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
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