Chapter 1 Flashcards
The father of Modern Social Psychology
Gordon Allport (1954)
What is Social Psychology?
In the book of Myers (2010) it is defined as
“is a science that studies the influences of our situations, with special attention to how we view and affect one another”
What is Social Psychology?
More precisely,
“the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another”
We can learn behaviors from novels and alike but what makes social psych differ from artistic and humanistic endeavor is a ________.
Science
It applies _________ _________ or __________ ___________, description, and measurement to the study of human conditions.
scientific methods or systematic observation
it conducts _________ _________ _________ so that we can understand how a person’s behaviors and decisions are Influenced by the situation and by other people surrounding them.
rigid psychological studies
What is social psychology?
Social psychologists attempt to ___________________________________________. This search of general principles is not limited to the study of attitudes but it extends across the array of human behaviors and experiences.
establish general principles of attitude formation and change that will apply in various situations
What is Social Psychology?
- Science
- Focuses on the thoughts, feelings, & behaviors of individuals
- Focuses on individual
- Influenced by other human beings
- thoughts are the beliefs, expectations and alike (yes, our private thoughts can be social as well, how? I remember the story of one of my advisees in research, this happened during the time that she was so unmotivated to work on her paper. she told me that even in her solitude, when she thought about me, imagining that I’m asking for her output, she immediately had an urge to work on it.)
- feelings are our emotions and moods (have you ever experience to remember the person who hurt you, and suddenly you see yourself crying?)
- behaviors maybe overt and covert (these are the actions that we usually see or manifest. We tend to ask why certain behavior occurs, and so and so.)
FOCUSES ON THE THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, & BEHAVIORS OF
INDIVIDUALS
- Social psychology cares about how the group works or how society works. However, it focuses on the _________ in the group or society. It studies how the group or society influences the __________ as a member of it. How the ____________ grew or changed. What does he/she care about?, How does the group change her/his personal preference?
In short, even if it studies groups of people, they usually
emphasize the behavior of the ___________ in the group context.
FOCUS ON INDIVIDUAL
- Try to think of yourself when you are at home, how do you behave? when you are alone? How about with your siblings or parents? when you are with your close friends, what’s your behavior, When you are with your classmates that are not so close with you, how about with strangers, how’s your behavior? Does it change? Is it constant?
- Basically, our behavior change depending on people we are with. Our behavior is shaped by our social environment. Thus, the society has impact on you.
INFLUENCED BY OTHER HUMAN BEINGS
The study of people in groups and society.
Sociology
Social Psychology is the scientific study of (1) _______ _______ (how we perceive ourselves and others, what we believe, judgment we make, and our attitude), (2) ________ _________ (Culture, pressures to conform, persuasion, and groups of people), (3) ________ _________ (prejudice, aggression, attraction and intimacy and helping)
- Social Thinking
- Social Influences
- Social Relations
The Social Psychology Big Ideas
- These are the fundamental Principles
- Great ideas we ought never to forget in Social Psychology
- We construct our (own) social reality
- Our social intuitions are often powerful but sometimes perilous
- Social influences shape our behavior
- Personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behavior
- Social behavior is biologically rooted
- Social Psychology’s principle are applicable in everyday life
✔ We react differently to similar situations simply because we think differently
✔ There is an objective reality out there, but we always view it through the lens of our beliefs and values.
✔ Our beliefs about ourselves also matter. Do we have an optimistic outlook? Do we see ourselves as in control of things? Do we view ourselves as relatively superior or inferior? Our answers influence our emotions and actions.
✔ How we construe the world, and ourselves, matters.
We construct our (own) social reality
✔ Our instant intuitions shape our fears (is flying dangerous?), impressions (can I trust him?), and relationships (does she like me?)
✔ Our intuitive capacities are revealed by studies of what later chapters will explain: “automatic processing,” “implicit memory,” “heuristics,” “spontaneous trait inference,” instant emotions, and nonverbal communication.
✔ Thinking, memory, and attitudes all operate on two levels—one conscious and deliberate, the other unconscious and automatic. “Dual processing,” today’s researchers call it.
✔ Intuition is huge, but intuition is also perilous.
✔ We intuitively trust our memories more than we should. We misread our own
minds.
✔ Our intuitions and unconscious information processing are routinely powerful and sometimes perilous.
Our social intuitions are often powerful but sometimes perilous
✔ We speak and think in words we learned from others.
✔ As social creatures, we respond to our immediate contexts. Sometimes the power of a social situation leads us to act contrary to our expressed attitudes.
✔ Our cultures help define our situations. e.g. our standards regarding promptness, frankness, and clothing vary with our culture.
✔ Social psychologist Hazel Markus (2005) sums it up: “People are, above all, malleable.” Said differently, we adapt to our social context. Our attitudes and behavior are shaped by external social forces
Social influences shape our behavior
✔ Internal forces also matter.
✔ Our inner attitudes affect our behavior.
✔ As we will see, our attitudes also follow our behavior, which leads us to believe strongly in those things we have committed ourselves to or suffered for.
✔ Personality dispositions also affect behavior.
✔ Attitudes and personality influence behavior.
Personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behavior
✔ Many of our social behaviors reflect a deep biological wisdom.
✔ Biology and experience together create us. (nature vs. nurture)
✔ Social neuroscientists do not reduce complex social behaviors, such as helping and hurting, to simple neural or molecular mechanisms. Their point is this: To understand social behavior, we must consider both under-the-skin (biological) and between-skins (social) influences. Mind and body are one grand system.
✔ Stress hormones affect how we feel and act.
✔ Social ostracism elevates blood pressure.
✔ Social support strengthens the disease-fighting immune system.
✔ We are bio-psycho-social organisms. We reflect the interplay of our biological, psychological, and social influences.
Social behavior is biologically rooted
✔ Social psychology has the potential to illuminate your life, to make visible the subtle influences that guide your thinking and acting.
✔ As we will see, it offers many ideas about how to know ourselves better, how to win friends and influence people, and how to transform closed fists into open arms.
Social Psychology’s principles are applicable in everyday life
As we social psychologists wrestle with human nature to pin down its secrets, we organize our ideas and findings into __________.
Theories
A ________ is an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events.
Theory
Theories not only summarize but also imply testable predictions, called ___________.
Hypothesis/Hypotheses
🌸 It allows us to test a theory by suggesting how we might try to falsify it.
🌸 Its predictions direct research and sometimes send investigators looking for things they
might never have thought of.
🌸 Its predictive feature of good theories can also make them practical.
Purposes of hypotheses
As pioneering social psychologist _______ ________ declared, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.”
Kurt Lewin
A good theory:
🌀 effectively summarizes many observations
🌀 makes clear predictions that we can use to:
📌 confirm or modify the theory o generate new exploration
📌 suggest practical applications
Two types of research
Laboratory Research
Field Research
Controlled situation
Laboratory Research
Everyday situations
Field Research
Research Methods
- Correlational
- Experimental
The study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables (asking whether two or more factors are naturally associated)
📌 Its advantage is it often involves important variables in natural settings
📌 Its major disadvantage (ambiguous interpretation of cause and effect)
Correlational
Studies that seek clues to cause–effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant).
Experimental
