PSYCH 180 Reviewer

Chapter 1

 Social Psych compared with sociology social psychology the scientific

(study of people in groups and societies) study of how people think about,
influence,
focus more on individuals and does and relate to one another.
more experimentation; compared with
personality psych, Soc Psych focuses more on how individuals, in
general, view and affect one another.
 Big Ideas in Social Psych
 Social thinking
 We construct our social reality.
 There is an objective reality out there, but we always view it through the
lens of our beliefs and values.  Every psychological event is a biological event.
 We attribute someone’s behaviour to his or her personality.  Social neuroscientists: To understand social behavior, we must consider
 How we construct the world, and ourselves, matter. both under-the-skin (biological) and between-skins (social) influences.
 Our social intuitions are powerful, sometimes perilous  We are bio-psycho-social organisms. We reflect the interplay of our
 Instant intuitions shape our fears, impressions, and relationships. biological, psychological, and social influences.
 Psychological science reveals an unconscious, intuitive, backstage mind.  How do human values influence social psych?
“Thinking occurs offstage, out of sight.”  Obvious ways values enter psychology
 Thinking, memory, and attitudes all operate on two levels: (1) Conscious  Values enter when social psychologists choose research topics.
and deliberate, (2) Unconscious and automatic.  Values influence the types of people who are attracted to various
 Our intuitions and unconscious information processing are routinely disciplines.
powerful and sometimes perilous. Perilous when accuracy is required but  Values enter as the object of social psychological analysis.
we intuitively judge the likelihood of things by how easily various instances  Not-So-Obvious ways
come to mind.
 The subjective aspects of science
 Social influences shape our behaviors  Science is not objective. Nature is interpreted through people’s mental
 Our attitudes and behavior are shaped by external social forces. categories.
 Power of social situations can lead us to act contrary to our expressed  This tendency to prejudge reality based on our expectations is a basic fact about
attitudes or could determine our attitudes. the human mind.
 Our cultures help define our situations.  Culture - the enduring behaviors,ideas, attitudes, and tradition, shared by a
large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
 Personal attitudes and disposition also shape behavior  Social Representations - A society’s widely held ideas and values, including
 Internal forces also matter. Inner assumptions and cultural ideologies. Our social representations help us make
social neuroscience An
attitudes and personality dispositions sense of our world.
interdisciplinary field that explores
influence behavior. the neural bases of social and
 Psychological concepts contain hidden values
 Social Behavior is biologically rooted emotional processes and behaviors,  Values influence our idea of how best to live our life ex. Abraham Maslow
 Psychological advice also reflects the advice giver’s personal values. Other
 Many of our social behaviors reflect a and how these processes and
behaviors affect our brain examples include child-rearing experts. In western societies, values tend to be
deep biological wisdom. individualistic as opposed to non-western counterparts.
and biology.
 Nature and nurture helped create us.  Forming concepts
  Labeling  Theories are discarded not because they have been proven false but are
 Is social psychology simply common sense? replaced by newer and better models.
 Social psychology faces two hindsight bias The tendency to  Correlational Research: Detecting Natural Associations.
contradictory criticisms: first, that it exaggerate, after learning an  Social psychological research varies by location - laboratory or field
is trivial because it documents the outcome, one’s ability to have research - and method - correlational and experimental.
obvious; second, that it is dangerous foreseen how something turned out.  Correlation and causation
Also known as the I-knew-itall-  Correlations indicate a relationship, but that
because its findings could be used to along phenomenon. field research Research
relationship is not necessarily one of cause
manipulate people. done in natural, real-life
and effect.
 One problem with common sense is that we invoke it after we know the settings outside the
 Correlational research allows us to predict, but
laboratory.
facts. it cannot tell us whether changing one
 Events are far more “obvious” and predictable in hindsight than variable (such as social status) will cause changes in
correlational
another (such as health).
beforehand.  Correlations quantify, with a coefficient known as r,
research The
 The I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon can have unfortunate consequences. study of the
the degree of relationship between two
naturally occurring
It is conducive to arrogance—an overestimation of our own intellectual factors—from 2 1.0 (as one factor score goes up, the
relationships
powers. Moreover, because outcomes seem as if they should have been other goes down) through 0 to 1 1.0 (the two
among variables.
factors’ scores rise and fall together).
foreseeable, we are more likely to blame decision makers for what are in
 The great strength of correlational
retrospect “obvious” bad choices than to praise them for good choices, research is that it tends to occur in experimental research
which also seem “obvious.” real-world settings where we can examine Studies that seek clues to
cause–effect relationships
 Common sense usually is right - after the fact. factors such as race, gender, and social
by manipulating one or
status (factors that we cannot manipulate
 How do we do social psychology? in the laboratory). Its great disadvantage more factors (independent
 Forming and testing hypothesis lies in the ambiguity of the results. variables) while controlling
 We [social psychologist] organize our ideas and findings into theories.  Knowing that two variables change others (holding them
 Facts are agreed upon statements about what we observe while theories together (correlate) enables us to predict constant).
are ideas that summarize and explain facts. Theory An integrated set
one when we know the other, but
 Theories also imply testable predictions correlation does not specify cause and effect.
of principles that explain
called hypothesis. and predict observed  Advance correlational techniques, such as Time-lagged correlations, may
 Hypotheses serve several purposes. events. suggest cause-effect relationships. Time-lagged correlations reveal the
 First, they allow us to test a theory by sequence of events.
random sampling
suggesting how we might try to falsify it.  Survey Research Survey procedure in
 Second, predictions give direction to Hypothesis A testable  Surveys require random sample for all units to be which every person in
research and sometimes send investigators proposition that describes represented. 1200 units means 95% confidence the population being
looking for things they might never have a relationship that may with 3 % margin of error. studied has an equal
thought of. exist between events.  Polls are example of survey but they do not chance of inclusion.
 Third, the predictive feature of good literally predict voting. they
theories can also make them practical. only describe public opinion at Framing The way a question or an
 A good theory: the moment they are taken. issue is posed; framing can influence
 effectively summarizes many observations, and Public opinion can shift. To people’s decisions and expressed
 makes clear predictions that we can use to evaluate surveys, opinions.
 confirm or modify the theory,  We must also bear in mind four
 generate new exploration, and potentially biasing influences:
 suggest practical applications  unrepresentative samples
 question order
  response options  Ethical principles developed by the American Psychological Association (2010),
 question wording. the Canadian Psychological Association (2000), and the British Psychological
 Experimental Research Society (2009) mandate investigators to do the following:
Independent variable The  Tell potential participants enough about the experiment to enable their
 Psychological experiments have two
experimental factor that a informed consent .
“essential ingredients”: control and
researcher  Be truthful. Use deception informed consent An ethical
random assignment. manipulates. only if essential and justified principle requiring that research
 Control:
The variable being measured, so by a significant purpose and participants be told enough to
 Independent and dependent
called because it may depend on not “about aspects that would enable them to choose whether
variable
manipulations of the affect their willingness to they wish to participate.
 the logic of experimentation is
independent variable. participate.”
simple: By creating and
 Protect participants (and
controlling a miniature reality, we
bystanders, if any) from harm Debriefing In social psychology,
can vary one factor and then random assignment The
and significant discomfort. the postexperimental
another and discover how those process of assigning
 Treat information about the explanation of a study to its
factors, separately or in participants to the
individual participants participants. Debriefing usually
combination, affect people. conditions of an experiment
confidentially. discloses any deception and
 Random assignment such that all persons have
 Debrief participants. Fully often queries participants
 random assignment eliminates all the same chance of being in
explain the experiment regarding their understandings
such extraneous factors ( factors a given condition.
afterward, including any and feelings.
not considered by researcher such
deception. The only exception
as education, culture, intelligence of people)
to this rule is when the feedback would be distressing, such as by making
 Random assignment helps us infer cause and effect. Random sampling
participants realize they have been stupid or cruel.
helps us generalize to a population.
 The experimenter should be sufficiently informative and considerate that
 Ethics of Experimentation people leave feeling at least as good about themselves as when they came in.
 Social psychologists often venture
into that ethical gray area when
Mundane realism Degree to which  Generalizing from Laboratory to life
an experiment is superficially  social psychology mixes everyday experience and laboratory analysis;
they design experiments that similar to everyday situations.
engage intense thoughts and displays a healthy interplay between laboratory research and everyday life.
Experimental realism Degree to
emotions. Experiments need not  Although the laboratory uncovers basic dynamics of human existence, it is
which an experiment absorbs and
have is called mundane realism. involves its participants. still a simplified, controlled reality. It tells us what effect to expect of
That is, laboratory behavior need variable X, all other things being equal—which in real life they never are.
not be like everyday behavior, which is
typically mundane, or unimportant. But the Deception In research, an
experiment should have experimental effect by which
realism —it should engage the participants. participants are
misinformed or misled
 Achieving experimental realism sometimes
requires deceiving people with a
Demand characteristics Cues
plausible cover story.
in an experiment that tell the
 Experimenters also seek to hide their
participant what behavior is
predictions lest the participants, in their
expected.
eagerness to be “good subjects,” merely
do what is expected or, in an ornery mood, do the opposite
 In subtle ways, too, the experimenter’s words, tone of voice, and gestures may
call forth desired responses. To minimize such demand characteristics,
experimenters typically standardize their instructions or even use a computer
to present them.