Week 1.0 - Social Psychology – Exam Notes

Definition

  • Allport (1935): Social psychology is the scientific investigation of how an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others.

Neighbouring Disciplines

  • Cognitive, individual, and social psychology interact with:

    • Social anthropology, sociology

    • Socio-linguistics & language/communication studies

  • Key shared foci: norms\text{norms}, social cognition, psychology of language

Social Psychology vs. Common Sense

  • Common sense relies on isolated observations; conclusions are not systematically tested.

  • Social psychology employs the scientific method:

    • Hypothesis → empirical test → replication or reformulation

    • Example clichés that fail empirically: “large rewards increase liking,” “opposites attract.”

Early Empirical Work

  • Triplett (1898): Social facilitation—people reel fishing lines faster in competition.

    • Strube (2005) re-analysis: findings mixed; highlights need for replication.

Producing Reliable Findings

  • Reproducibility: identical methods/analysis can be duplicated.

  • Replicability: similar results re-appear with:

    • close / exact replications\text{close / exact replications}

    • conceptual replications\text{conceptual replications}

  • Open science practices:

    • Pre-registration of hypotheses/design

    • Shared data/materials

    • Careful control of confounds

Reductionism & Levels of Explanation

  • Complex behaviour analysed from multiple nested levels:

    • Groups → interpersonal processes → intrapersonal cognition → neural → cellular → molecular → physics

  • Each level yields valid yet partial explanations; integration is essential (blind-men-and-elephant fable).

Historical Context – Violent Social Movements

  • 18th–19th C: Crowd psychology (Le Bon) & “Völkerpsychologie”

  • 1940s: Holocaust research

    • Conformity & compliance: Asch, Sherif

    • Authoritarian personality: Adorno et al.

  • 1960s: Milgram—power of the situation

  • 2000s: Xenophobia/right-wing resurgence

    • Right-wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer)

    • Modern racism (Kinder), moral exclusion (Opotow)

    • Social identity theory (Tajfel)

    • Language as social force; neuro-cognitive approaches

Contemporary & Future Directions

  • Mental-health literacy, loneliness, social support

  • Responses to pandemics (e.g., COVID-19) & natural disasters

  • Identity, inclusion, online/social-media behaviour, social comparison

  • Topic selection itself is socially determined