Lecture 26- Social Psychology 1

Question 1

What is the broad goal of social psychology?

Answer 1

To understand the relationship between the mind and society

Question 2

What is characteristic about the sub fields of of social psychology?

Answer 2

They overlap with each other and lots of different areas

Question 3

What did modern social psychology focus on in the early days?

Answer 3

• Interpersonal (how do we interact with each other on the individual level)
• Discrimination (we always better explaining our negative behaviours as humans than our positive ones)
• Behaviorist principles: learn through interactions with the environment (punishment + reward)

Question 4

What event in world history was a huge driver for modern social psychology?

Answer 4

• World war 1 and 2
• Sparked a debate on extreme behaviours: why do people do the things they do? It can’t just be that everyone has an extreme disregard for human life

Question 5

What are the three dominant explanations for prejudice according to Brown, 2011 (and reasons)?

Answer 5

1. Individual personality traits developed in childhood make some people
   predisposed to be more prejudice to outgroups (overstates role of genetics, also prejudice isn’t confined to one personality type so this doesn’t make sense)
2. A build up of frustration. Either due to one’s personal environment or the
   context more broadly (not true cause you don’t always have to be angry to show prejudice)
3. Competing goals/values between groups. If they are in line then less
   prejudice, if they clash a lot then that equals more prejudice

Question 6

After interpersonal relations where has the focus now shifted in modern social psychology?

Answer 6

Inter-group: we know that despite individual differences if given the right group pressures an individual can conform to behave poorly (or well)

Question 7

What did Kurt Lewin do in terms of modern social psychology?

Answer 7

-Recognized that it’s not just individual characteristics that cause certain behaviours to emerge it’s complicated with a number of different factors coming into it

-To illustrate this Lewin came up with an equation to model human behaviour….
Behaviour = The Person(P) x The Environment (E)

Person refers to the combination of their history, personality etc.
Environment is both the physical and social environment

Question 8

Why did Kurt Lewin’s diagram to explain human behaviour get so complex?

Answer 8

• Included all the different possible elements that could have an effect
• As a result the diagram became very complex

Question 9

What scale exists in intergroup explanations for behaviour? When would be at the extremes?

Answer 9

• We sit somewhere along the scale with the two extremes being either entirely interpersonal (decision made by self with no input of the environment/ others) to inter group
• It is rare that we would ever be at the extremes. Interpersonal extreme: you basically live in a vacuum or in a desert island where there is no one else. Intergroup extreme: a bit more feasible, example is if you are at a sport game in a crowd of fans facing off against a rival: very hard to separate your individual actions against the group in this case

Question 10

What is the minimal group paradigm?

Answer 10

A scientific attempt to create an ‘empty environment’ where researchers could then systematically add variables that would elicit discrimination. Basically trying to figure out what are the minimum conditions required for group competition to occur

Question 11

Describe the study by Tajfel and Turner (1979) that came up with the minimal group paradigm…

Answer 11

-Categorize participants into ingroup and outgroups that have no context or
meaning: Groups of participants were asked to rate their preference for several abstract paintings.
-Participants were then told that based on these preferences they were part of
a group that preferred paintings by Paul Klee or Wassily Kandinsky. In reality
they were randomly categorized into these groups (their preference didn’t
matter).
-Participants then asked to allocate resources between an in-group member
and an out-group member. Note : No ‘real’ in-group/out-group interaction.
-In the way that study was set up the interpersonal differences were stripped/ removed leaving only the group differences

Question 12

What is a constraints/ critic to the minimal group paradigm?

Answer 12

• Not realistic (not ecologically valid) but experimentally practical. i.e. how relevant is it to the real world when it’s very rare to be spilt into meaningless groups
• Allocation decisions are also rare at least in this format
• In-group membership isn’t usually arbitrary

Question 13

What are the four basic minimal group paradigm strategies to focus on?

Answer 13

• Ingroup favoritism= Allocate more resources to ingroup
• Maximum joint profit= Allocate so that between the ingroup and outgroup the maximum amount of resources are allocated (everyone benefits)
• Biggest difference= Allocate resources so that there is the biggest difference between the ingroup and outgroup (i.e. the ingroup gets a lot more even if this means they get less than if were using a different strategy
• Parity= equal spilt of resources

Question 14

How do the four basic minimal group paradigm strategies compare in terms of popularity?

Answer 14

• Parity= most common
• Ingroup favoritism also common
• Maximum difference was also common and happened at the expense of the ingroup i.e. ingroup actually got less than what they would with other strategies but it was favoured by participants because it made the difference between ingroup and outgroup the greatest)

-Maximum joint profit was low in popularity

Question 15

What does the fact the maximum joint profit was low as a strategy show?

Answer 15

-It’s not just self interest (i.e. favoring in-group cause best for self as well) there are some group dynamics at play.