PSYC221 Exam 1 Study Guide Chapter 1 The Mission and the Method Introduction to Social Psychology Social psychology the scientific study of how people affect and are affected by others Involves normative human behavior and mental processes Includes social cognition personality social influence relationships and sexuality political psychology and group behavior aggression and violence altruism and helping and religion and morality Social psychology uses scientific approaches to measure behavior thoughts feelings and other inner states Throughout history there was a battle between behaviorism and Freudian psychoanalysis In the end neither was compatible Behaviorism explained all of psychology in terms of learning principles Favored experiments and the scientific method Freudian psychoanalysis used interpretations of individual experiences instead of systematic studies that counted behaviors Interested in inner states and unconscious processes ABC s of Social Psychology Affect how people feel inside about themselves self esteem others prejudice and about various issues attitudes Behavior what people do in terms of behavior working playing helping others Cognition what people think about themselves self concept others forming impressions and social issues protecting the environment Social psychology focuses upon the power of the situation Example Participants who were primed with words that represent the elderly walked slower than participants who were primed with words that are not associated with the elderly The color of the walls where you are season setting etc all impact how we behave The social context the time periods geography culture government is not the same as the situation It can t trace back to an individual personality Ex hand gestures are different across cultures A social psychologist is usually interested in studying the individual Intuition vs Research Lay folk theories theories that aren t scientific but can be found in expressions and clich s Common sense explanations that are not always correct The Scientific Method Intuition is sometimes correct but not always For example in a job interview study participants were all the same except one participant spills coffee on the interviewer Our intuition says that we aren t going to like that person as much But the findings were the exact opposite People liked the job applicant more when they spilled coffee because subtle imperfections make a person more likable Pratfall when a person is more likeable when they do something embarrassing or imperfect First impression study people who handed participants a hot coffee were liked more than those who handed them a cold coffee Physical warmth indicated social warmth Science is in place to be the unbiased source of empirical information The media portrays things like opposites attract which aren t true There are also exaggerated claims Theory composed of constructs abstract ideas or concepts that are linked together in some logical way They are connected with observable variables and help guide our explanations Theories are explanations or interpretations of phenomena Phenomena things that we observe in general terms Construct validity the variable is a valid representation of the theoretical stimulus Quasi experiment when the researcher can t use random assignment to assess an independent variable classrooms frats athletic groups For example to study marriage you can t randomly assign people to be married or single You have to compare people who are married with those who happen to be single Internal validity the extent to which changes in the independent variable caused changes in the dependent variable Confounding occurs when the effects of two variables cannot be separated Ex the effects of violence vs excitement in individuals playing video games Factoral design an experiment that includes more than one independent variable or factor Reactance an unpleasant emotional response that people often experience when someone is trying to restrict their freedom Ex taking longer to pull out of a spot when someone is waiting for it Field experiment an experiment conducted in a real world setting Mundane realism whether the setting physically resembles the real world Experimental realism whether participants get so caught up in the procedures that they forget they are in an experiment External validity the extent to which the findings from a study can be generalized to other people settings or time periods Nonexperimental Studies Correlation the measure of the relationship between two variables Does not imply causation Coefficient ranges from 1 to 0 to 1 Zero means no relationship Meta analysis a quantitative literature review that combines the statistical results from all studies conducted on a topic Chapter 5 Social Cognition What is Social Cognition People use their brains to think about other people The mind is like a computer The brain processes information in a biased way and as a result we behave Positive psychology studies on positive emotions behaviors and outcomes Not all behaviors are necessarily evil even if there is an evil outcome Conformity for example has a negative connotation but there are times where it can be positive such as in an emergency Learning theories related to behaviorism Conditioning the pairing of stimuli Ex Pavlov s dog experiment Reinforcement rewards punishment Modeling mimicking Evolutionary psychology our behavior is adaptive and purposeful What we are doing must have some evolutionary advantage Nothing truly has value Cognitive miser people are reluctant to do extra thinking and question what they already know Thinking takes effort and a person s capacity to think is limited As a result people take shortcuts Makes us faster to make judgments or decisions based on a small amount of information Leads to errors and biases Heuristics mental shortcuts You assume that a more expensive product is of higher quality People reported that a more expensive wine was better than a cheaper wine even though it was the same Randomness doesn t appear random We see patterns that aren t really there Personal narratives weigh more heavily in peoples minds than statistical information Ex the phone always rings when I am in the shower you trust product reviews from someone you know more than a statistic Representativeness heuristic the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles the typical case What does random look
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