Social Psychology
Has its roots in Psychology and Sociology.
Range of topics influences by number of disciplines
Three orientations: Individual; Social; Political
Changes in definition reveal its contested and changing nature.
Intergroup relations
Dominated intergroup relations in psych.
In SA focussed mainly on race
Emerges from European and American scholars
Shifts towards South African based, making it more relevant.
,Lecture 2 12/02/2020
Mental Testing:
Adaption of tests to be used on South Africans.
Testing of intellectual ability of population groups
Challenges
o Methodological flaws:
o Applicability of measures
o Interpretation: who is administering the test, what are their agendas. No context is
taken into consideration (who and for what purpose)
o The commissioning of work to fulfil oppressive agendas.
The poor white phenomenon:
Increasing impoverishment of whites
Large grants provided to study this problem.
o Questions of power and agenda setting.
o Research to justify preferential and discriminatory practices.
Legal, social, economic and political implications of such studies
o Colour bars in jobs
o The Carnegie commissions
Fake statistics
Racial Attitudes:
MacCrones – white towards black... what about black attitudes against whites
Attitude scales
War years and aftermath
Motivated soldiers to fight against opposite race.
Psychometric test
o Bias and flaws in test
o Designed to exclude certain populations.
Authoritarian personality
Prejudice to a cluster of personality trait
o Neglect’s impact of socio-cultural and political factors
o Locates prejudice within individuals.
o Prejudice = harsh treatment as child, lack of love
,Continued research on attitudes
Limited research on other races towards whites
Another research
Marginality and “coloured” people
o Possibility of “coloured” people
Interracial contact
o Gordon Allport
Controversies in intergroup research
Suppression of research findings
o Who decides what is relevant?
o Suppress bad information on person or company.
o Not sure how much information or research has been supressed and hidden from
the public.
Methodological controversies in intelligence research
o Interpretation of studies,
o Ignoring contextual factors
The continued policing of research and publication
o Journal acceptance and flawed review processes
o Funding allocation for research on certain topics. Sponsors can decide if your work is
problematic to them.
How has social psych contributed to being problematic (racism, prejudice etc.?)
, Lecture 3
Attitudes:
Evaluations towards an object
Evaluations of tangible and intangible objects
When the object of the attitude is important to the person, it produces an
emotional/affective response.
Two features of attitudes
o categorizations represented in memory by an object label and the rules for applying
that label, an evaluative summary of that object, and a knowledge structure
supporting that evaluation
o They are responses that locate i.e. they are communicative and are social
dimensions of judgement may be universal or specific
o Depends on the object
The definition of attitudes as evaluative replaces the previous ABC model of attitudes
o This was divided into three classes of responses:
Affective – our feelings towards an object
Behavioural – our overt behaviours towards an object
Cognitive – our knowledge and beliefs about and object
Components are not always consistent.
Functions of attitude
Katz four functions:
1. Knowledge function: attitudes help us to know the world through our memorial
representations of an object and rules about labeling that object
2. Utilitarian function helps us know how to respond to an object (approach/avoid) and
help us gain rewards or avoid punishment
3. Value expression: attitudes as public statements of what we believe or identify with
4. Ego-defensive: Deeply rooted, difficult to change and mostly hostile attitudes towards
an object/group (homophobia)
May serve more than one function, held for different reasons and at different times.
o Not innocent evaluations
o May depend on what that person knows about that object at that time.
Smith’s 3 functions:
1. Object appraisal: Katz’s knowledge function
2. Externalization: Katz’s ego-defensive function
3. Social adjustment: Katz’s value expression & utilitarian functions
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