Inhoud
CH 1 Social psychology, the science of the social side of life..................................................................1
CH 2 Social cognition, how we think about the social world..................................................................8
CH 3 Social perception, seeking to understand others.........................................................................14
CH 4 The self, answering the question “Who am I?”............................................................................20
CH 5 Attitudes, evaluating and responding to the social world............................................................25
CH 7 Liking, love and other close relationships....................................................................................32
CH 8 Social influence; changing others’ behavior.................................................................................39
CH 9 Prosocial behavior, helping others...............................................................................................41
CH 10 Aggression; its nature, causes and control.................................................................................46
CH 11 Groups and individuals, the consequences of belonging...........................................................51
CH 1 Social psychology, the science of the social side of
life
Connecting with others – both as individuals and as part of social groups – is a major predictor not
only of happiness and well-being, but also of physical health
Solitary confinement is so bad for mental health that it is often considered ‘cruel and unusual
punishment’
Even digital forms of connection to others help to satisfy our emotional needs
Social contact is a central aspect of our lives. In a very basic sense, it helps define who we are and
the quality of our existence
How we think about ourselves at any given point in time – our identity – is shaped by our
relationships with other people, which in turn guides our social behaviors
Social psychology: what it is and is not
Objective: evaluate the diverse topics that social psychology seeks to understand
Social psychology is the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual
behavior, feelings and thoughts in social situations. Another way to put this is to say that social
psychology investigates the ways in which our thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced by the
social environments in which we find ourselves – by other people or our thoughts about them
Social psychology is scientific in nature
The term science refers to two thing: (1) a set of values and (2) methods that can be used to study a
wide range of topics
Four of the core values that all fields must adopt to be considered scientific in nature are:
1. Accuracy (a commitment to gathering and evaluating information about the world in as
careful, precise, and error-free a manner as possible)
2. Objectivity (a commitment to obtaining and evaluating such information in a manner that is
as free from bias as possible)
, 3. Skepticism (a commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent they have
been verified over and over again)
4. Open-mindedness (a commitment to changing one’s views – even those that are strongly
held – if existing evidence suggests that these views are inaccurate)
Common sense often suggests a confusing and inconsistent picture of human behavior. Yet, it can
offer intriguing hypotheses that can be tested in controlled research
The scientific method is designed to help us determine not just which of the opposite sets of
predictions is correct, but also when, for whom and why one or the other might apply
Most of us fall victim to the planning fallacy, there is a strong tendency to believe that projects will
take less time than they actually do or, alternatively, that we can accomplish more in a given period
of time than is really true
, Social psychology focuses on the behavior of individuals
All of us are strongly influenced by other people and the situations we find ourselves in, much
research will systematically examine cultural and other contextual factors to illuminate just how
those influences are exerted on the individual
Social psychologists examine how groups influence individual behavior, how culture becomes
internalized and affects individual preferences, and how emotions and moods affect the decisions
made by the individual
Many nonsocial factors (features of the environment; how the information we receive is framed) can
exert powerful effects on us, often by influencing our emotions and social thoughts
Social contexts/experiences self-identities social behavior
Social psychology seeks to understand the causes of social behavior
Social psychologists are primarily interested in understanding the many factors and conditions that
shape the social thought and behavior of individuals – their actions, feelings, beliefs, memories and
judgments
Obviously, a huge number of variables can play a role, although most fall under a few major
headings:
The actions and characteristics of other persons
- Instances where we observe other people and respond to them, indicate that other people’s
emotional expressions often have a powerful impact upon us
- We are often strongly affected by other people’s group memberships as indicated by
appearance (even if we are unaware of such effects and might deny their existence)
Cognitive processes
- Reactions in situations will depend on memories of past behavior and inferences about
whether possible excuses/explanations are really true
- We try to make sense of people in our social world by attributing their actions to something
about them (e.g. traits) or something about the circumstances
Environmental variables; impact of the physical world
- Aspects of the physical environment can indeed influence our feelings, thoughts and
behavior
Biological factors
- Our preferences, emotions and behaviors may be linked, to some extent, to our biological
inheritance
- Environmental factors and social experiences – through what is called epigenetics processes,
where the operation of certain genes is turned on or off – can influence behavior, sometimes
long after initial exposure
- The evolutionary psychology suggests that our species has been subject to the process of
biological evolution throughout its history and that, as a result, we now possess a large
number of evolved psychological mechanisms that help (or once helped) us to deal with
important problems related to survival
