LECTURE 1: Social introduction

Question 1

what is personality psychology?

whats its approach?

Answer 1

• focuses on the person
• individual differences
• cross-situational stability
  = are certain people more prone to conflict

Question 2

What is social psychology?

Whats its approach?

Answer 2

• focuses on the situation
• situational context
• situational contingency
  = are certain situational factors more likely to lead to conflict

Question 3

Whats the argument regarding conflict in a person x situation example when:

• > people with low agreeableness will be prone to conflict in all situations
• > people will be prone to conflict when their interests are misaligned

Answer 3

• people with low agreeableness will be prone to conflict when their interests are not aligned with other parties

Question 4

all personality and social psychologists consider what about thought, feeling and action?

Answer 4

product of the interaction between persons and situations

Question 5

what is interactionism

whats the equation?

Answer 5

x=f(P,S)
where x is some behaviour, though, emotion
p=person, s=situation

Question 6

(what is social psychology)

what does social mean?
what about in psychology?
In what contexts?

Answer 6

• involving allies and confederates
• scientific study of the human mind in the social context
• i.e. contexts characterised by the presence of other people, real or imagined

Question 7

(what is social psychology)

whats the social content
whats the social processes

Answer 7

• other people as the content of psychological research

- other people as sources of influence

Question 8

(what is social psychology)

according to smith
3

Answer 8

scientific
social and cognitive
perceive, influence, relate

= the scientific study of the effects of social and cognitive processes on the way people perceive, influence and relate to others

Question 9

what is the unit of analysis in social psychology?

Answer 9

individual, gyad and group

Question 10

how are social psychology theories formed?

Answer 10

• casual relationships

- mechanistic cognitive and social processes

Question 11

Social psychology, deep history

• > what is doxa?
• > le bon and Canetti

Answer 11

• crowd mind

- crowd psychology = the majority of people’s opinions relied on crowd mind (full of errors) instead of logic

Question 12

What is crowd or mob psychology?

Answer 12

the study of individual members of the crowd or the crowd itself and how its often devoid form rational thinking

Question 13

whats the history of psychology?
5 different types

• > what does social reject?
• > what did it integrate?
• > how/what did it develop from (world event)

Answer 13

1. introspectionism = Wundt
2. watson, skinner (stimulus-response) = behaviourism
3. cognitive = mind as a computer
4. biological = evolutionary psychology
5. big data and computational psychology

• > behaviourism: stimuli are not given, but interpreted
• > cognitive, biological and computational
• > WWII and the inter-war period due to migration, social influence and practical problems

Question 14

integrations with biology, neuroscience and computer science led to? (4)

Answer 14

• evolutionary social psychology
• embodiment (our mental states our grounded in sensory experiences)
• social neuroscience
• computational social psychology and big data (twitter profiles to predict personality traits)

Question 15

what does the replication crisis refer to?

Answer 15

• individual cases of scientific misconduct
• limitation of null hypothesis testing + such a strong focus on publishing interesting effect = we ignore null results rather than viewing them as a large body of evidence

= demand to increase transparency

Question 16

They saw a game: case study

princeton vs Dartmouth, provide brief outline

Answer 16

• two different accounts of the same match from the supporters of the two teams despite viewing the same game

Question 17

what does the ‘they saw a game’ case study suggest about our perceptions?
- conclusion

Answer 17

• our most basic perceptions are influenced by our frame of reference and how subjective those frames of references are compared to others
• no objective reality, reality is something we all experience subjectively
• > highly dependant on our frame of reference

Question 18

define - construction of reality

shaped by 2 things

Answer 18

each person’s view of reality is a construction, shaped both by cognitive processes and by social processes

Question 19

what is pervasiveness of social influence?

Answer 19

other people influence virtually all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour whether those others are physically present or not

Question 20

what are mastery, connectedness and me/mine?

what do they do?

Answer 20

motivational principles

-> driving our thoughts, feeling and actions

Question 21

what is striving for mastery?

Answer 21

people seek to understand and predict events in the social world in order to obtain rewards
- understanding, control, seeking meaning

Question 22

what is seeking connectedness?

Answer 22

people seek support, liking and acceptance from the people and groups they care about and value
- belonging, relatedness and trusting

Question 23

what is valuing me and mine?

Answer 23

people desire to see themselves and other people and groups connected to themselves in a positive light
- self-enhancement, positive self-esteem

Question 24

what are the three core processing principles?

Answer 24

conservatism
accessibility
processing depth

Question 25

define conservatism

Answer 25

beliefs and opinions are slow to change

Question 26

define accessibility (3)

Answer 26

accessible information has the most impact on thought, feeling and action
- mind as an associative network
some network elements are more active than others
- these influences ongoing thought, feeling, action

Question 27

define processing depth

Answer 27

information can be processed with various levels of depth
automatic vs controlled
system 1 vs system 2

Question 28

what do motivational principles and processing principles act on?

Answer 28

construction of reality and pervasiveness of social influence

Question 29

How do we understand and explain human social thought, feeling and action in social psychology?

how don’t we and why?

Answer 29

scientific method = systematic observation combined with inductive and deductive reasoning

-> introspection, observation, authorities (biased)

Question 30

what are the aims of the scientific method in social psychology?
-> how are theories constructed?

Answer 30

causal, mechanistic explanations of social psychological phenomena

-> shaped by observations but only considered valid once testing using the scientific method has occurred

Question 31

what are the 5 steps of the scientific method?

Answer 31

1. observe- senses/engagement with prior theories
2. hypothesise- proffer a tentative explanation for observation
3. test - derive prediction from hypothesis and test
4. infer- make inferenece about hypothesis based on test outcome
5. repeat/revise - if supported repeat, if not modify

Question 32

what is construct validity?

how is it achieved?

Answer 32

• extent to which manipulations and measures correspond to theoretical constructs
• selecting appropriate measures, using multiple measures

Question 33

what are theories about?
what do theories seek to explain?
what kind of explanations do theories seek?

Answer 33

• abstract constructs
• causal explanations
• generalizing explanations

Question 34

what is internal validity?

how is it achieved?

Answer 34

• extent to which casual inference (IV-> DV) is justified

- manipulation and random assignment

Question 35

what is external validity?

how is it achieved?

Answer 35

• extend to which experimental results can be generalised to other people, places etc
• appropriate sampling and research design