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Psychology 324 Full Summary
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- Stellenbosch University (SUN)
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Anja Hinz19522304
Chapter 1
Introducing Social Psychology
What is Social Psychology?
• Social psychology is the scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours
of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
• Social psychologists study behaviour (both obvious and subtle behaviours) because it can be
observed and measured and is publicly variable. They also attempt to study unobservable
processes, such as attitudes and beliefs.
• Social psychology is a science, which is a method for studying nature that involves the
collecting of data to test hypotheses.
• A theory is a set of interrelated concepts and principles that explain a phenomenon.
• Data is publicly verifiable observations.
• Social psychology is related to cognitive psychology, individual psychology (except it
explains social behaviour and not individual behaviour), social anthropology, sociology (both
of these deal with group behaviours and interactions, but their unit of analysis is the group
and not the members of the group), and sociolinguistics language communication.
• Social psychologists often investigate fields such as conformity, persuasion, obedience,
racism, prejudice, sexism, emotion, attraction, leadership, communication, crowd behaviour,
social conflict, the jury and prosocial behaviour.
• Social psychology uses the scientific method to study social behaviour. This involves the
formulation of hypotheses (empirically testable predications about the outcome of an
experiment).
• These experiments have to be replicable, meaning you need to be able to repeat them
elsewhere with another set of people and still obtain the same results.
• The opposite of science is dogma (or rationalism) which is understanding based on what an
authority says.
à Social psychology and its close neighbours
• Social psychology is poised at the crossroads of a number of related disciplines and
subdisciplines.
• It is a subdiscipline of general psychology and is therefore concerned with explaining human
behaviour in terms of processes that occur within the human mind
• It differs from individual psychology in that it explains social behaviour.
• A great deal of social psychology is concerned with face-to-face interaction between
individuals or among members of groups, whereas general psychology focuses on people’s
interactions to stimuli that do not have to be social (e.g. shapes, colours, sounds)
à Topics of social psychology
• One way to derive social psychology is in terms of what social psychologists study.
• Social psychologists study conformity, persuasion, power, influence, obedience, prejudice,
prejudice reduction, discrimination, stereotyping, bargaining, sexism, racism, etc.
• A problem with defining social psychology solely by its topics covered is that it does not
differentiate itself as a unique discipline.
• Political scientists and sociologists also study intergroup relations (what makes social
psychology different?)
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• What makes social psychology unique is the combination of what it studies, how it studies it,
and what level of explanation is sought.
Methodological issues
à Scientific method
• Social psychology employs the scientific method to study behaviours.
• Science is the method used to study natural or biological phenomena and chemical processes.
• Science includes the formulation of hypotheses (predictions) on the basis of prior knowledge,
speculation and causal or systematic observation.
• Hypothesis: formally stated predictions on what factor(s) may cause something to occur and
are stated in such a way that they can be empirically tested for truth.
• Replication: an important feature in the scientific method that guards against the possibility
that a finding is tied to the circumstances in which a test was conducted (also guards against
fraud).
• The alternative to science is dogma, rationalism, where understanding is based on authority:
something is there because an authority figure says it is so.
- With rationalism and dogma, valid knowledge is acquired by pure reason and faith; that
is uncritically accepting and trusting the pronouncement of authorities.
• There are 2 types of empirical methods of research:
Experimental Non-experimental
à Experiments
• An experiment is a hypothesis test where something is done to see how it affects something
else.
• Systematic experimentation is the most important research method in science.
• Experimentation involves manipulating an independent variable (an aspect or factor in a
situation that can change independently and then has an effect on the dependent variable), and
then measuring the effect on one or more dependent variables (the variables that change as a
result of the change in the independent variable).
• When performing experiments, random assignment is very important.
• This is when participants are randomly assigned to the different experimental groups so that
the researchers have equal, unbiased groups.
• It is essential to avoid confounding, which is when two or more independent variables co-
vary in such a way that it is impossible to know which one caused the effect.
• The conditions within experiments must be identical in all ways, except for the factor whose
affect they are trying to determine (the independent variable).
• A one-factor design is an experiment that is designed so that only one independent variable is
manipulated.
• Different types of experimental methods include:
1. The laboratory experiment:
- The laboratory is usually a room where data is collected by experimental methods.
- Here, researchers aim to isolate and manipulate a single variable.
- This allows us to address theories and establish cause-effect relationships between
variables.
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- Laboratory experiments are intentionally low on external validity or mundane
realism (how similar the created conditions are to those usually encountered by
participants in the real world).
- However, they are usually high on internal validity or experimental realism (the
manipulations are full of psychological impact and meaning for the participants).
- However, these experiments are also prone to biases such as subject effects,
which is when participants' behaviour is the result of the experiment, rather than
the manipulation.
- This can be avoided by minimising demand characteristics (when the experiment
seems to demand a certain response from the participants).
- Demand characteristics can be caused by experimenter effects.
- Experimenter effects are produced when the researchers may unintentionally give
cues that cause the participants to behave in a way that confirms the hypothesis.
- This can be minimised by a double-blind procedure, where the experimenter is
unaware of which experimental condition they are running, so that they don't
affect the experiment to prove their hypothesis.
2. The field experiment:
- This involves more natural settings outside the laboratory, such as real life
situations.
- An example of this would be if a researcher asks ten people for directions and
counts up how many people ignored him.
- These have high external validity but low internal validity.
- Random assignment is difficult during these experiments, there is less control over
other variables and it can be difficult to obtain accurate measurements as people
are often unaware that they are part of the experiment.
1. Archival research
à Non-experimental methods 2. Case studies
• These methods are used when experimental methods are impossible 3. Qualitative research and
to perform. discourse analysis
4. Survey research
• These methods do not involve the manipulation of independent
5. Field studies
variables against a background of random assignment to conditions.
• Therefore, it is almost impossible to draw reliable causal conclusions.
• Correlation is when changes in one variable are associated with changes in another variable,
but it can't be determined which one changes which one.
• Different non-experimental methods include:
o Archival research:
- A non-experimental method that is useful for investigating large-scale, widely
occurring phenomena that may be remote in time.
- The researcher assembles data collected by others often for reasons connected
with those of the researcher.
- Archival methods are often used to make comparisons between different cultures
or nations regarding phenomena such as suicide, mental health or child rearing
strategies.
- Archival research is not reactive
- Archival research can be unreliable because often, the researcher has no control
over the primary data collection, which might be biased or unreliable in other
ways.
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o Case studies:
- Allows an in-depth analysis of a single case (individual)
- Employ a wide range of data collection techniques: open-ended interviews,
questionnaires, observation of behaviour.
- Suited to rare phenomena that cannot be recreated in labs.
- Findings of case studies may suffer from researcher or subject bias and findings
may not easily be generalized to other cases or events.
o Qualitative research and discourse analysis:
- Discourse analysis is a set of methods used to analyse text, in particular,
naturally occurring language in order to understand its meaning and significance.
- Discourse analysis is both a language-based and communication-based
methodology and approach to social psychology that is proven useful particularly
in the study of prejudice.
o Survey research:
- Structured interviews in which the researcher asks the participants carefully
chosen questions and notes their responses.
- Or questionnaires in which participants write their own responses to written
questions.
- Surveys can be used to obtain a large amount of data from a large sample of
participants; here generalization is often not a problem.
- Anonymous and confidential questionnaires may minimize experimenter bias,
evaluation apprehension and some subject bias but demand characteristics may
remain.
- Poorly structures questionnaires may obtain biased data due to “response set”
(the tendency for some participants to agree unthinkingly with statements, or to
choose mid-range or extreme responses.
o Field studies:
- This is similar to the field experiment, where the researchers don't manipulate or
intervene with anything.
- This involves the observation, recording and coding of behaviour as it occurs (in
the real world, and not experimental conditions).
- The observer is non-intrusive most of the time (meaning the subjects don't even
realise he is there).
- However, this type of research is very prone to experimenter bias, lack of
objectivity, poor generalisability and distortions due to the impact of the
researcher on the behaviour under investigation.
à Data Analysis
• Once data is collected, it needs to be analysed. The type of analysis depends on:
o the type of data obtained
o the method used to obtain data
o the purpose of the research
• Most data are transformed into numbers, which are then compared in various ways using
statistics.
• If we want to calculate the difference between two groups for a specific factor, we could use
the t-test, which is a statistical procedure that tests the statistical significance of the
differences between the means of the two groups.
• The larger the value of “t”, the larger the difference between the two groups.
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