Summary of the 13 chapters of the book. Important experiments are described as well, definitions are easy to find. Only the second chapter consists merely of the definitions, since this is a chapter on research methods. The rest of the chapters is summarized completely.
Summary Social Psychology
Summary Social Psychology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
1.1 Defining Social Psychology ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
1.2 The Power of the Situation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3
1.3 Where Construal Come From: Basic Human Motives--------------------------------------------- 3
Chapter 2 Methodology (only definitions) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.1 Social Psychology: An Empirical Science -------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.2 Research Designs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4
2.3 New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research ---------------------------------------------------- 5
2.4 Ethical Issues in Social Psychology --------------------------------------------------------------------- 5
Chapter 3 Social Cognition---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5
3.1 Automatic Pilot: Low-Effort Thinking ------------------------------------------------------------------ 5
3.2 Types of Automatic Thinking ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
3.3 Cultural Differences in Social Cognition -------------------------------------------------------------- 6
3.4 Controlled Social Thinking: High-Effort Thinking --------------------------------------------------- 6
Chapter 4 Social Perception -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7
4.1 Nonverbal Communication------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7
4.2 First Impressions: Quick but Long-Lasting------------------------------------------------------------ 8
4.3 Causal Attribution: Answering the ‘Why?’ Question ---------------------------------------------- 8
4.4 Culture and Social Perception --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
Chapter 5 The Self -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
5.1 The Origins and Nature of the Self-Concept --------------------------------------------------------- 9
5.2 Knowing Ourselves Through Introspection -------------------------------------------------------- 10
5.3 Knowing Ourselves by Observing our own Behavior -------------------------------------------- 10
5.4 Using other people to know ourselves-------------------------------------------------------------- 11
5.5 Self Control: The Executive Function of the Self-------------------------------------------------- 12
5.6 Impression Management ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12
5.7 Self-Esteem: How We Feel About Ourselves ------------------------------------------------------ 12
Chapter 6 The Need to Justify Our Actions ----------------------------------------------------------------- 13
6.1 The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance----------------------------------------------------------------- 13
6.2 Self-Justification in Everyday Life --------------------------------------------------------------------- 14
Chapter 7 Attitudes and Attitude Change ------------------------------------------------------------------ 15
7.1 The Nature and Origin of Attitudes ------------------------------------------------------------------ 15
7.2 When do Attitudes Predict Behavior?--------------------------------------------------------------- 16
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, 7.3 How do Attitudes Change? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16
7.4 The Power of Advertising ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17
7.5 Resisting Persuasive Messages------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17
Chapter 8 Conformity -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18
8.1 Conformity: When and Why? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18
8.2 Informational Social Influence ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18
8.3 Normative Social Influence----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18
8.4 Strategies for Using Social Influence----------------------------------------------------------------- 19
8.5 Obedience to Authority --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20
Chapter 9 Group Processes------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20
9.1 What is a Group? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20
9.2 Individual Behavior in a Group Setting -------------------------------------------------------------- 21
9.3 Group Decisions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21
9.4 Conflict and Cooperation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23
Chapter 10 Interpersonal Attraction ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23
10.1 What Predicts Attraction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 23
10.2 Making Connections in the Age of Technology ------------------------------------------------- 25
10.3 Love and Close Relationships ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 25
10.4 Ending Intimate Relationships ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 26
Chapter 11 Prosocial Behavior--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27
11.1 Basic Motives Underlying Prosocial Behavior --------------------------------------------------- 27
11.2 Personal Qualities and Prosocial Behavior ------------------------------------------------------- 27
11.3 Situational Determinants of Prosocial Behavior ------------------------------------------------ 28
11.4 How Can Helping Be Increased? -------------------------------------------------------------------- 29
Chapter 12 Aggression ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29
12.1 Evolutionary, Cultural and Learning Explanations of Aggression--------------------------- 29
12.2 Social Situations and Aggression -------------------------------------------------------------------- 31
12.3 Violence and the Media ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31
12.4 How to Decrease Aggression------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32
Chapter 13 Prejudice --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 33
13.1 Defining Prejudice -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 33
13.2 Detecting Hidden Prejudices ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 34
13.3 The Effects of Prejudice on the Victim ------------------------------------------------------------ 34
13.4 Causes of Prejudice ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 34
13.5 Reducing Prejudice ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35
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,Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
1.1 Defining Social Psychology
Social psychology = the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings and
behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.
Social influence = the effect that words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on
our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviors.
Empirical = derived from experiments and measurement.
1.2 The Power of the Situation
Part of Social Psychologists job is to find under which circumstances one or another
assumption is true.
Level of analysis = the individual in the context of a social situation.
This is not like in sociology, where the main focus is on the group. Social Psychology
emphasizes the psychological processes shared by most people around the world that make
them susceptible to social influence. The importance of the situation really helps taking
perspective.
Fundamental attribution error = the tendency to explain our and others’ behavior entirely in
terms of personality traits and underestimate social influence and situations.
[EXPERIMENT] Wall street game VS community came as a name for the prisoner’s dilemma.
The name of the game has an influence on how competitive or cooperative the participants
are.
Behaviorism = a theory of psychology that to understand human behavior, you only have to
consider reinforcing properties of the environment.
Behaviorism overlooks the importance of how people interpret their environment. Behavior
namely also depends on Construal = the way in which people perceive, comprehend and
interpret the social world. This is very important in Gestalt Psychology = a theory which
stresses the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s
minds, rather than the objective physical attributes of the object. We are mostly busy with
guessing all the time about another person’s state of mind, motives and thoughts. This is
what we often react to, even though we often assume the wrong things.
Naïve realism = the conviction that we ourselves perceive things ‘as they really are’.
[EXPERIMENT] Israeli proposals labeled as Palestinian weren’t attractive to Israeli citizens.
1.3 Where Construal Comes From: Basic Human Motives
Why do we construe the social world the way we do? There are two motives: the need to
feel good about ourselves and the need to be accurate. These often tug us in opposite
directions.
Self-esteem = to see yourself as good, competent and decent. When it’s used to justify
actions, it can impede change and self-improvement.
Need for accuracy = we want to view the world as accurate as possible. à
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, Social Cognition = how people select, interpret and use information to make judgements and
decisions. Unfortunately, many mistakes are made here: we often lack facts to judge a
situation accurately. Expectations about the social world may also interfere with perceiving
it accurately and can change the nature of the social world.
[EXPERIMENT] Self-fulfilling prophecy with elementary school kids and a ‘biased’ teacher.
Chapter 2 Methodology (only definitions)
2.1 Social Psychology: An Empirical Science
Hindsight bias = the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something
occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occurred.
2.2 Research Designs
Observational method = the technique whereby a researcher observes people and
systematically records measurements or impressions of their behavior.
Ethnography = the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture
by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have.
Inter-judge reliability = the level of agreement between two or more people who
independently observe and code a set of data; by showing that two or more judges
independently come up with the same observations, researchers ensure that the
observations are not the subjective, distorted impressions of one individual.
Archival analysis = a form of observational methods in which the researcher examines the
accumulated documents, or archives of a culture.
Correlational method = the technique whereby two or more variables are systematically
measured and the relationship between them is assessed.
Correlation coefficient = a statistical technique that assesses how well you can predict one
variable from another.
Surveys = research in which a representative sample of people is asked questions about their
attitude or behavior.
Random selection = a way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a
population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the
sample.
Experimental method = the method in which the researchers randomly assign participants to
different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the
independent variable.
Independent variable = the variable a researcher changes to see if it has an effect on some
other variable.
Dependent variable = the variable a researcher measures to see if it’s influenced by the
independent variable.
Random assignment to condition = all participants have an equal chance so you can assume
equal groups with equal backgrounds and personalities.
Probability level = p-value; how likely it is that results occurred by chance, find significance
for a certain probability level.
Internal validity = nothing besides the IV influences the DV, by controlling for extraneous
variables and using random assignment.
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