animals are around.

Social Inhibition

• Pesson's study in 1933 showed that participants made more errors when someone was watching them compared to when they were alone.
• This is the opposite of social facilitation, where other people's presence inhibits performance.
• Robert Zajonc proposed drive theory in 1965 to explain when the presence of others facilitates or inhibits performance.
• Drive theory: The presence of others causes physiological arousal, enhancing performance on habitual or easy tasks but impairing performance on difficult tasks.

Drive Theory

• Drive theory proposes the presence of others increases physiological arousal, which facilitates performance of dominant responses (easy tasks) but hinders non-dominant responses (difficult tasks).
• Going back to Triplett's fishing reel experiment, when children had to reel a fishing line, the arousal that competition provoked overstimulated them to the point where they couldn't do the task at all
• Michaels and colleagues found that novice pool players performed worse when watched, while expert players performed better.
• This research continues to be explored, with refinements and moderating/mediating factors being investigated.
• Critiques of drive theory: the lack of objective criteria for task difficulty and the small amount of variance accounted for by the presence of others.
• Alternative theory: individual differences (personality) influence whether social facilitation or social inhibition is observed.

Alternative Social Orientation

• Usual proposed that personality influences social facilitation or inhibition.
• Individuals who are self-assured in social situations will perform better in the presence of other people, whereas individuals who are apprehensive in social situations will perform worse in the presence of other people compared to when each individual is alone.
• Usual argued that people with a positive orientation (extroverted personality, high self-esteem) exhibit social facilitation, while those with a negative orientation (neurotic personality, social anxiety, low self-esteem) exhibit social inhibition.
• Meta-analysis supported this hypothesis, showing that participants with a negative orientation tended to exhibit social inhibition, regardless of task difficulty, and vice versa.

Re-examination of Triplett's Study

• Strobe (2005) re-examined Triplett's original study and found no statistically significant differences between alone and competition conditions.
• This raises concerns about the validity of early claims in social psychology.

Replication and Reproducibility Crisis

• For decades, scientists have warned about practices that make results seem statistically meaningful when they are not.
• Ioannidis (2005) highlighted practices that make published results unreliable in his paper, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False."
• Bem (2010) published controversial research suggesting the existence of ESP.
• The Open Science Collaboration (2015) found that a small percentage of psychological experiments could be replicated.
• Replication is essential to protect against false positives and increase confidence in results.
• Two types of replication: exact (direct) and conceptual.
• Exact replications determine if original findings are true under the same test conditions.
• Conceptual replications confirm whether the theoretical idea behind the findings is true.
• The Open Science Collaboration (2015) replicated 100 psychological studies published in 2008.
• Only 25% of social psychology studies replicated, compared to 50% of cognitive psychology studies.
• Effect sizes of original studies tended to be larger than those of the replication studies.

Case Study: Priming

• Priming: exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus without conscious guidance or intention.
• Example: exposure to words related to stereotypes about the elderly slows walking speed.
• Dramatization of a research study about the effects of words related to elderly and youth on participant's walking speeds. The experiment seemed to show that just a few words could have a direct influence on how we behave.
• Another study showed that holding a hot pack made participants more likely to choose a gift for their friend because it activates concepts of interpersonal warmth.
• A group of researchers attempted to replicate that last experiment with the hot pack but found no significant difference between the conditions.
• The original study found holding a hot pack decreased acting selfishly, while the replications had a tendency to go in the opposite direction with the hot packs increasing selfishness.

Reasons for Unsuccessful Replication

• Falsified data, where authors make up studies or tamper with results.
• Small sample sizes, which may lead to chance findings not representative of the larger population.
• Findings may be true for some people or circumstances but not universal or enduring.
• Scientist error in replication studies or insufficient statistical power to find significant results.
• In BEM's ESP studies, he suggested the failure of replication attempts was due to the fact that the researchers used an online sample and the word based stimuli they used wasn't as conducive to ESP as the pornographic material he used in some of his studies.

Questionable Research Practices

• Researchers can make statistical and methodological decisions that influence whether results will be significant.
• Bem used liberal statistical analyses, which were more likely to find significant results confirming his hypotheses.
• Wagenmaker and colleagues reanalyzed BEM's data using Bayesian statistical techniques and found only weak evidence in favor of the existence of ESP.

Addressing the Crisis

• Researchers are now aware of the replication crisis and can attempt to address it.
• There has to be a critical approach to theories and research studies, without the assumption that everything read is incorrect.
• It is unknown how bad the problem is. While The Open Science Collaboration Project suggested that only 25% of the social psychological studies they directly replicated could be replicated, that is not representative of all studies in social psychology.
• It's possible that theories and research presented in lectures and tutorials may be found to be nonreplicable.
• Researchers are aware of this issue, and there are attempts to address it.

Conclusion

• The lecture covered a brief history of social psychology, tracing trends and experimentation between individualistic and collectivistic perspectives.
• Social facilitation, social inhibition, drive theory, and an alternative orientation were discussed.
• The importance of replications and the concerns of nonreplication were described.
• Conceptual and direct replications were defined with examples of social psychological experiments that have not replicated.
• The possible reasons for failed replication attempts has also been discussed.