PSYC221 Introduction 9 4 WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Normative human behavior Mental processes associated with social interactions Any social interaction is a form of social psychology Going to a party voting having sex etc Life is X rated we will study the dark side unfiltered and uncensored Also a funny side of life WHAT S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EDUCATION SYSTEM IN HARRY POTTER AND US They do more hands on work as we will do in this course They only study stuff that they use in their lives no math similarly in this class we will actually use everything about social psychology in our everyday lives Ex Don t wear red on a job interview b c research shows that when red is worn in a job interview they get rated as less qualified But wear red on a date b c the color evokes feelings of attraction Theories Methods Social Cognition 9 9 13 INTUITION VS RESEARCH Lay theories philosophy Intuition is often correct but sometimes misses the complete picture Ex Job interview pratfalls minor imperfection in someone s behavior that makes them seem more down to earth or human accidentally spilling coffee on interviewers desk after a interview flawless Counterintuitive results findings Hot cold beverage and social behavior People held hot cold cups of coffee and then rated people as warm or cold The people rated others as warmer when holding the hot cups Sensation of physical warmth activated a schema for warmth and enthusiasm PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE Media portrayal Opposites attract Facebook and divorce Not much evidence for the opposites attract claim 1 out of 5 divorce cases in certain area were caused by Facebook Probably a very skewed sample size and not a well organized study but hearing that 20 of divorces are from Facebook is a seemingly amazing statistic Exaggerated claims Effect size vs significance THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES What influences social behavior Theory can help guide explanations WHAT CAUSES SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 1 How people behave is mostly determined by their personality 2 How people behave is mostly determined by the immediate situation they re in 62 of our class voted for 2 Most social psychologists would say that the field is the POWER OF THE SITUATION Situations matter Color of walls in the room the season outside the temperature in the room Our behavior will differ based on these different norms These variances matter more than personality disposition ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT Not immediate situation but broader environment socialization Time period in history geography culture Government and legality These are all external variables that really have nothing to do with peoples personalities and differences WEIRD SOCIETIES Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies This is the acronym used by social psychologists to describe participants in most studies Culture matters LEARNING THEORY Classical Conditioning Pairing stimuli response is generated Reinforcement rewards punishment Modeling mimicking behavior COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Information Processing Mind a computer Senses generate input behavior is the output Information is filtered organized biased INFORMATION PROCESSING 2 MINDS Conscious Slow reasoning effort taxing deliberate controllable flexible Automatic Fast evaluations based on gut instinct effortless unintentional stable stubborn Studying for an exam is a conscious process Reacting to seeing a tarantula is an automatic process Stroop test reading a color printed in a different color Automatic mind makes us want to say what s written but the conscious mind is what allows us to determine the color that the letters are written in For RED I would say blue with my conscious mind AUTOMATICITY Most psychological processes occur automatically Bargh 5 of processes in human mind are governed by conscious control Baumesiter Supported by most different theoretical perspectives EMBODIED COGNITION AUTOMATICITY Mind body connection Sensitive to physical environmental cues When people sit in a hard backed chair they actually become tougher negotiators The hard backed surface makes them more stiff and rigid Car dealerships will sit you down in a comfortable and plush chair so you don t put up as much of a fight during negotiations Wobbly chair uncertainty People in relationships were asked to estimate how long they would last responses were shorter from people sitting in wobbly chairs Heavy backpack guilty feelings Heavy objects weighty more lengthy decisions Hot cold beverage 1st impressions and generosity see earlier in the notes PRIMING Spreading activation If a researcher primes a participant they are presenting a stimulus and seeing how it triggers responses in subsequent behavior If I say the word cat the word dog is much more likely to be triggered in our minds than if I had used the word chair Because cat and dog are more related in our minds than chair and dog Priming activates related concepts ideas in the mind s network It s automatic and uncontrollable IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETING People associate brands with personality and goal pursuits Apple nonconformity innovation creativity IBM traditional responsible Exposed participants to Apple and IBM logos Apple logo higher performance on creativity tests and higher creativity motivation The only reason priming works is because these associations are already formed in our minds from thousands of exposures have already seen the Apple logo thousands of times people Embedded words and anagrams Participants are exposed to reading comprehension word scramble word pair and memory test Bargh gave people paragraphs to read that had words embedded in them that are associated with elderly people retirement elderly Florida Afterwards participants were secretly recorded walking away The ones who had been primed with elderly words walked away more slowly WRITE DOWN WORDS WE REMEMBER FROM LIST HE READ OUT LOUD QUICKLY Stars bed nighttime pillow yawning narcolepsy tired moon A bunch of people got words like sleep and dream that weren t even on the list Because we were primed with words that were related to sleeping peoples minds assumed that sleep and dream were words ADAPTATION AND SURVIVAL EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY Behavior is purposeful Solves problems faced by ancestors Binge eating developed from back when people didn t know when their next meal would come from so they had to overeat Now we just do it for no reason Nothing has inherent value or quality Seeing a pile of dog shit is disgusting to us but dinner to flies The sky isn t actually
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