Past, Present & Future- Week 1

"Understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others" (Allport, 1954)

  • Links ordinary people’s cognitions, affective states and behaviour to their social world

  • Don’t have to be around others

  • Process-oriented approach: we want to know what people do and when, also why they do it, causation

Have ability to influence others:

  • Social perception

  • Social influence

  • Intergroup relations

  • Self-presentation

  • Interpersonal attraction

  • Attitude and behaviour change

  • Group decision making

Levels of explanation/analysis in social psychology

  • Individual psychology

  • Immediate social context

  • Broader society

- Embedded within one another, not individual

Levels- types of theories in social psychology

Why do people help others?

  • Because of something about individual people (personality)

  • Because of what others are doing (the social context)

  • Because of society

Origins of social psychology

Idea of studying social processes in a scientific manner emerged in the mid-19th century

Floyd H. Allport (1890-1978)- 1922 Associate Professor in social psychology at UNC, Chapel Hill

  • Social psychology “is part of the psychology of the individual, whose behavior it studies in relation to that sector of the environment comprised by his fellows” (p 4., 1924)

WW2- profound effect on establishing social psychology

  • Forced emigration of Jewish academics from Germany

  • Stimulated interset in social psychology research (e.g., impact of war propaganda)

Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)- founded the Research Centre for Group Dynamics, MIT (now at Michigan Uni)

B = f (P, E)

  • (1951)

  • Behaviour is a function of the person, the environment and the interaction between the two

  • Environment = physical and psychological, objective and subjective

Areas of Interest- philosophy of science; psychology (social, developmental, personality, motivational, cognitive, clinical); Social organisations; Social problems; Scientific methodology

Areas of Influence- Psychology, sociology, political science, cultural anthropology, communication studies, law, medicine, education, business administration, computer programming, sports, nursing, environmental studies, farm management, death and dying, tourism

Festinger cognitive dissonance theory (1957)- when our attitudes and behaviours don’t align

Asch- conformity, person perception

Milgram (1963)- obedience

Festinger- cognitive dissonance, social comparison

Heider- balance theory (how our attitudes need to be aligned), attribution theory (we want to come up with explanations for our own and other peoples behaviour)

Age of activism (60s)

  • Stereotyping and prejudice- school desegregation

  • Aggression- (why it occurs), weapon effect (having weapon in the environment increases aggression)

  • Altruism- bystander intervention

  • Interpersonal relations- attraction, close relationships

Age of cognition (starting from 70s)

  • The Naïve Scientist (1970s)- attribution models

  • The Cognitive Miser (1980s)- schemas, heuristics (when people began to recognise the importance of emotions and mood impacting the way we behave)

  • The Motivated Tactician (1990s)- accuracy motivation

European social psychology

Dominance of US American social psychology

“European” (social identity, intergroup behaviour)

“American” (stereotyping, social cognition) research topics and approaches.

1966 European Association of Experimental Social Psychology

  • Serge Moscovici

  • Conferences, Summer Schools etc.

Susan Fiske

  • Professor of psychology at Princeton University

  • Social cognition, stereotypes, prejudice

Mahzarin Banaji

  • Professor at Harvard University

  • Implicit attitudes, unconscious nature of assessment of self and other humans, IAT