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Summary Psychology 324 Test Notes
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Psychology 324 Test Notes, covers chapters: 1,2,3, & 4
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Made By: Daryan Van Der WathPsychology 324
Chapt& One: In-oducing social Psychology
1. What is social psychology?
• Social Psychology à Scientific Investigation of how people’s thoughts,
feelings and behaviour are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied
presence of others
• Social psychologists are interested in explaining human behaviour because
behaviour can be measured and observed
• Behaviour is our motor activities, subtle actions, what we say & write (thus
publicly verifiable) and serves a communicative function
• Behaviour à what people do that can be objectively measured
• Unobservable processes (feelings, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, intentions and
goals) can be inferred from behaviour, influence is or even determine it
• What makes social psychology social: deals with how people are aCected by other
people who are physically present or who are imagined to be present or even
whose presence is implied
• Social psychology is a science because it uses scientific method to construst
tests and theories
o Science à method for studying natures that involves the collecting of
data to test hypothesis
o Theory à set of interrelated concepts and principles that explains a
phenomenon
o Data à publicly verifiable observations
Social psychology and its close neighbours
• Social psychology draws on a number of subdisciplines in general psychology and
has connections with other disciplines, mostly in the social sciences
• Since the late 1970s social psychology has been strongly influenced by cognitive
psychology, it has used its methods and concepts to explain a range of social
behaviours (this approach is called Social
Cognition)
• Neuroscience has also influenced social
psychology
• Social psychology (Behavioural sciences)
also has links with sociology and social
anthropology (these are social sciences)
• Its location at the intersection of diCerent
disciplines is part of its intellectual and
practical appeal but is also the source of
debate about what constitutes social
psychology as a distinct scientific
discipline
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Topics of social psychology
• Social psychologists study a broad range of topics (power, racism, social
categories, leadership, speech, attitudes, love, violence etc.)
• Defining social psychology solely in terms of what it studies, is that it is not
properly diCerentiated from other disciplines
• What makes social psychology distinct is: what it studies, how it studies and
what level of explanation is sought
• Conformality à group explanations provide norms with powerful eDects on
an individual’s behaviour (for example: appropriate dress style)
2. Research methods:
Scientific method
• It is the method that distinguishes science from other approaches to knowledge
• Hypotheses à empirically testable predictions about what co-occurs with
what or what causes what
o Based on prior knowledge, speculation and causal or systematic
observation
o Empirical test can fail to support hypothesis (thus reject the hypothesis
or revise it)
o If it is supported, confidence in its accuracy increases
• An important feature of the scientific method is replication: it guards against
the possibility that a finding is tied to the specific circumstances in which a test
was conducted as well as fraud
• Social psychologists are concerned that some of social psychology’s findings
are diCicult to replicate – thus do not have enough evidence in support of a
theory (reproducibility/replication crisis)
• The problem is due to: small samples of participants, diCerences between
research groups in there research methods, scientific reporting practices (which
makes it diCicult replicate a study), a tendency to refine/revise Hypotheses After
the Results are Known (“harking”) & selective reporting and interpreting
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• By conducting social psychological research more transparently, these theories
will have more reliable findings and make the theories stronger
• Nobert Kerr – adversarial collaboration: diCerent researchers in diCerent labs
with diCerent research traditions closely collaborate to test predictions from a
specific theory
• The alternative to science is faith, dogma, or rationalism (something is true
because one simply believes it to be true) – these still influence knowledge
• Valid knowledge is acquired by pure reason, grounded in faith and conviction
• Two types of methods: experimental & non-experimental
• Methodological pluralism (both methods) helps to avoid confirmation bias
• Confirmation Bias à the tendency to seek, interpret and create
information that verifies existing explanations for the cause of an event
• The use of the scientific method in social psychology implies that research
predictions are derived from theory
Experiments
• An experiment is a hypothesis test in which something is done to see its
eDect on something else
• People often experiment casually or informally as a way to learn about their
world
• Experimentation is a powerful method because it allows us to identify the
causes of events and thus gain control over our destiny
• Brain Imaging: social neuroscientist are using new techniques such as fMRI, to
establish correlates, consequences, and the causes of social behaviour
• Systematic experimentation is the most important research method in science
• Experimentation involves intervention in the form of manipulation of one or
more Independent Variables and then the measurement of the eCect of the
treatment (manipulation) on one or more focal dependent variables
o Independent variables (predictor variable)à features of a situation
that change of their own accord or can be manipulated by an
experimenter to have eDects on a dependent variable
o Dependent variables (outcome variables)à variables that change as a
consequence of changes in the independent variable
o Variation in the dependent variable is dependent on variation in the
independent variable
• To conduct an experiment you need at least two groups/conditions:
o Experimental group – exposed to the I.D
o Control group – not exposed to the I.D
• Social psychology is largely experimental and most of what we know about
social behaviour is based on experiments
• It is important in experiments to avoid confounding; conditions must be
identical in all respects expect for those represented by the manipulated
independent variable
• Confounding à where two or more independent variable covary in such a
way that it is impossible to know which has caused the eDect
• We should be careful about how we measure eCects – the dependent measures
that assess the dependent variable
• The coder(s) should know as little as possible about the experimental
conditions and the research hypothesis
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The Lab(at(y exp-iment:
• Laboratory à a place, usually a room, in which data are collected, usually by
experimental methods
o to control as many potentially confounding variables as possible
o the aim is to isolate and manipulate a single aspect of a variable, an aspect
that does not occur in isolation outside the laboratory
• first ever psychology laboratory was led by Wilhelm Wundt (1897)
• They are intended to create artificial conditions
• Research in social neuroscience using fMRI (functional magnetic Resonance
Imaging) has become popular
o fMRI à method used in social neuroscience to measure where
electrochemical activity in the brain is occurring
• laboratory experiments allow us to establish cause-eCect relationships between
variables
• Laboratory findings cannot be generalised directly to the “less” pure conditions that
exist in the “real” world; however these findings address theories about human
social behaviour, and we can generalize these to apple to conditions other than
those in the laboratory
• They are intentionally low on External validity or Mundane Realism but always
high on Internal validity or experimental realism
o External Validity/mundane realism à similarity between circumstances
surrounding an experiment and circumstances encountered in everyday
life
o Internal validity/experimental realism à psychological impact of the
manipulations in an experiment
• Laboratory experiments are susceptible to a range of Biases:
o Subject eDects à eDects that are not spontaneous, owing to demand
characteristics and/or participants wishing to please the experimenter
o Demand characteristics à features of an experiment that seem to
“demand” a certain response
o Experimenter eDects à eDects produced or influenced by clues to the
hypotheses under examination, inadvertently communicated by the
experimenter
o Double-blind à procedure to reduce experimenter eDects, in which the
experimenter is unaware of the experimental conditions
The field exp-iment:
• Social psychology experiments that are conducted in a more naturalistic setting
outside of the laboratory
• Involves the observation, recording and coding of behaviour as it occurs
• Field experiments have high external validity, because participants are usually
unaware that an experiment is taking place, thus they are not reactive
• However there is less control over extraneous variables, random assignment is
diDicult, and it is hard to obtain accurate measurements or measurements of
subjective feelings
Non-experimental methods
• There are circumstances where it is impossible to conduct an experiment to test
a hypothesis
• Social psychology confronts ethical issues that can proscribe experimentation
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