LECTURE 1: Social introduction Flashcards
what is personality psychology?
whats its approach?
- focuses on the person
- individual differences
- cross-situational stability
= are certain people more prone to conflict
What is social psychology?
Whats its approach?
- focuses on the situation
- situational context
- situational contingency
= are certain situational factors more likely to lead to conflict
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
- people with low agreeableness will be prone to conflict when their interests are not aligned with other parties
all personality and social psychologists consider what about thought, feeling and action?
product of the interaction between persons and situations
what is interactionism
whats the equation?
x=f(P,S)
where x is some behaviour, though, emotion
p=person, s=situation
(what is social psychology)
what does social mean?
what about in psychology?
In what contexts?
- 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
(what is social psychology)
whats the social content
whats the social processes
- other people as the content of psychological research
- other people as sources of influence
(what is social psychology)
according to smith
3
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
what is the unit of analysis in social psychology?
individual, gyad and group
how are social psychology theories formed?
- casual relationships
- mechanistic cognitive and social processes
Social psychology, deep history
- > what is doxa?
- > le bon and Canetti
- crowd mind
- crowd psychology = the majority of people’s opinions relied on crowd mind (full of errors) instead of logic
What is crowd or mob psychology?
the study of individual members of the crowd or the crowd itself and how its often devoid form rational thinking
whats the history of psychology?
5 different types
- > what does social reject?
- > what did it integrate?
- > how/what did it develop from (world event)
- introspectionism = Wundt
- watson, skinner (stimulus-response) = behaviourism
- cognitive = mind as a computer
- biological = evolutionary psychology
- 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
integrations with biology, neuroscience and computer science led to? (4)
- 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)
what does the replication crisis refer to?
- 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
They saw a game: case study
princeton vs Dartmouth, provide brief outline
- two different accounts of the same match from the supporters of the two teams despite viewing the same game
what does the ‘they saw a game’ case study suggest about our perceptions?
- conclusion
- 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
define - construction of reality
shaped by 2 things
each person’s view of reality is a construction, shaped both by cognitive processes and by social processes
what is pervasiveness of social influence?
other people influence virtually all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour whether those others are physically present or not
what are mastery, connectedness and me/mine?
what do they do?
motivational principles
-> driving our thoughts, feeling and actions
what is striving for mastery?
people seek to understand and predict events in the social world in order to obtain rewards
- understanding, control, seeking meaning
what is seeking connectedness?
people seek support, liking and acceptance from the people and groups they care about and value
- belonging, relatedness and trusting
what is valuing me and mine?
people desire to see themselves and other people and groups connected to themselves in a positive light
- self-enhancement, positive self-esteem
what are the three core processing principles?
conservatism
accessibility
processing depth
define conservatism
beliefs and opinions are slow to change
define accessibility (3)
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
define processing depth
information can be processed with various levels of depth
automatic vs controlled
system 1 vs system 2
what do motivational principles and processing principles act on?
construction of reality and pervasiveness of social influence
How do we understand and explain human social thought, feeling and action in social psychology?
how don’t we and why?
scientific method = systematic observation combined with inductive and deductive reasoning
-> introspection, observation, authorities (biased)
what are the aims of the scientific method in social psychology?
-> how are theories constructed?
causal, mechanistic explanations of social psychological phenomena
-> shaped by observations but only considered valid once testing using the scientific method has occurred
what are the 5 steps of the scientific method?
- observe- senses/engagement with prior theories
- hypothesise- proffer a tentative explanation for observation
- test - derive prediction from hypothesis and test
- infer- make inferenece about hypothesis based on test outcome
- repeat/revise - if supported repeat, if not modify
what is construct validity?
how is it achieved?
- extent to which manipulations and measures correspond to theoretical constructs
- selecting appropriate measures, using multiple measures
what are theories about?
what do theories seek to explain?
what kind of explanations do theories seek?
- abstract constructs
- causal explanations
- generalizing explanations
what is internal validity?
how is it achieved?
- extent to which casual inference (IV-> DV) is justified
- manipulation and random assignment
what is external validity?
how is it achieved?
- extend to which experimental results can be generalised to other people, places etc
- appropriate sampling and research design
