Class notes
Social Psychology 1 notes
- Course
- Psyc 2400 (PSYC2400)
- Institution
- University Of Winnipeg (U Of W )
All studies and concepts covered in class. Multiple modules, comprehensively condensed.
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Social psychChapter 1-intro to social psychology
main assumptions in social psychology
there is some pattern and some predictions in peoples behaviour
we can study these with the scientific method
what is social psychology?
social influence is the heart of social psychology
we are influenced by even the presence of people
social pscyhology definition
o `the scientific study of the way in which peoples thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are
influenced by the real, implied, and imagined presence of people
the power of social interpretation
more concerned with how people are influenced by their perception of a social situation
understanding how people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world rather than the
objective properties of the social world
social psychology, science, and common sense
asking similar questions to philosophers but looking at it scientifically
folk wisdom
o absence makes the heart grow fonder vs out of sight out of mind
o birds of a feather flock together vs opposites attract
social psychology compared with sociology
both are concerned with the influence of social and societal factors on human behaviour
the difference is level of analysis
o for a social psychologist the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social
situation
o sociology is more concerned with broad societal factors rather than the individual
social psychology compared with personality psychology
personality psychologists are focused on individual differences and personality characteristics
social psychologists focus more on the role of social influence
the cult example-very unlikely that all of them were psychotic and more likely social influence
had something to do with it
the power of the situation
fundamental attribution error
o tendency to overestimate the personality factors and underestimate situational factors
o common in instances of abuse
individual behavior is powerfully influenced by the social environment
where construals come from
two motives that underly our thoughts and behaviours
o the need to feel good about ourselves
, can cause people to distort reality
o the need to be accurate
suffering and self justification
hazing incidents-to avoid feeling foolish, they justify it by seeing the group in a positive light
social cognition
o people try to view the world as accurately as possible
the power of social interpretation
gestalt psychology
o the idea that we should study the subjective way an object appears in peoples minds
behaviourism
o school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behaviour, we only need to
consider the reinforcing properties of the environment
its important to look at a situation from the viewpoint of the person as they see the world
social psychology and social problems
fear mongering as a prevention technique only fuels denial
Chapter 2-methodology
experimenter-person who runs the experiment
steps involved in a social psychology experiment
step 1-topic of interest
o narrow down topic to a specific testable hypothesis
attractive feelings experiment
o bring in people who are both attractive and then not
o use physiological factors
o one group of aroused people and put them in an attractive enviornment and then a
group of unaroused
step 2-design experiment
o two arousal groups-different bridges and introduce an attractive person into this
enviornment
o measure attraction
o hypothesis-people will label physical arousal as attraction if they are in the prescense of
an attractive person
step 3-conduct experiment
o who are your participants
o approaching men alone, not with women, limited age and gender
o have men tell stories
step 4-analyze your data
, o people read stories blindly, ranking between sexual content
o based on whether they called her
step 5-publish
o essentially you can trick peopleinto thinking theyre aroused because of attraction if you
put an attractive person in front of them while theyre in an aroused state
independent variable
o variable you control and set up
depedent variable
o the data youre measuring from your experiment
sources of bias
social nature of the research process
o an experimenter participant interaction
o experimenter as a source of information
participants interpretation of the experiment
rosenthaul
o work on self fulfilling prophecys
o highlighted issues that come up when we have one person studying another
o experimenter participant interaction
in the same way that we influence eachother in the real world, it keeps going
even in the lab
had male and female experimenters hand out a simple questionairre to female
or male participants
nothing particular on the questionnaire
then had observers record what they saw
female experimenters are more likely to smile at other women
compared to men
male experimenters took more time to hand out to females than to
males
If youre in a situation where theres basically 0 interaction, that people would
still have a different experience based on who the experimenter is
o experimenter as a source of information
when you come into an experiment, you have lots of questions, and you look to
the experimenter to ask those questions
o they can use that against you to get your natural reaction in that situation
o experiment
took two groups of experiments and told them he was testing whether you can
tell how successful someone is based on a photo
he says to one group hes expecting that most people will rate them in the
direction of sucess, and says the oppposite to the other group
casual hint
the people in the room that was told he was expecting success rated them all
successful, and vise versa
, subtly and accidentally communicating hypothesis-experimenter expectancy effect
o body language
o emphasis of certain words
o smiling
o main point-dont tell your participants or experimenter the hypothesis, it may bias the
experiment
adair-epstein
o repeated rosenthaul experiment
o put hidden tape recorder in the room as experimenters were explaining the instructions
o then did another experiment and played the tape recorder for instructions
to weed out whether it was body language or vocal/language differences in
ratings
o when participants listened to tape recordings, you still got the same results
in the lab-be as realistic as possible in order to capture natural behaviour as it occurs
participants interpretation
o martin orne
demand characteristics
the things we notice when we wonder what the experiments are about
he had people fill out a sheet of math problems, then there was a stack of index
cards with instructions
the instructions say to tear the math sheet into at least 32 pieces and then do
the next math sheet
every math sheet was the same, and every card had the same instructions
he wanted to compare normal conscious states to hypnotised states
after a few hours, orne checked on the lab
people are motivated to find the purpose of the experiment, they thought it was
a test of endurance, so they wanted to prove that they could do it
cooperative set
o once people think they have the purpose of the experiment figured out they tend to
cooperate and give the experimenter what they think is expected
evaluation apprehension
o trying to present yourself as smart and presentable
screw you participants
o some participants who think they know the hypothesis and will deliberately give
opposite answers to mess up the research
faithful subject
o when you think you know the hypothesis, but you know it would mess up the
experiment, so they try to behave naturally
new frontiers in social psychology
o culture in social psychology
o social osychology began as a western science which raises the question of how universal
the findings are
to see if psychological processes differ between cultures they use cross-cultural research
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