Introduction to Social Psychology

Question 1

Define social psychology

Answer 1

The scientific study of how individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual, implied, or imagined presence of others.

Question 2

What are some key themes in social psychology?

Answer 2

Self: who do we compare ourselves to, in order to understand ourselves?

Gender: what does it mean to be a woman?
Attitude change: how do you best change peoples minds about a politician.

Prosocial behaviour: can people do good things purely for selfless reasons?

Attribution: how people explain what they and others do, think and feel?

Social categorisation: why do people share the same sort of ideas about what a nun, soldier or accountant would be like?

Question 3

What are social psychologist interested in?

Answer 3

1. Identifying patterns of behaviour (seeing what is going on for people).
2. Explaining why patterns of behaviour (not just seeing the behaviour, but seeing why).

Question 4

What are the three main research methods in social psychology?

Answer 4

1. Descriptive methods: measure or record behaviours or responses in their natural state, e.g. surveys, natural observations.
2. Correlational methods: test relationships between variables (e.g. positive/negative correlation).
3. Experimental methods: manipulate variables to examine causality.

Question 5

Describe the difference between within-person and between-person experiments?

Answer 5

Within-person: participant experiences multiple conditions and their responses are measured each time.

• Challenges: boredom, practice effects, demand characteristics.

Between-subjects: participants are randomly assigned to one condition.

• Challenges: requires more participants, especially in complex designs.

Question 6

What are the advantages and disadvantages of experimental methods?

Answer 6

Advantages:
- Determine cause-effect relationship.
- Controll extraneous variables.

Disadvantages:
- Artificial settings may reduce ecologial validity.
- Participants might alter behaviour due to observation.

Question 7

What is the difference between positive and negative correlations?

Answer 7

Positive correlations: both variables increase together.

Negative correlations: one variable increases while the other decreases.

Question 8

What are theories in social psychology?

Answer 8

Scientific explanations that:

1. Connect and organise existing observations.
2. Propose what is going on behind what you see and why things happen that way.
3. Suggest fruitful paths for future research -> to test those proposals, i.e. test the theory.

Question 9

What are experiental methods?

Answer 9

Allows researcher to examine causality.
In a basic experiment, one thing is altered and everything else stays the same > this way the experimenter can measure the impact of that one thing.

Question 10

What two types of experimental methods are most used in social psychology?

Answer 10

Laboratory: people come into the (rather artifical) lab environment to be tested.

Field experiments: researchers set things up to manipulate variables where people usually act.

Question 11

Problems with within-person experiments

Answer 11

Highlights what you are looking for:
- participant may feel judged by task/want to do their best so may show demand characteristics.
- With social psychology there is a higher chance of moral judgement that could occur - may skew answers.
- Could figure out task and answer how they might think you want them to answer, or how they think they should answer (morally, socially).

Question 12

Problems with between-subjects design?

Answer 12

Need twice as many participants for a study, with two versions to compare.
In complex studies, with lots of groups, you will need loads more participants.