Social Psychology What do social psychologists do o Goal have a broad understanding of how humans think act and feel o Focus on normal day to day behavior o ABC triad ex bad drivers Affect how people feel ex feeling anger Behavior what people do ex driving aggressively Cognition what people think ex thinking that others are out How internal personal changes lead to behavioral changes Ex how people act when they are feeling to get you o Personal influences on ABC Powerful Lonely o Situational influences on ABC How environmental changes lead to behavioral changes Ex how to people act when they are around o Other people compared to alone o People who are Older respectful Younger dumb down language Different sex o Use of the scientific method All of the questions just proposed are Empirical questions Can be answered through systematic observation and experimentation Best way to objectively assess reality Scientific explanations o Based on scientific method o Scientific explanations are empirical They are based on subjective systematic observations o Are rational they follow the rules of logic and are consistent with known facts also known s determinism o Only way object can affect you is if you re exposed to it first o Are testable they are verifiable through observation and can be disproved contrast with pseudoscience explanations fake science o Are parsimonious provide the simplest explanation using the fewest o Are general apply beyond the original observations on which they possible assumptions are based o Are tentative they are never accepted as absolutely correct o Are rigorously evaluated they are constantly evaluated for consistency with evidence generality and parsimony When scientific explanations fail o Faulty inference Scientific explanations involve the inference process If inference is wrong explanation fails Inference the test I am using measures IQ Is it a pure measure of IQ o Cultural biases might not understand context in it o Motivational influences maybe sick the day they took test so wasn t as motivated to answer questions Scientific theories theories use abstract concepts that are logically linked o IF sexually aroused THEN more risk taking o Sexual arousal is difficult to observe directly o Concepts must be grounded in reality Observable o Variables are operationally defined Ex sexual arousal writing about sexually arousing event Ex risk taking choosing hit option in blackjack Theoretical model o Theoretical stimulus theoretical response dependent variable independent variable o Independent variable is causal variable o Dependent variable depends upon the independent variable o Independent variable Manipulated by researcher in a true experiment Proposed cause o Dependent variable The effect Observable behavior or response o Sexual arousal risk taking completed sexual arousal of hits on black jack game Research design experimental designs o Experiment Research controls procedures participants randomly assigned to condition anyone in the lab could be assigned to either prompt allows for statements of cause and effect situations of arousal causes an increase in risk taking IV not manipulated no random assignment ex gender age Can infer cause and effect but not conclusively Ex testing the hypothesis men take more risks than women o quasi experiment Non experimental studies o Correlational approach No attempt to control for other variables No random assignment o Weakness does not prove causation But good 1st step to see if there is a relationship o Correlation Relationship between 2 variables Correlation coefficient Range from 1 to 1 tells you how strong the two relationships are and the strength valance tells you what kind of relationship you have 0 no relationship at all positive correlation positive relationship negative correlation the more you party the worse o Three kinds you do in school Case study 1 or a very small number of ppl and observe them and their behaviors Usually done on specialized populations Naturalistic observation Survey questionnaires measuring a couple different variables Reading social psych articles o Thinking critically about social psych Peer review process Top journals have it Experts review methods and theory assess validity What if researchers mess up lie Self correcting nature of science o Emphasis on replication if a couple of researchers submit publication that doesn t agree with reality and isn t valid other researchers wont be able to replicate what they found Some top journals unofficially require at least 2 experiments per article Shows results can be replicated o If others can t replicate a finding that line of research will die out Support will start to die down Psych articles o 5 major sections o title o authors abstract intro method results discussion first hint regarding what the article is about usually work on the same 2 3 topics o abstract gives a brief overview of the article 120 words article evaluation intro o should provide 3 pieces of info research question what phenomenon is the author going to explore theoretical context what research has previously been done on this topic what would psychological theories suggest about the topic hypothesis state the hypothesis and explain the reasoning for the hypothesis Usually at the end of the general introduction and repeated again in the introduction for each study o has the author accurately interpreted previous research o Does the article cite relevant research o Has the reviewed research been logically presented so that the hypothesis makes sense Article evaluation method o Should provide at least 3 pieces of info Participants Materials Procedure Who was studied and how many people What was used to test the hypothesis How did they choose these materials Detailed description of what was done Other researchers should be able to replicate exactly what they did o Does the sample represent the intended population o Does the method get at the hypothesis o Do the operational definitions make sense Does what they are actually measuring reflect the concept in the hypothesis o What was done to minimize potential bias Blind procedures minimize social desirability effects when people behave in such a way when they know what someone wants Random assigning minimizes differences btwn groups Article evaluation results o Should provide at least 3 pieces of info Descriptive statistics e g means Statistical tests performed Significance of statistical tests Were the results unlikely due
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