chapter 1: introduction Flashcards
what is the definition of social psychology
-What is social psychology, and how is it different from other disciplines?
definition: It is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people (i.e., the study of social influence).
-Another important aspect of the field is attitudes, we will look at how these things influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
social psychology vs. philosophy
Address many of the same questions
-Or same topics
Social psychology explores them scientifically (empirically)
-Difference in how we approach these topics, empirically means based on research or observable evidence
Philosophy uses reasoning
-Example of philosophy:
-Does life have meaning?
Example of social psychology:
-What effect does believing that life has meaning have on your health?
empirical vs. non-empirical questions
-Social psychology is concerned with “empirical” questions
-Empiricism: knowledge should be based on objective evidence
-It’s ok to have thoughts and ideas about non-empirical things, but that’s not psychology
why not learn about the world through common sense
common sense is often contradictory
explain a common sense being contradictory example
Birds of a feather flock together
-Empirical evidence shows that this statement is more true than opposites attract, human beings tend to pair off with people who are more similar to them
Opposites attract
-Research found that opposites work well together is when one person is very frugal and the other member is someone that spends a lot more money, this makes the relationship work because the couple ends up being financially responsible
-But other than that, people tend to flock towards those who are similar
how do social psychologists predict behavior
Social psychologists predict behavior by forming hypotheses and testing them empirically
-Give people online dating information about potential relationship partners
-See if they are more attracted to similar partners
where did social psychology come from
behaviorism
how did social psychology come from behaviorism and the problems with behaviorism
-Studied observable stimuli’s effect on behavior (what this field of psychology studies)
Chooses not to deal with cognition, thinking, and feeling (Skinner stated these things exist but do not have causal influence on the world around us and are too vague to study)
-Thinks these concepts are too vague
Behaviorism ignores construals of the situation (the way that people understand the situation they are in which is important for behavior), view of human nature is complete
-Inadequate for understanding the social world!
-Did not really get anything wrong, just an incomplete view
what is gestalt psychology
A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds (the gestalt or “whole”) rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object
-How the whole is more than the sum of its parts
-When you apply this to social situations, this is what social psychology really is
-Emphasis on construal, the way people interpret the social situation, has its roots in Gestalt psychology
explain the founding of Gestalt psychology
Gestalt Psychology was founded in Germany
-early 20th century
-Late 1930s, several of these psychologists emigrated to the U.S. to escape Nazi regime
-The reason we do not have Gestalt psychology today because it was founded in Germany in the early 20th century, many of the psychologists were Jewish, when the holocaust came many of them were killed, in concentration camps, or fled
explain Kurt Lewin
Among the émigrés was Kurt Lewin
-Founding father of modern experimental social psychology
-Applied Gestalt principles to social perception
-Stressed the importance of taking perspective of the people in any social situation to see how they construe social environment
-Importance of how people understand the social environment they are in
sociology vs. social psychology vs. personality psychology
Sociology: the study of groups, organizations, and societies rather than individuals
-Instead of focusing on people in general you are focusing on societies and organizations
-The study of groups is also included in social psychology
Social Psychology: the study of the psychological processes people have in common that make them susceptible to social influence
Personality Psychology: the study of the characteristics that make individuals unique and different from one another
explain fundamental attribution error
-When we do something we blame it on the environment, when someone else does something we assume it is in internal trait
explain how situation can impact how you act and example
The situation that you are in is very influential over you and more important than you realize, it is easy to think that we are individuals who do what we want, but this is at odds with what we know about human nature
Study: took RAs, identified people who were cooperative or competitive in nature (had the tenants on the floor identify who was cooperative or competitive), took all the people into a laboratory and had them play a game, game could be played in two ways (either win the most tokens for yourself and screw the people you were playing with over, or help out the people you are playing with), the one difference was the name of the game “The Community Game” or “The Wall Street Game”
-Results: the percentage of people who chose a cooperative strategy was the same in both Community Game and The Wall Street Game, people were more likely to cooperate in the community game and less likely to cooperate in the wall street game independent of their personality type
explain naive realism
The conviction that we see things accurately
-We have this idea that “I am seeing the world correctly and everyone else is extremely wrong”, people who think opposite things also have this idea in their head
