6 1 15 7 6 15 Psyc221 Notes 1 Week One a Scientific Writing i You must use scientific language That means your paper should be written in the style of academic papers articles in scientific journals ii AVOID CONVERSATIONAL LANGUAGE iii Scientese iv Get right to the point v Do not cite the textbook or his lectures or popular press websites vi ALWAYS PARAPHRASE NO DIRECT QUOTES vii Explicitly define the key variables 1 Conceptually describe the variables in abstract terms What is self esteem 2 Operationally describe the general method for how a variable is measured or manipulated Survey observation etc viii Label the type of study 1 Correlational predictor and outcome instead of independent and dependent variables 2 Experimental ix Do not describe specific scales sample sizes demographics or any other details about the method x Overall format of writing 1 Intro a Outline goals of research explain the target phenomenon include your thesis and give the reader an overview of what will come next b Should give everything away c Your thesis statement needs to be a declaration of an association between variables a Also known as Literature Review b You will summarize results from previous scientific studies mentioning the key variables in those studies see above that are related to your thesis 2 Summary of previous research 3 Conclusions 4 Applications of the research xi Nothing needs to be in APA format except the in text citations and the references bibliography b Theories and Methods i Power of the situation the study of social situations 1 Social psychology predicts that people s behavior is more strongly influenced by the immediate situation ii Cultural context is also important to keep in mind because we can t assume that the behaviors we witness in our society are universal iii The tendency to over generalize is considered an error in external validity 1 i e Americans assuming everyone is WEIRD iv Learning Theory suggests behavior can be increased or decreased with rewards and punishments v Evolutionary Psychology contains the idea that human behavior was shaped by processes of natural selection and sexual selection our behavior may have once been adaptive as a way to solve problems that our ancestors faced thousands of years ago 1 Evolutionary psychologists look to identify behaviors as universal to humans and caused by biological forces if it meets these conditions a The behavior is observable in infants with minimal socialization which means it s less likely that the behavior was learned observed and more likely to be innate The behavior is observed across cultures all around the world and is not specific to one type of cultural norms b c The behavior is observed in genetically similar species e g bonobos chimpanzees 2 Positive psychology improving people s happiness and healing a person as a whole rather than just treating mental illness i Social cognition refers to the study of how human minds form store recall and represent the external world ii The way in which human minds form knowledge or what psychologists call schemas is inherently biased iii The mind processes things in 2 ways 1 Rational pathway a Synonyms conscious cognitive explicit controlled processing cold cognition System 2 b Critical thinking this part of the mind is very slow and deliberate c Requires effortful reasoning 2 Associative pathway Study of it is called automaticity c Social Cognition a Synonyms automatic experiential implicit peripheral processing hot cognition System 1 b Very fast and involves gut level intuition and instinct c Almost automatic d Most of what happens in the human mind is not e rational or controllable but rather instinctual and emotional John Bargh and others estimate that over 95 of our mental processes occur in the associative part of the human mind and call this the automaticity juggernaut i ii Spreading activation A model for the association of ideas and memories that is based on activating one memory will trigger associated items a How you start thinking about your high school friends whenever you hear the old Phoenix song 1901 from 6 years ago Prime Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences a response to another stimulus a As an example one study showed that when French music is played while people are in a liquor store French wine sales go up compared to days when other music is playing People are more likely to purchase French wine because their schema for France was activated by the music John Bargh demonstrated that priming people with thoughts about elderly people actually caused them to walk slower Also did this with rudeness b iii Embodied social cognition a Basically the logic is that our bodies will pick up sensory information which the mind translates into social information through embodied metaphors b Warm and cold temperature and demeanor i Participants who held a hot beverage were primed with the notion of warmth through their bodies and rated the stranger as more warm than people who held the iced beverage Importantly participants perceptions of other traits that are not related to warmth e g intelligence were not affected by temperature Heavy baggage Guilt a Ex People who wore a doctors lab coat performed c iv Enclothed cognition v better on cognitive tasks than those who were told they were wearing a painter s coat In the business world of advertising and marketing companies are constantly trying to forge an association in your mind between their product brand and generally positive qualities This is more commonly known as branding a People were more creative when shown the apple logo rather than IBM b People were more honest when shown the Disney logo rather than the E logo vi Direct replication is complex and very difficult to do a A research group claimed they could not replicate the study on the elderly words and walking speed vii Mimicry mirroring a Adopting mannerisms of those around you b Chameleon effect blending into social environments c In an experiment participants who were interacting with a confederate were more likely to rub their face when they saw the confederate rub their face and more likely to shake their foot when they saw the confederate shake their foot d Another experiment showed that if there was more mimicry during an interaction then participants liked the confederate more and also rated the interaction as going more smoothly i The logic is that if you get people on the same page physically
View Full Document
Unlocking...