introduction to social psych Flashcards
what are basic similarity and differences of personality psy and social psy
Personality and social psychology are both concerned with explaining human thought, feeling and action
– Theory building through empirical research
– Related to and applicable in many live and research domains
•Generally, personality psychology focuses on the person as the locus of explanation (across different situations)
•Generally, social psychology focuses on the situation as the locus of explanation (across different people)
•cross-situational stability (P) vs. situational contingency (S)
What is interactionism
-Both the personality and situation lead to the creation of behavior
x = f(P, S)
Where x is some behaviour, thought, emotion …
P = person; S = situation
What is social psychology
® Social: involving allies or confederates.
® Social psychology: the scientific study of the human mind in the social context (i.e.contexts characterized by the presence of other people, real or imagined).
® Social content: other people as the content of psychological research.
® Social processes: other people as sources of influence.
How is social psychology studied, Relations to other disciplines: foci of social psychology
•Unit of analysis: individual, dyad and group (cf. sociology – larger- scale social structures)
•General methods: scientific (observe - hypothesize – test – infer – revise – repeat)(cf. philosophy, anthropology)
•Analyses: quantitative (cf. anthropology – qualitative)
•Theories: couched in terms of casual, mechanistic cognitive and social processes (cf. anthropology, cultural studies – hermeneutics: meaning/reasons as primary drivers of psychology)
•Content and process: social (cf. personality)
History of social psychology: early stage deep history
® Social psychological thought has a long history, however mostly is not empirical/scientific.
® Plato – ‘doxa’ (‘crowd mind’ or popular belief; C4th BCE).
® Le Bon and Canetti – crowd psychology; C19th
History of social psychology as an empirical discipline
Emerged as an empirical discipline in the late 19th century.
® Initial experiments (late 19th century)
® Initial systematic textbooks (1908)
® Wundt & introspectionism.
® Behaviourism – Watson, Skinner & the stimulus response.
® Freud: psychodynamic theory.
® Rogers & Maslow: humanistic theory
® Gergen: social construction
Brief history of social psychology (as a science)
•Rejection of behaviorism: stimuli are not given, but interpreted
•Groups and attitudes: WWI and the inter-war period
•WWII: migration, social influence and practical problems
•Integrating cognitive revolution
•Integrating other revolutions: biological and computational
core tenet (principle of social psyc)
•People construct their own reality (within limits)
•Our identities, beliefs, attitudes, values…influence our perception of the world
•Social influence is pervasive. other influence what we think, feel and do
- Pervasiveness of social influence: the axiom that other people influence virtually all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour, whether those others are present or not.
Core motivations of social psy
® Striving for mastery: the motivational principle that people seek to understand and predict events in the social world in order to obtain rewards (aka understanding, control & seeking meaning).
® Seeking connectedness: the motivational principle that people seek support, liking and acceptance from the people and groups they care about and value (aka belonging, relatedness & trust).
® Valuing ‘me and mine’: the motivational principle that people desire to see themselves, and other people & groups connected to themselves, in a positive light(aka self-enhancement, positive self-esteem).
Core processing principles
Different processing method
Our cognitive resources are limited – therefore we tryto be efficient when processing information, leading to bias.
Conservatism: beliefs and opinions are slow to change. We tend to favour sticking to existing beliefs, as opposed to being open to new information & change.
•Accessibility: accessible information has the most impact on thought, feeling and action. The mind form associate network with some nodes stronger/more active than other. these node then influence us
•Processing depth: information can be processed with various levels of depth
– Automatic vs controlled processes
– ‘System 1 vs System 2’ thinking
The scientific method: ( aims and theory)
® Aim: to provide causal, mechanistic explanations of phenomena (specifically social psychological phenomena).
® These explanations of phenomena are stated in theories – which are generalizing statement(s) or a collection of statements understood in terms of causal relationships between well-defined abstract constructs.
® Theories are constructed and tested using the scientific method.
How do we achieve the goals of social psychology? (i.e. to understand & explain humansocial thought, feeling & action)
•Introspection (cf. ‘strangers to ourselves’)
•Mere observation of others (cf. biased observers)
•Reason from first principles (cf. not very good/biased reasoners)
•Authorities – religious, secular (cf. they are biased too)
•Scientific method – systematic observation combined with inductive and deductive reasoning
Overview of the scientific method: (how is it carry out)
•Observe: something about the world – through the senses, through engagement with prior theories
•Hypothesize: proffer a tentative explanation for observation
•Test: derive prediction from hypothesis and test (usually with an experiment)
•Infer: make (inductive) inference about hypothesis based on test outcome
•Repeat/revise: if hypothesis supported, repeat; if not, modify hypothesis and test revised hypothesis
validity of theory and evidences
•Construct validity: extent to which manipulations and measures correspond to theoretical constructs by selecting appropriate measures; using multiple measures
•Internal validity: extent to which casual inference (IV -> DV) is justified. manipulation and random assignment
External validity: the extent to which experimental results can be generalized to other people, places, times & settings. Achieved via appropriate sampling and research design
