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The social world
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lecture notes from the module ps105, includes lectures 1,2,4,5,9
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PS105LECTURE 1
Social Psychology consists of 4 main aspects;
- Thinking and feeling- self and identity, attitudes, emotions and behavior
- Relating- communication, persuasion, close relationships
- Belonging- social influence, intergroup relations
- Applying- controlling aggression, altruism and justice
Historical context
Behaviourism
- Wilhelm Wundt ‘father of experimental psychology’, Leipzig 1879 (introspection, endorses
people's experience/ cognition)
- Behaviorism – reward and punishment affecting behavior
- Empirical approach – vary contingencies
- ‘Black Box’- explains behavior without going inside the mind, reject cognition.
Social Psychology
- Social psychology- thoughts, feelings, actions are influenced by the social environment.
- Empirical psychology- vary aspects and how it impacts thoughts, feelings, behavior.
- Posit psychological explanations- try to investigate the ‘black box’
Example of social psychology;
Milgram obedience study (1974)
- 63% shocked innocent learners to maximum level,
- Vary situation- force hand onto machine (30%), other ‘teachers’ refuse (10%), subject chooses
level of shock (3%).
Kitty Genovese 1964 bystander effect
- 38 witnesses and no one called police when saw Genovese limp towards her apartment
Social psych using modern methods- Stroop and person perception -> Karylowski, Motes, Curry, & Van
Liempd (2002). North Amer J of Psych, 4, 1-12.
- Result- Ԥfaster to read ink color when color and racial category label match than when they
mismatch’
Kahneman & Tversky (1973, 1974)
- Mental shortcuts, non-statistical heuristics
- Can lead to suboptimal conclusions
- Conjunction fallacy (Linda problem- cashier and feminist)
, Social identity – minimal group paradigm
- Ppl told they are one group and are asked to make allocations
- Typical findings- norm of fairness, ingroup favoritism or maximum joint/ ingroup profit
Cognitive Psychology
- Cog. Psych. - study of basic mental abilities e.g., perception, problem solving, memory
- Humans as information processors
- Empirical approach- vary information input
- Return of cognition – focus on process inside the ‘black box’.
Example, Stroop task (1935)
- Easier to name the ink color alone than when shown in a contradicting color-name
- -> we process the meaning of words automatically, without intention.
Neuroscience
- Scientific study of the nervous system
- Humans- neural circuits
- Empirical approach – measure techniques include the use of neuroimaging, EEG
LECTURE 2
Research methods used in social psychology; experiments, surveys, interviews, interviews, focus
groups....
- Emphasis on theory testing
- Quantitative – physiological measures, behavioral measures, intelligence testing, measuring
attitudes, helped advance psychological theories like authoritarianism and psychopathy.
- Quantitative vs Qualitative- complimentary, early stages of sciences included qualitative,
Phrenology (no longer taken seriously) was once a precursor for IQ.
- More recent research – Colleen Ward- identity maps, multicultural identity styles.
- Need to distinguish between data collection and data analysis.
Measuring Psychological concepts;
- Tests are often standardized= controlled environment for testing conditions.
- Normative data – tests score can be compared to an established scale e.g.IQ
- -ve standardized tests – expensive for large samples, administrative cost is high, developed for
specific populations, construct isn't always available.
- Developing a scale – Likert scale – 5 vs 6 options? aggregated
- - Thurstone scale- easy to difficult, favorable to unfavorable.
- (Ashton & Lee, 2009)- extroversion scale: different settings and behaviors, normal to include –
ve worded items, -ve worded items need to be reversed for scoring, use simple and common
language to ensure understanding.
- Test for quality- pilot testing
Sampling;
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