Current Issues in Social Psychology Flashcards
What is social psychology according to Allport (1935, p.5)
“The scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others”
Which is an Overt behaviour?
A. Thoughts
B. Goals
C. Fighting
D. Feelings
What did Folk Psychology determine in the late 1800s?
The collective mind. A societal way of thinking eg. crowds
What approach did Tarde establish in (1898)?
The bottom -up approach
(the consideration of the individual)
What are the main two strands of Social Psychology?
Psychological and Sociological
What is the origin of the Psychological strand?
Logical empiricism
What is the methodological approach to the psychological strand?
Quantitative/ Hypothetic-deductive
e.g. experimental
What is the origin of the Sociological strand?
Social constructionist / humanistic
What is the methodological approach to the sociological strand?
Qualitative/ Indicative
e.g. discourse analysis
What did Shove (2010) state?
That society changes as a group/ whole
Psychologists and Sociologists shouldn’t work together.
What did Durkheim state about social psychology?
That social laws are determined by society as a collective.
what was Whitmash, O’Neil and Lorenzoni (2010)’s response to Shove (2010)?
Her models were over simplistic portrayals of society.
Examples of Social Psychological Methods?
Surveys, Interviews, Focus Groups
What’s an issue with lab based experiment?
low in external validity
What’s a pro to using a lab based experiment
high in internal validity
avoidance of confounding variables
What’s a con to using field experiments?
less control over variables
difficult to randomly assign participants
What are demand characteristics?
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.
What are the three Level 3 Strategies of the model developed by Corneille & Lush (2021)? (demand characteristics)
Faking
Imagination
Phenomenological Control
Faking (Corneille & Lush, 2021)
Intentional and Conscious
No genuine experience
Imagination (Corneille & Lush, 2021)
Intentional and conscious
genuine experience
Phenomenological Control (Corneille & Lus, 2021)
Intentional and unconscious
Genuine Experience
4 ways to avoid Demand characteristics?
double blind studies
funnelled debrief
quasi controls
deception & distraction
3 types of sensitivity (Tourangeau & Yan, 2007)
Intrusiveness: topics perceived as private or taboo.
Threat of disclosure: costs of potential disclosure.
Social desirability: adhere to social norms.
6 ways to deal with sensitive questioning
anonymous research setting- no interviewer
have objective data
non-threading question wording
Assurance of confidentiality and data protection
bogus pipeline procedure
anonymous response techniques
What are the 6 Ethics Guidelines according to the BPS (2014)?
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
what 3 factors should a psychologist consider when adding deception to an experiment?
that there are no other deceptive means within the experiment
the contribution of the experiment to science
the deception won’t cause harm
What are examples of Neo-behaviourism?
beliefs, feelings, motives.
What two main studies did Behaviourism originate from?
Classical Conditioning- Pavlov
Operant conditioning- Skinner
What is the Gestalt theory?
The sum is greater than its parts (Koffka, 1935)
What is cognitive Psychology?
the idea that we actively interpreted change our environment through our thinking.
what is Social Cognition?
how cognitive processes and representations are constructed and influence behaviour
3 components of social cognition
attitudes, dual process models, schemas
What is evolutionary social psychology based on?
our ancestral past of human development- Evolution and the Darwinian Theory
What is the collectivist meta-theory?
Our behaviour is dependent on a socially constructed group norm.
What is the individualistic personality meta-theory?
Our behaviour is dependent on our individual differences and characteristics
What does the neuroscience and biochemistry meta-theory state?
That our psychological processes occur in the brain, therefore must be associated with electro-chemical brain activity.
What is a critique with Behaviourism?
It exaggerates the extent to which people are passive to the situation
What is a critique with Cognitive Psychology?
may struggle to account for irrational or automatic behaviour
What is a critique with Evolutionary approaches?
Can it really account for the complexity of social behaviour?
What is a critique with Individualistic personality?
People behave differently in different situations
What is a critique with the Collective?
its difficult to predict which groups people might identify with
What is a critique with Neuroscience and biochemistry?
Does locating processes alone help us with understanding them?
What is reductionism?
Reducing the complexity of a situation to a lower means/ level
What is an issue with Reductionism?
It can leave the original question unanswered
What is a benefit of reductionism?
It breaks down the problem for analysis into smaller components
What is Positivism?
A non- critical acceptance of scientific method
study of humans- biased and not objective
What is Hindsight Bias?
The tendency for people to see a given outcome as “obvious” once the actual outcome becomes known
What is data sharing?
Depositing anonymised data sets in shared repositories.
Two systems that have been implicated to avoid fraudulent data?
- Pre registration of studies (to indicate analyses in advance)
- Statistical Developments (to detect the fraudulent data)
- open access to published research
