Lecture 4: Critical social psychology and Phenomenology:

Question 1

Phenomenology and Critical Social Psychology

Answer 1

Bobo dolls
Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977)
People learn through observing others’ behaviours, attitudes + outcomes of those behaviours (modelling)
Consequences of this theory?
Violent video games increase aggressive behaviour in children and young adults (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) across “Eastern” and “Western” cultures (Anderson et al., 2010)

Question 2

Kitty Genovese

Answer 2

BYSTANDER EFFECT
Likelihood of helping decreases when bystanders are present in a critical situation (Darley & Latané, 1968)
“Collective inaction”
Effect found to be persistent – bystander inhibition is less pronounced in dangerous situations (Fisher et al., 2011)

LIVED EXPERIENCE OF…
1964, Queens New York
Her “lifeworld”
A normalisation of violence against women
Role of social class
What would we hear?
Examples of IPA studies looking at violence against women…

Question 3

Marienthal: The sociography of an unemployed community.

Answer 3

Jahoda, M., Lazarfeld, P.F., & Zeisel, H. (1931/32)
Billig, (2019). More Examples, Less Theory
How the recently unemployed make use of their enforced lesiure time
“Descriptive fieldwork“: ‘to make visible in its complexity what is otherwise invisible’
Descriptions of food eaten
Unemployment destroyed the structure of the men’s days
Walking speed
The importance of realising that people do not react to the same circumstances in identical ways
We cannot be replaced
The particulars, rather than what can be generalised
Description becomes interpretation

Question 4

Managing power relations in social psychology

Answer 4

Social psychology doesn’t have a great reputation!
In experiments from the 1960/70’s we did things to people – they were our “subjects”
Now there are ethical regulations to follow in all of our research
Critical social psychology developed out of a want to do research with people, not on them