PSY 223 1st edition Lecture 1 8 20 Outline of Last Lecture I Syllabus Outline of Current Lecture II Introduction to Social Psychology A Definition of social psychology B Use of scientific method III Social Context IV Social Psychology vs Common Sense V Social Psychology and other disciplines Current Lecture Intro to Social Psychology We are all amateur social psychologists think we all like to people watch Social psychology attempts to explain how thoughts feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual imagined or implied presence of others Social psychologists use scientific method include systematic observation description and measurement hallmark of social psychology is the experimental study considered best method but only used for some experiments because not everything can be manipulated Social Context Central phenomenon of social psychology social context Social context social psychologists study how people are influenced by the situations in which they are in and how they exert influence on each other These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Walton and Cohen study to illustrate social context about stress of freshman year in minority groups in textbook ch 1 Wall Street Game vs Community Game another study on social context used participants who were either labeled especially cooperative or especially competitive Told them to play a game either called the wall street game or the community game Researchers found those who played wall street game played competitively and those who played community game played cooperatively regardless of previous personality characteristics Found the power of social influence Social psych is different from common sense Unlike common sense social psych uses scientific method Although some research confirms common sense social psych also reveals that an answer may depend on a variety of factors Social psych and related disciplines Personality Psych personality psych seeks to understand differences between individuals but social psych looks at how social factors influence people regardless of different personalities Cognitive Psych social psych wants to look and how people think learn remember and reason with respect to social information and how processes are relevant to social behavior Clinical Psych social psych not interested in disorders instead how individuals think feel behave and influence each other Sociology interested in similar issues violence prejudice marriage but sociology focuses on group level whereas social psych focuses on individual ex Sociology tracks racial attitudes of middle class Social psych examine specific factors that make individuals behave in racist way Social psych also more likely to conduct experiments with manipulated variables
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