Lecture 1 Flashcards
What is the definition of social psychology?
the study of how people think about, influence, and relate to others
Where does social psychology it in relation to other theories and disciplines
Social psych sits dead centre within many other theories and disciplines, due to how central the self is
E.G. Self in the situation, self, own attitudes and behaviours, relationships with others, beliefs about others’ attitudes and values
At what 3 levels is social psychology understood?
- Societal level
- Interpersonal level
- Individual level
How is social psychology understood at a societal level?
Links broad social forces to general patterns of behaviour
Used by sociologists, economists, political scientists
How is social psychology understood at an interpersonal level?
Current social situations used to explain behaviour
Used by psychologists, especially social psychology
How is social psychology understood at an individual level
Individual differences in background explain behaviour
Used by clinical and personality psychologists
What are the 2 main features of studying social psychology?
- applying prior theories to social domains
- using empirical methods to test these theories in social domains
List some theories in social psychology
- Decision making theories
- Learning theories
- Motivational theories
- Interdependence theories
- Sociocultural theories
- Cognitive theories
- Evolution Social psychology
What do motivational theories focus on? What are motivational theorists interested in looking into?
- Focuses on what motivates us, what changes our behaviour to achieve
- Focus on fulfilling needs or obtaining goals
- Increase in drive when faced with obstacles
- Threat vs challenge
- Substitutable paths for obtaining goals; we are adaptable and can change the way we reach goals
What do cognitive theories focus on?
- Focus of attention (top down, bottom up)
- Categorisation (Looking for things in the environment, and blocking out stimuli which stops you doing what you want/stops you finding what you want)
- Interpretation (How we perceive events or things in our environment)
What do learning theories focus on?
- Associational conditioning
- Operant conditioning
- Observational conditioning
What are the 4 goals of psychological research
- Description (describing behaviour)
- Causal analysis (finding cause to behaviours)
- Theory building (theories as to why we behave the way we do)
- Application (can we apply these theories here/elsewhere)
Methods in social psychology: selecting research participants
What do we mean by a representative sample? What is a population?
- The sample is the group of people the experimenter has chosen to examine
- The population is the group of people the researcher wishes to understand
- The sample should be similar to the population you want to understand
Methods in social psychology: selecting research participants
What effect does a bigger sample have on making a representative sample?
Bigger sample= more representative of target population
Methods in social psychology: selecting research participants
What is the reference effect? Why is this bad?
Reference effect- people use the people around themselves as a reference point for comparison
This doesn’t work (obviously) because lots of populations are different.
