Current Issues in Social Psychology

Question 1

What is social psychology according to Allport (1935, p.5)

Answer 1

“The scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others”

Question 2

Which is an Overt behaviour?

Answer 2

A. Thoughts
B. Goals
C. Fighting
D. Feelings

Question 3

What did Folk Psychology determine in the late 1800s?

Answer 3

The collective mind. A societal way of thinking eg. crowds

Question 4

What approach did Tarde establish in (1898)?

Answer 4

The bottom -up approach
(the consideration of the individual)

Question 5

What are the main two strands of Social Psychology?

Answer 5

Psychological and Sociological

Question 6

What is the origin of the Psychological strand?

Answer 6

Logical empiricism

Question 7

What is the methodological approach to the psychological strand?

Answer 7

Quantitative/ Hypothetic-deductive
e.g. experimental

Question 8

What is the origin of the Sociological strand?

Answer 8

Social constructionist / humanistic

Question 9

What is the methodological approach to the sociological strand?

Answer 9

Qualitative/ Indicative
e.g. discourse analysis

Question 10

What did Shove (2010) state?

Answer 10

That society changes as a group/ whole
Psychologists and Sociologists shouldn’t work together.

Question 11

What did Durkheim state about social psychology?

Answer 11

That social laws are determined by society as a collective.

Question 12

what was Whitmash, O’Neil and Lorenzoni (2010)’s response to Shove (2010)?

Answer 12

Her models were over simplistic portrayals of society.

Question 13

Examples of Social Psychological Methods?

Answer 13

Surveys, Interviews, Focus Groups

Question 14

What’s an issue with lab based experiment?

Answer 14

low in external validity

Question 15

What’s a pro to using a lab based experiment

Answer 15

high in internal validity
avoidance of confounding variables

Question 16

What’s a con to using field experiments?

Answer 16

less control over variables
difficult to randomly assign participants

Question 17

What are demand characteristics?

Answer 17

Where the participants are aware of the hypothesis (or think they are) and change their behaviour which is either consistent or inconsistent wit the hypothesis.

Question 18

What are the three Level 3 Strategies of the model developed by Corneille & Lush (2021)? (demand characteristics)

Answer 18

Faking
Imagination
Phenomenological Control

Question 19

Faking (Corneille & Lush, 2021)

Answer 19

Intentional and Conscious
No genuine experience

Question 20

Imagination (Corneille & Lush, 2021)

Answer 20

Intentional and conscious
genuine experience

Question 21

Phenomenological Control (Corneille & Lus, 2021)

Answer 21

Intentional and unconscious
Genuine Experience

Question 22

4 ways to avoid Demand characteristics?

Answer 22

double blind studies
funnelled debrief
quasi controls
deception & distraction

Question 23

3 types of sensitivity (Tourangeau & Yan, 2007)

Answer 23

Intrusiveness: topics perceived as private or taboo.
Threat of disclosure: costs of potential disclosure.
Social desirability: adhere to social norms.

Question 24

6 ways to deal with sensitive questioning

Answer 24

anonymous research setting- no interviewer
have objective data
non-threading question wording
Assurance of confidentiality and data protection
bogus pipeline procedure
anonymous response techniques

Question 25

What are the 6 Ethics Guidelines according to the BPS (2014)?

Answer 25

Risk- harmful procedures or long term effects on the participant Consent- study info, written consent, option to withdraw Confidentiality- anonymity, reporting, destruction of data Advice Deception - to assure natural behaviour Debriefing - explanation, to leave the participant with out effects

Question 26

what 3 factors should a psychologist consider when adding deception to an experiment?

Answer 26

that there are no other deceptive means within the experiment the contribution of the experiment to science the deception won't cause harm

Question 27

What are examples of Neo-behaviourism?

Answer 27

beliefs, feelings, motives.

Question 28

What two main studies did Behaviourism originate from?

Answer 28

Classical Conditioning- Pavlov Operant conditioning- Skinner

Question 29

What is the Gestalt theory?

Answer 29

The sum is greater than its parts (Koffka, 1935)

Question 30

What is cognitive Psychology?

Answer 30

the idea that we actively interpreted change our environment through our thinking.

Question 31

what is Social Cognition?

Answer 31

how cognitive processes and representations are constructed and influence behaviour

Question 32

3 components of social cognition

Answer 32

attitudes, dual process models, schemas

Question 33

What is evolutionary social psychology based on?

Answer 33

our ancestral past of human development- Evolution and the Darwinian Theory

Question 34

What is the collectivist meta-theory?

Answer 34

Our behaviour is dependent on a socially constructed group norm.

Question 35

What is the individualistic personality meta-theory?

Answer 35

Our behaviour is dependent on our individual differences and characteristics

Question 36

What does the neuroscience and biochemistry meta-theory state?

Answer 36

That our psychological processes occur in the brain, therefore must be associated with electro-chemical brain activity.

Question 37

What is a critique with Behaviourism?

Answer 37

It exaggerates the extent to which people are passive to the situation

Question 38

What is a critique with Cognitive Psychology?

Answer 38

may struggle to account for irrational or automatic behaviour

Question 39

What is a critique with Evolutionary approaches?

Answer 39

Can it really account for the complexity of social behaviour?

Question 40

What is a critique with Individualistic personality?

Answer 40

People behave differently in different situations

Question 41

What is a critique with the Collective?

Answer 41

its difficult to predict which groups people might identify with

Question 42

What is a critique with Neuroscience and biochemistry?

Answer 42

Does locating processes alone help us with understanding them?

Question 43

What is reductionism?

Answer 43

Reducing the complexity of a situation to a lower means/ level

Question 44

What is an issue with Reductionism?

Answer 44

It can leave the original question unanswered

Question 45

What is a benefit of reductionism?

Answer 45

It breaks down the problem for analysis into smaller components

Question 46

What is Positivism?

Answer 46

A non- critical acceptance of scientific method study of humans- biased and not objective

Question 47

What is Hindsight Bias?

Answer 47

The tendency for people to see a given outcome as "obvious" once the actual outcome becomes known

Question 48

What is data sharing?

Answer 48

Depositing anonymised data sets in shared repositories.

Question 49

Two systems that have been implicated to avoid fraudulent data?

Answer 49

- Pre registration of studies (to indicate analyses in advance) - Statistical Developments (to detect the fraudulent data) - open access to published research