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PSY204 Social Psychology Complete Course Notes
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PSY204 Social Psychology Complete Course Notes (Weeks 1-13).
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WEEK 1: RESEARCH METHODS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY- Social psychology: the scientific investigation of how thoughts, feelings and behaviours
of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others
(Allport, 1954, as cited in Vaughan & Hogg, 2018, p. 4).
- Attribution: an understanding of why we and other people do things.
Key Methodological Terms
Theory: a set of interrelated concepts and principles that explain a phenomenon.
Variable: any phenomenon that can differ or vary from one situation to another or one person to
another.
Hypothesis: a statement or prediction about what is expected to be found.
Confounding: where two or more independent variables covary in such a way that it is not
possible to know which has caused the effect.
Confounding variable: a variable other than the independent variable that could influence the
dependent variable.
Statistical significance: when findings are likely due to a real difference between two groups
rather than due to chance alone.
Representative sample of the population: a representative sample is a subset of a population that
seeks to accurately reflect the characteristics of the larger group.
Random sample: involves a strategy of selecting research participants where every member of
the larger population has an equal chance of being included in the study sample. (rare in most
research).
Control group: group that does not receive treatment and serves as a comparison to the group
receiving the treatment.
Experimental group/s: group/s that receive the treatment.
Cause and effect conclusion: is the relationship between two things when one thing makes
something else happen
, Experimental Method
- Independent variable: a variable used to influence, predict, or explain variations in
another variable.
- Sometimes referred to as a predictor or explanatory variable.
- Dependent variable: a variable that is influenced, explained or predicted by the
independent variable.
- Sometimes referred to as an outcome or response variable.
- Always measured, never manipulated.
Laboratory Experiment: experiment conducted in a laboratory.
Field Experiment: experiment in more naturalistic settings.
External validity: degree to which the findings of a study can be generalised to other people,
settings, and conditions.
Internal validity: the degree to which the independent variable caused the difference measured in
the dependent variable.
Potential bias
- Subject effects: effects that are not spontaneous, owing to demand characteristics and/ or
participants wishing to please the experimenter.
- Demand characteristics: features of an experiment that seem to ‘demand’ a certain
response.
- Experimenter effects: effects produced or influenced by clues to the hypotheses under
examination, inadvertently communicated by the experimenter.
Reduce bias
- Sound experimental design: a sound research design considers overarching goals and
tenets common to most scientific research, the specific objectives of the research project,
standards of the relevant scientific discipline or disciplines, and ethical principles that
guide scientific research
- Double-blind procedure: procedure to reduce experimenter effects, in which the
experimenter is unaware of the experimental conditions.
Non-Experimental Method
Non-experimental method: Method that does “involve the manipulation of independent variables
against a background of random assignment to condition” (Vaughan & Hogg, 2018, p.13).
Cannot make cause-and-effect conclusion!
Types of Non-Experimental Methods
, - Correlation: direction and strength of the relationship between variables.
- Archival research: non-experimental method involving the assembly of data, or reports of
data, collected by others.
- Case study: in-depth analysis of a single case (or individual).
- Survey research
- Questionnaire: is the main instrument for collecting data in survey research.
Basically, it is a set of standardized questions, often called items, which follow a
fixed scheme in order to collect individual data about one or more specific topics.
- Interview: is generally a qualitative research technique which involves asking
open-ended questions to converse with respondents and collect elicit data about a
subject.
- Field study: experiment in more naturalistic settings.
Ethics
- Research ethics: research ethics is also about treatment of research participants.
- Physical welfare of participants
- Clearly it is unethical to expose people to physical harm. For example, the
use of electric shocks that cause visible burning would be difficult to
justify. However, in most cases, it is also difficult to establish whether
non-trivial harm is involved and, if so, what its magnitude is and whether
debriefing (see the ‘Debriefing’ section later in this chapter) deals with it.
For instance, telling experimental participants that they have done badly
on a word-association task may have long-term effects on self-esteem and
could therefore be considered harmful. On the other hand, the effects may
be so minor and transitory as to be insignificant.
- Respect for privacy
- Social psychological research often involves invasion of privacy.
Participants can be asked intimate questions, can be observed without their
knowledge and can have their moods, perceptions and behaviour
manipulated. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether the research topic
justifies invasion of privacy. At other times, it is more straightforward –
for example, intimate questions about sexual practices are essential for
research into behaviour that may put people at risk of contracting HIV and
developing AIDS. Concern about privacy is usually satisfied by ensuring
that data obtained from individuals are entirely confidential: that is, only
the researcher knows who said or did what. Personal identification is
removed from data (rendering them anonymous), research findings are
reported as means for large groups of people, and data no longer useful are
usually destroyed.
, - Use of deception: is when a researcher gives false information to subjects or
intentionally misleads them about some key aspect of the research.
- Informed consent: when conducting clinical research, the obtaining of informed
consent is required. Informed consent is a procedure through which a competent
subject, after having received and understood all the research-related information,
can voluntarily provide his or her willingness to participate in a clinical trial.
- Debriefing: is a procedure that occurs at the conclusion of the human subject's
participation in the study (although, in cases that warrant it, a full debriefing may
occur at the conclusion of the study), through which the subject is provided the
opportunity to discuss with the researcher the details of the research.
What is Social Psychology?
- Believes all behaviour takes place in a social context.
Core Beliefs
1. Believes behaviour and decision making are largely influenced by society.
2. Experiments may be conducted to back up theories.
3. Behaviour is used to assess someone’s personality and character.
4. Behaviour helps to reach certain goals.
Most Notable Theories
- Attribution theory: looks and the way we observe other people and explains how
someone else made their decisions (consists of internal and external factors).
- Self-perception theory: looks at the way we observe and make judgments about our own
behaviour.
- Social identity theory: looks at the way we categorise ourselves and other people (e.g.,
ingroups and outgroups).
- Cognitive dissonance theory: It refers to the mental conflict that occurs when a person's
behaviours and beliefs do not align.
- Evolutionary psychology: believes our perceptions, language and social interactions are
as a result of evolution.
WEEK 2: SELF, IDENTITY AND CULTURE
Key terms
Symbolic interactionism: theory of how the self emerges from human interaction, which involves
people trading symbols (through language and gesture) that are usually consensual and represent
abstract properties rather than concrete objects.
Looking-glass self: The self derived from seeing ourselves as others see us.
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