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Summary PSYC308A- Social Psychology Summarized Textbook Notes
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In depth summarized textbook notes on chapters 1-9 at UBC's PSYC308A class with Dr. Andrew Rivers. Especially focuses on learning goals in the textbook. Well-written with examples.

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  • Chapters 1-9
  • February 5, 2024
  • 25
  • 2022/2023
  • Summary

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Ch. 1- Intro to Social Psych

Define social psych and distinguish it from other fields.
- Def: the study of how ppl’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by other
ppl’s presence (real or imagined)
- Social influence: the effect that other ppl’s words, actions, and presence have on our
own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behavior
- Can be influenced by the imaginary approval/ disapproval of loved ones and how we
expect others to react to us
- Interested in what we do when social influences conflict (eg. parents vs. friends)

- Like other fields, it examines the causes of human behavior
- Difference: social psych emphasis on how ppl interpret the social world
- How personality is influenced by social influence
- Level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation
- Overlaps w sociology, personality psych, and biology/ neuroscience
- Evolutionary psych attempts to explain social behavior in terms of genetics factors that
evolve over time
- Construal: the way that ppl perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
- Goal of social psych: to identify psychological properties that makes ppl susceptible to
social influence, regardless of social class or culture
- Cross cultural research is to demonstrate universality or to discover other variables that
lets us predict/ understand human behavior

Power of the situation
Summarize why it matters how ppl explain/ interpret events and their own/ others’s
behavior
- Fundamental attribution error: overestimating ppl’s behavior as internal and
underestimating the role of situational factors
- 1. Thinking of ppl as flawed and not considering situational factors increases our
vulnerability to destructive social influences bc we’re less aware of our own susceptibility
to them
- 2. We oversimplify the problem so we blame the victim in situations where they’re
overpowered by social forces
- social/enviro situations are so powerful, they have dramatic effects on everyone
regardless of personality differences

- Behaviorism: to understand human behavior, we need to consider the reinforcing
properties of the enviro (behavior followed by reward vs punishment)
- Ppl’s behavior is not directly influenced by the situation, but by the construal
- Eg. someone slaps you on the back and asks how are you. You interpret that
behavior differently depending on who they are (friend, salesperson, etc.)

, - Gestalt psychology: the importance of studying how an object appears in ppl’s mind
objectively rather than the objective attributes of the object (eg. duck/ rabbit illusion.
Which one do you see first? We are construing it)
- More important to understand how ppl interpret each other’s behavior rather than to
understand its objective properties
- Eg. we should trust that the ceiling will not fall down in general not bc we need it
to be determined by engineers
- The importance of how ppl construe their enviro:
- Ppl react to what they think the other person is thinking/ feeling
- We’re so busy guessing motives and thoughts but we’re usually wrong
- Naive realism: perceiving things as they rly are, underestimating how much we’re
spinning what we see
- Eg. each political side thinks they’re seeing issues clearly and that the other side
is biased

Construals: basic human motives
Explain what happens when ppl’s need to feel good abt themselves conflict w the need
for accuracy
- 2 motives in steering our construals: the need to feel good abt ourselves and the need
for accuracy
- Sometimes, this pulls us in opposite directions where to accurately perceive the world,
we need to admit that we’ve behaved foolishly/ immorally
- But Festinger says this is how we gain our most valuable insights
- Ppl usually prefer feeling good abt themselves over accuracy. They put themselves in
the best possible light so they do things paradoxically
- Self esteem is good but when they justify their bad actions instead of learning from them,
it impedes change and self improvement
- That’s why some ppl prefer suffering instead of ease/ pleasure (eg. Oscar frat example)

- Social cognition: how ppl think abt themselves and use social info to make judgments/
decisions
- We aren’t perfect in interpreting situations
- Eg. granola oat cereal has more fat than Lucky Charms even if we don’t think so

Explain why studying social psych is important
- Bc we’re curious abt how we’re influenced
- Bc we contribute to the solution of social problems (we work to resolve conflicts within
groups, raise children’s intelligence, etc)

Ch. 2- Methodology– how social psychologists do research

How do researchers dev hypotheses and theories.
- Hindsight bias: tendency for ppl to exaggerate how they could’ve predicted it after
knowing that it occurred

, - Inspiration from previous theories and research
- Unhappy w previous theories, revises it, and new hypotheses are formed
- Hypotheses based on personal observations
- Eg. diffusion of responsibility: think someone else will help so they don’t help
- Collects data to test hypotheses

Compare strengths and weaknesses of research designs.
- Observational method: observe ppl and record impressions of their behavior
- Ethnography: trying to understand a culture by observing it from the inside
- Goal: avoid imposing preconceived notions and try to understand the
POV of the ppl being studied
- Must use 2+ judges to ensure observations are not subjective
- Archival analysis: accumulated documents of a culture (diaries, novels)
- Limits: we don’t know the reason behind the behavior, some behaviors are
difficult to observe bc they’re rare or only occur in private

- Correlational method: a technique for predicting 1 variable from another (eg. how well
we can predict ppl’s weight from their height)
- 2 variables are measured and the relationship between them is assessed
- Calculate correlation coefficient
- Closer it is to 1 = the stronger the relationship (height and weight correlation is
0.7)
- Negative correlation: increasing 1 variable means decreasing the other variable
- Surveys: analyze surveys
- Can judge the relationship between variables that are difficult to observe
- Can sample representative segments of the population
- Use random selection for representation
- Limits: correlation does not equal causation
- Tells us that 2 variables are related, but doesn’t identify the causes of the
behavior (can’t say A causes B. Can only say, A is correlated with B)
- Causal relationship can have no correlation and be caused by a 3rd
variable

- Experimental method: randomly assign participants to diff conditions that are all the
sam except for the IV
- The only method to determine causal relationships
- IV: the variable a researcher changes to see if it has an effect on the other variable
- DV: the variable the researcher measures. To see if it’s influenced by the IV
- 1 important determinant of whether ppl helped: # of bystanders they think are present
- Internal validity in experiments: make sure everything abt the situation is the same
amongst all conditions except for the IV (eg. # of bystanders)
- Random assignment to condition: all participants have an equal chance of taking
part in the experiment. Personality differences and bg can be distributed evenly
across conditions

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