Chapter 1—The Mission and the Method Learning Objectives:1. What is social psychology? How is it different from other sciences? Other psy-chological fields?a. Social psychology: the scientific study of how people affect and are af-fected by others. Social psychology can also help you make sense of you social world. i. Social psychology came into its own field in the 1950s and 1960s. Two camps: behaviorism VS Freudian psychoanalysis. Behaviorism sought to explain all of psychology in terms of learning principles such as rewards and punishment. Freudian preferred elaborate interpretations of individual experiences in-stead of systematic studies that counted behaviors. b. Social psychology is related to other social sciences include: anthropol-ogy, economics, history, political science, and sociologyi. Anthropology: is the study of human culture, which consists of shade values, beliefs, and practices of a group of people. Social psych. cannot understand people fully without understand their cultural contextii. Economics: is the study of production, distribution and consum-mation of goods and services. Some social psych concepts are based on economic principles—social exchange—, focus on how large social systems affect behavior. iii. History: is the study of past events. Social psych,. debate whether the behaviors we study have changed historically. iv. Political science: is the study of political organizations and insti-tutions, esp. governments. Social psych. conduct study of politi-cal behaviors. v. Sociology: is the study of human societies and the groups that form those societies. Similar to social psych. differ in their fo-cus. Social psych. focus from inside the individual and work out-ward, whereas sociologist start with large units.c. Psychology is the study of human behavior. Other psych, fieldsi. Biological/physiological psych. and neuroscience: the study of what happens in the brain, nervous system, and other aspects of the body. (biological aspects of social behavior). ii. Clinical psych: focuses on behavior disorders and other forms ofmental illness and how to treat them. Focuses on abnormal be-haviors.iii. Cognitive psych: the basic study of thought processes, such as how memory works and what events people notice. iv. Developmental psych: study of how people change across their lives from conception and birth to old age and death. v. Personality psychology; focuses on important differences be-tween individuals, as well as inner processes.2. What is the ABC triad?a. Social psychology is conceded with the effect of other people on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. These three dimensions are known as the building blocks of social psych. aka the ABC triadb. A= Affect (noun, how people feel inside). For example: how people feelabout themselves (self-esteem), issues (attitude), others (prejudice)c. B=Behavior (what people do, their actions)d. C=Cognition (what people think about). What people think about them-selves (self concept), others (forming impressions), various problems and issues in the social world (protecting the environment). e. Social psych are concerned about the effects of personal and situa-tional influences on these ABCs. They focus especially on the power of situations. 3. What is the scientific method? How does it apply to psychology?a. Social psych. embraces the scientific method. Most social psych. use experiments to carefully and systematically test theories. b. Ways of learning about people: reading, watching, living, talking. c. Scientific method is the most rigorous way of sorting out the valid lessons from the mistaken ones. d. the world’s common wisdom is filled with social psychological trusts. Some end up contradicting one another. Human intuition is a poor method for discovering the trust, even if we observe and learn about these phenomenons through our senses. We cannot rely on intuition/common sense; we need the scientific method. e. Science—> a method for discovering the trust, not a disciple. f. Scientific method: i. the researcher states a problem for study and conduct a reviewof literatureii. ..formulates a testable hypothesis as a tentative solution to theproblem1. Hypothesis: “an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts by has not yet been proved” an ed-ucated guess. iii. … designs a study to test the hypothesis and collect dataiv. ..a test is made of the hypothesis by confronting it with data (run an experiment). Statistical methods are used to test whether the data are consistent/inconsistent with the hypothe-sis (analyze results). 1. No single study can prove something beyond doubtv. …communicates the study results. Submits a manuscript de-scribing exactly what was done and found to a scientific journal.4. What are the three types of explanations people use to acquire knowledge, and what are the differences between these explanations? Which of these ways is the most common way for researchers to acquire knowledge?a. Belief- based explanations: typically getting information from other people, authority figure—parents, religion, professor etc. Beliefs ac-cepted as truth in the absence of evidence or in the presence of con-tradictory evidence. i. Often accepted on the basis of: indoctrination (ppl tell you this is the way things work and you need to accept it), upbringing, personal needb. Common-sense explanations: based on someone’s intuition, gut-feel-ings. Sometimes they are more rational and deduced by logic.i. Derived from the world around us, our experiences, observed events, etc. ii. Limitations: Seem intuitively true but have NOT been rigorously tested. However, can be helpful in creating theories for new re-search. c. Scientific-explanations: usually through observations and the scientific method. 5. What are seven characteristics that define the scientific method? How are these characteristics applied in scientific research?a. Scientific explanations are are based on objective, systematic, obser-vations. i. They are RATIONAL, they follow the rules of logic and are con-sistent with known facts (also known as determinism) ii. They are TESTABLE, they are verified through observation and can be disproved (contract w/ pseudoscience explanations). It ispossible to prove a hypothesis, and it is possible to have an ex-periment NOT support your hypothesis.iii. They are PARSIMONIOUS: they provide the simplest explanationusing the fewest possible assumptions iv. They are GENERAL,
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