Chapter One: What Is Social Psychology

What Is Social Psychology?

• When the brain isn’t engaging in any active task, its default pattern of activity involves social thinking

• The social contexts in which we find ourselves can influence us profoundly

• Social Psychology: The scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context

• Walton: Conducted an experiment in which they told female engineering students that it was typical to go through periods of social stress - this intervention eliminated the large gender difference between GPAs

History of Social Psychology

The Birth and Infancy of Social Psychology: 1880s-1920s

• Norman Triplett: Published the first research article in social psych

• Max Ringlemann: Conducted social research in the 1880s

• William McDougall, Edward Ross, and Floyd Allport: Wrote the first three textbooks in social psychology

A Call to Action: 1930s-1950s

• Hitler had a great impact on the field

  • People became desperate for answers to social psychological questions

  • Many social psychologists living in europe fled to the us, establishing the field in the us

• 1936 Gordon Allport - Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

• Kurt Lewin: Fled to the US in the early 1930s

  • Interactionist Perspective: Behavior is a function of the interaction between the person and the environment

  • Advocated for social psychological theories to be applied to practical issues

Confidence and Crisis: 1960s- Mid 1970s

• Stanley Milgram’s research

• Social psych entered a period of expansion and enthusiasm

• Also a time of crisis and heated debate

  • Dominant research method: lab experiments

  • Critics said certain practices were unethical, theories were historically and culturally limited, and there was experimenter bias

An Era of Pluralism: Mid 1970s-2000s

• More rigorous ethical standards were instituted

• More practices to guard against bias

• More attention paid to possible cross-cultural difference

• Social Cognition: The study of how we perceive, remember, and interpret info about ourselves and others

Social Psychology Today

Integration of Emotion, Motivation, and Cognition

• In 1970s and 80s, dominant perspective was called “cold” bc it emphasized the role of cognition

• “Hot” perspective focused on emotion and motivation

• Hot vs cold = the conflict between wanting to be right and wanting to feel good about oneself

Genetic and Evolutionary Perspectives

• Behavioral genetics and social psych

  • Are political attitudes partially inherited?

  • What role do genes play in sexual orientation/identity?

• Evolutionary psych and social psych

  • To understand a social psych issue, we should ask how the underlying tendencies and reactions may have evolved from our natural-selection ancestors

Cultural Perspectives

• How people perceive their world is influenced by the beliefs, norms, and practices of the people and institutions around them

• Cross-cultural Research: Examine similarities and differences across a variety of cultures

  • Collectivist v Individualist cultures

• Multi-cultural Research: Examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures

Behavioral Economics, Political and Moral Issues, and Other Interdisciplinary Approaches

• Behavior economics focuses on how psychology relates to economic decision making

• Social psych, political science, philosophy, and neuroscience

  • Understanding the political divide

• Environmental studies, public health

  • How to get people to conserve energy, adopt healthier habits, and avoid skin cancer

The Social Brain and Body

• Social Neuroscience: The study of the relationship between neural and social processes

  • How playing violent video games can affect brain activity and subsequent acts of aggression

  • How different patterns of activity in parts of the brain relate to how people are likely to perceive themselves

• Embodied Cognition: Focuses on the close links between our minds and the positioning, experiences, and actions of our bodies

  • People’s perceptions and judgements reflect and can influence their bodily experiences

New Technologies and the Online World

• The social brain - made possible through advances in tech

• Today we can see images of the brain through noninvasive procedures

  • PET - Positron Emission Tomography: Imaging test that can help reveal the metabolic or biochemical function of your tissues and organs

  • ERP - Event-related Potential: Small voltages generated in the brain structures in response to specific events or stimuli

  • TMS - Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Noninvasive procedure that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to improve symptoms of depression

  • fMRI - Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining: Measures the small changes in blood flow that occur with brain activity

• Online communication

  • Facilitates research

  • Becoming a provocative topic of study