Chapter 1 The mission & the method
Social psychology: the scientic study of how people afect and are afected by others. Social
psychology can help you make sense of your own social world.
A brief history of social psychology
Two early social psychological experiments in the 1880s:
1. Triplett found that children wound the fshing reel faster in the presence of other children
than when they were alone.
2. Ringelmann found that people exert less efort in groups, such as in a tug-of-war, than as
individuals.
Two ideas from the 2000s had a lastng innuence on social psychology:
- Gordon Allport’s observaton that attitudes were ‘the most distnctve and indispensable
concept in contemporary American social psychology’. The study of attudes dominated
social psychology for decades and is stll centrally important today.
- Kurt Lewin’s formula that behavior is a functon of the person and the situaton.
Social psychology began to come into its own as a feld in the 1950s and 1960s. At the tme,
psychology was divided between two camps:
Behaviorism: theoretcal approach that seeks to ex plain behavior in terms of learning
principles, without reference to inner states, thoughts, or feelings.
Freudian psychoanalysis: theoretcal approach that seeks to ex plain behavior by looking at
the deep unconscious forces inside the person.
Social psychology tried to fnd a middle course, by using scientfc approaches to measure not only
behavior but also thoughts, feelings, and other inner states.
Another huge development from the 1990s onward was a growing openness to biology. Some social
psychologists began to study the brain in order to learn how its workings are related to social events.
What do social psychologists do?
Social psychology aims for a broad understanding of the social factors that innuence how human
beings think, act and feel. The three dimensions of social psychology is also called:
ABC triad: Afect hhow people feel inside),, B,ehavior hwhat people do),, Coogniton hwhat people
think about),
Social psychologists study the efects of personal and situatonal innuences on these ABCs –
especially the power of situatons. or this purpose, they use the scientfc method.
Social psychology’s place in the world
Social psychology is related to other social sciences:
Anthropology: the study of human culture – the shared values, beliefs, and practces of a
group of people.
Economics: the study of the producton, distributon, and consumpton of goods and services,
and the study of money.
History: the study of past events.
Politcal science: the study of human societes and the groups that form those societes.
Other branches of psychology:
Biological psychology: the study of what happens in the brain, nervous system, and other
aspects of the body.
Clinical psychology: branch of psychology that focuses on behavior disorders and other forms
of mental illness, and how to treat them.
, Cognitve psychology: the study of thought processes, such as how memory works and what
people notce.
Developmental psychology: the study of how people change across their lives, from
concepton and birth to old age and death.
Personality psychology: the branch of psychology that focuses on important diferences
between individuals.
Social psychology: social psychologists focus on how human beings think, act, and feel.
Thoughts, actons, and feelings are a joint functon of personal and situatonal innuences.
Why people study social psychology
Philosophy: ‘love of wisdom’; the pursuit of knowledge about fundamental maters such as
life, death, meaning, reality and truth.
Psychology separated itself from philosophy around 1900. What separates philosophy from
psychology is psychology’s heavy reliance on the scientfc method. Philosophers deal with problems
by thinking carefully and systematcally about them; psychologists address the same problems by
systematcally collectng data.
Some social scientsts use applied research (research that focuses on solving partcular practcal
problems) whereas others use basic research (research that focuses on a general understanding of
basic principles that can be applied to many diferent problems).
How do social psychologists answer their own questions?
Overview of the scientfc method: The scientfc method involves fve basic steps:
1. State a problem for study.
2. ormulate a testable hypothesis (educated guess) as a tentatve soluton to the problem.
3. Design a study to test the hypothesis and collect data.
4. Test the hypothesis by confrontng it with the data.
5. Communicate the study’s results.
Scientfc theories: Theories are composed of construct habstract ideas or concepts), that are linked
together in a logical way. Because constructs cannot be observed directly, the researcher connects
them with concrete, observable variables using operatonal defnitons. An operatonal defniton
classiies theoretcal constructs in terms of observable operatons, procedures, and measurements. If
the operatonal defnitons of the constructs are valid, the study is said to have construct validity:
Construct validity of the cause: extent to which the independent variable (=variable
manipulated by the researcher that is assumed to lead to changes in the dependent variable)
is a valid representaton of the theoretcal stmulus.
Construct validity of the efect: extent to which the dependent variable (=variable in a study
that represents the result of the events and processes) is a valid representaton of the
theoretcal response.
Experimental studies: Most social psychologists favor experimental studies over nonexperimental
studies, partly because an experiment can show causality. Experiments have two essental features:
- The researcher has control over the procedures.
- Partcipants are randomly assigned to the levels of the independent variable. Random
assignment means that each partcipant has an equal chance of being in each group.
If a researcher can manipulate an independent variable but cannot use random assignment, the
study is called a quasi-experiment.
A study is said to have internal validity if the researcher can be relatvely confdent that changes in
the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable.
,Experiments conducted in a real-world setng outside a laboratory are called feld experiments. The
primary strength of a laboratory experiment is control over other variables that might innuence the
results; the primary weakness is that the setng is less realistc. owever, the term realistc can mean
diferent things:
Experimental realism: the ex tent to which study partcipants get so caught up in the
procedures that they can forget they are in an ex periment.
Mundane realism: refers to whether the setng of an ex periment physically resembles the
real world.
Laboratory experiments are generally low in mundane realism, but they can be high in experimental
realism. A study is said to have external validity if the fndings are likely to generalizee to other people
and other setngs. Experimental realism is more important than mundane realism in determining
whether the results of a study will generalizee to the real word.
Other terms used in experiments are:
Within-subjects design: partcipants are ex posed to all levels of the independent variable.
Between-subjects design: partcipants are ex posed to only one level of the independent
variable.
Confounding: occurs when the two efects of variables cannot be separated.
Stmulus sampling: using more than one ex emplar of a stmulus he.g., more than one violent
video game),.
Confederate: a research assistant pretending to be another partcipant in a study.
Research ethics: Since 1974 all studies must frst receive Insttutonal Review Board RIRB/ approval.
This committee makes sure that a research study conducted in university setngs is ethical.
Therefore, almost all studies require researchers to give partcipants a consent form: a document
that partcipants receive before a study begins; the form contains enough informaton about the
study procedures, including any potental harm they hor others), might ex perience, so partcipants can
decide if they want to partcipate.
Partcipants usually try to fgure out what a study is about. Any cues that convey the hypothesis to
partcipants are called demand characteristcs and they can have a signifcant efect on how
partcipants behave. To reduce demand characteristcs, researchers sometmes use decepton
studies: research studies that withhold informaton from partcipants or intentonally mislead them
about the purpose of the study. At the end, there is a debriefng: an oral or writen statement
partcipants receive at the end of a psychological study; it serves two main purposes: h1), to fully
inform partcipants about the study and answer any questons they have, and h2), to reduce or
eliminate any stress or harm the partcipant ex perienced by being in the study.
Nonexperimental studies: In the correlatonal approach, the researcher does not try to control
variables or randomly assign partcipants to groups, but merely observes whether things go together.
A correlaton gives the relatonship or associaton between two variables. Two kinds of relatonship:
- When a correlaton is positve, as one variable goes up the other variable also goes up.
- When a correlaton is negatve, as one variable increases the other variable decreases.
Mathematcally, correlatons are computed in terms of the correlaton coefcient, denoted by r. A
correlaton coefcient can range from +1.0 to -1.0. A meta-analysis is a literature review that
averages the statstcal results from all studies conducted on the same topic. It is a quanttatve
literature review.
Survey research: The best way to obtain a representatve sample of the populaton (total number of
people under consideraton) is to take a random sample. A random sample of 1200 can give results
, that are 95% accurate, within -/+ 3% (margin of error: a statstc measure of the amount of random
sampling error in a survey’s results). Polls that are not based on random samples tell you little or
nothing about what the general populaton thinks.
With regard to surveys, two aspects of measurement are especially important:
Reliability: a measure that gives consistent results.
Validity: refers to whether a measure actually measures what it supposed to measure.
How much of social psychology is true?
Sources of concern about social psychology:
- Experts sometmes disagree. Sometmes both sides can point to experiments that seem to
support their connictng viewpoints. Moreover, some experiments can produce a wrong or
misleading conclusion. Because research builds on older research, science is self-
correctng, partly because of replicatons: repeatng a study to see if the efect is reliable.
- People worry of fndings are generalizeable (partcipants are mainly college students from the
US and Western Europe). College students do not difer all that fundamentally from other
people in most respects. Moreover, some psychological facts and principles are true for
people everywhere. There are also some cultural diferences, and some of them are quite
substantal and important.
Chapter 2 Culture and nature
Nature and social behavior
Explaining the psyche: One approach to understanding how people think, feel, and act is to try to
understand what the human psyche is designed for. The psyche is a broader term for mind,
encompassing emotons, desires, perceptons, and all other psychological processes.
Nature defned: Nature is the physical world around us, including its laws and processes. Those who
explain human behavior using nature invoke the sorts of processes that natural sciences have shown.
The advocates of nature in psychology turn to evolutonary theory to understand behavior patterns.
Evoluton, and doing what’s natural: The theory of evoluton, proposed by Coharles Darwin, focuses
on how change occurs in nature. Important features of almost all living things (including us), are:
- The drive to prolong life. There are two ways to do this: ‘To go on living’ and ‘reproducton’.
- Change: Each living thing changes as it grows older and change occurs from one generaton
to the next. The process of natural selecton decides which traits will disappear and which
will contnue. Natural selecton has two criteria: survival (living longer) and reproducton
(producing babies that survive long enough to also reproduce). A trait or mutaton (a new
gene or combinaton of genes) that improves survival or reproducton will tend to endure for
many generatons and become more common. owever, biologists have shifed their
emphasis from survival to reproducton as the single most important factor in natural
selecton: survival is important mainly as a means to achieve reproducton.
Social animals: Psychologists study people. People are social animals. Being social provides benefts.
It is a strategy that enables some animals to survive and reproduce efectvely.
The social brain: Social animals require brains with additonal, nexible capabilites. Bigger brains are
linked to having larger and more complex social groups. The human brain evolved mainly to enable
human beings to have rich, complex social lives.
Culture and human social life
Social animal or cultural animal?:
