4 TEST QUESTIONS NEED IN A HOUR
Lotus
Chapter1.pptxSocial Psychology
Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology
Social Psychology
How we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us.
How our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those around us.
History of Social Psychology
Earliest experiments were before 1900, first textbooks published in 1908.
Kurt Lewin
Father of social psychology because he developed many of the important ideas of the discipline (focus on the interactions among people).
Leon Festinger
Edited Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, in which he stressed the need to measure variables and use experiments to study social behavior.
History of Social Psychology
Muzafir Sherif
Robbers Cave Experiment
Solomon Asch
Stanley Milgram
Philip Zimbardo
History of Social Psychology
Group behavior
Helping
Intergroup relations
Stereotyping
Prejudice and discrimination
Attitudes
Persuasion (advertising)
Social cognition
The influence of our knowledge structures on memory, information processing, attitudes, judgments.
Flaws in our decision-making
The Social Situation
Behavior is determined by both a person’s characteristics and the social situation
Situation is often stronger than our characteristics!
Social Influence
Process by which others change our thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Lewin’s Equation
Behavior = f (person, social situation)
The behavior of a given person at any time depends on the characteristics of the person and the influence of the social situation.
Evolutionary Adaptation
Newborns
Recognize faces, respond to voices
Infants
Language development, friendships
Adolescence
Interest in sex, fall in love
Our genetic code has provided us with social skills that are important to survival through evolution.
Making judgments about others, helping others, working together
Helped our ancestors adapt, survive, pass on genes
Evolutionary Adaptation
Fitness
The extent to which a given characteristic helps an organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than other members of a species who do not have that characteristic.
Jealousy endures
Protect mates, guard against rivals, reproductive success
Our genes do not determine who we are
Self Concern
First human motivation
Protect and enhance one’s own life and the lives of the people who are close to us
Kin selection
Strategies that favor the reproductive success of one’s relatives (sometimes at a cost to one’s own survival)
Increase the survivial of the group as a whole
Ingroup
We desire to protect those whom we view as being similar and important to us, and with whom we share social connections
Other-Concern
We desire to connect with and be accepted by other people
We live in communities, we work together in groups, etc…
Helps us find a mate
Provides us with resources (providing goods/services for one another)
We enjoy it
We do not always put ourselves first
Our genes are “selfish”, we engage in altruistic behaviors
We generally behave MORALLY towards others
Negative behaviors are socially disapproved of
Hostility and violence are not the rule of human behavior
Social Influence
Stop sign on a deserted road
Internalized behavior
Others are still influencing you
Social situations are often stronger determinants of behavior than personality
Hitler
Heaven’s Gate
Social Norms
Social support exerts an enormous influence on our behavior
Creates “social norms”
Adopting the beliefs and behaviors of our parents
Customs, traditions, standards, rules, values of the group
Culture and Social Norms
Individualism vs collectivism
Self-concern vs other-concern
Arriving and departing on time
Pace of life
Walking speed in different locations
The ABC’s of Behavior (Create Successful Social Interactions)
Affect
Feelings
Behavior
Interactions
Cognition
Thought
Social Cognition
100 billion neurons
Cerebral cortex
Sets us apart from animals
Involved in thinking
Cognition: Mental activity of processing information and using it in judgment
Social Cognition: Helps us understand and predict the behavior of ourselves and others
Social Knowledge
We each develop a set that contains information about ourselves, others, relationships & social groups
Two that are highly important:
Schemas: Knowledge representation that includes information about a person or group
“Bob is a friendly guy”, “Italians are romantic”
Attitudes: Knowledge representation that includes (primarily) our liking/disliking of a person, thing or group
These allow us to judge quickly
Influence our social information processing and social behavior
Everyone’s knowledge is different, so we often draw different conclusions about the same events
Social Affect
Feelings we experience as part of our everyday lives
Vary throughout the day, but they help us function efficiently and in ways that increase our chances of survival
Affect signals that things are “OK” (good mood) or not (angry, anxious)
We experience affect in two ways
Mood: Positive or negative feelings in the background of our day
Good = more social, seeking interactions, efficient, helpful
Emotions: Brief (but often intense) mental and physiological feeling states
Shorter lived, stronger, more specific, caused by specific events
Only experienced when things are out of the ordinary/unusual
Social Behavior
We cooperate with others to gain outcomes we couldn’t gain on our own
Social exchange
The sharing of goods, services, emotions, etc…
Social rewards
Attention, praise, affection, love, $$ support
Social costs
Frustration, guilt, effort involved in maintaining relationships
Generally, people prefer: social rewards and social costs
Protects and enhances the self
Social Behavior
Social exchange is generally fair and equitable (in the long run)
Self-concern is normal, usually tempered by other-concerns
Balance!
We have learned over thousands of years that we can cooperate by giving to those in need, and we generally expect a return of those benefits over time
Called reciprocal altruism (I scratch your back, you scratch mine)
Those who don’t live up to this social contract are judged extremely negatively
Social Psychology and Common Sense
| Answer each question using your own intuition (True or False) |
| Opposites attract. |
| An athlete who wins a bronze medal in an event is happier about his performance than the athlete who wins the silver medal. |
| Having good friends can keep you from catching colds. |
| Subliminal advertising is very effective in getting us to by products. |
| The greater the reward for an activity, the more one will enjoy engaging in that activity. |
| Physically attractive people are seen as less intelligent than less attractive people. |
| Punching a pillow or screaming out loud is a good way to reduce frustration and aggressive tendencies. |
| People pull harder in a tug-of-war when they’re pulling alone than when pulling in a group. |
Is Social Psychology Common Sense?
Hindsight bias
We believe we know why we engage in the behaviors that we do
Hint: We usually don’t
Human behavior is extremely complex!
Psychological Research
Operational definitions
How do we measure:
Liking
Love
Altruism
Measuring
Self-reports (agree/disagree, 1-10)
“I enjoy being around Robert”
“I get along with Robert”
“I like Robert”
OD = Average of all three (assesses the attitude differently)
Issues with self-reports?
Social Neuroscience
Brain activity
Electroencephalography (EEG)
Brain wave patterns during different activities
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Images of brain structure and function (oxygen = blood flow)
Most commonly used method of learning about the brain
Cognition, attitudes, morality, emotions, rejection, prejudice
| Research Design | Goal | Advantages | Disadvantages | |
| Observational | Snapshot of current state of affairs | Complete picture, development of questions for further study | No relationship between variables | No creation of unique situations --Disasters |
| Correlational | Relationship between 2+ variables | Testing of relationships, predictions, can test in everyday life | No causal relationships between variables | Positive/negative --Which way? Common-causal variables |
| Experimental | Causal impact of 1+ manipulations on a DV | We can draw conclusions about causal relationships | Cannot manipulate many important variables, expensive | Equivalence between conditions |
Factorial Research Designs: More than one IV!
Research Methods
Internal validity
Confidence with which we can draw conclusions about the causal relationships between variables
Was your research measuring what you manipulated?
External Validity
Can your research be applied to individuals outside of your experiment?
Will they hold up in everyday life?
Research Methods
Ethics in research
Deception
Harm
Debriefing
Transparency in research
Interpretations
Limitations
Errors
Validity/reliability
Conclusion
Scientists generate research hypotheses, which are tested using an observational, correlational, or experimental research design.
The variables of interest are measured using self-report or behavioral measures.
Data is interpreted according to its validity (both internal and external), and the hypothesis is shown to be supported, not supported, or partially supported.
The results of many studies may be combined and summarized using meta-analysis.
