Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is social psychology?
the scientific study of how people’s affect, behaviours and cognitions are influenced by the presence of at lease one other person
The Scientific Method
Observation + Theory –> Hypothesis + Predictions –> Test (if confirmed, adds to theory; if not, modify hypothesis
Control
Internal validity; are the findings real, or a fluke due to uncontrolled factors?
Generalizability
External validity; can the findings be applied to others, or are they relevant only to the group being studied?
Correlational Studies
the technique wherevy researchers systematically measure two or more variables and assess the relation between them; how are two or more variables related? - use of surveys, pre-existing data analysis
Correlational Coefficient
a statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable based on another
Experiments
done in a lab under controlled conditions, uses cover stories and confederates; includes Independent and dependent variables, between subjects and within subjects designs, random sampling and random assignment.
Diehl & Stroebe - Brainstorming
randomly assigned subjects to different levels of the independent variable (condition under which brainstorming occurred); measured DV (performance); performance was higher than in a group & that being interrupted alone is the same as being in a group
Quasi Experiments
no random assignment; lowers experimental control because some factors cannot be randomly assigned
Field Experiments
done in the field; lowers experimental control because environment and behaviour cannot be controlled; the natural setting increases generalizability
Field Experiment Example - Men’s Bathrooms
do personal space invasions produce arousal in a men’s bathroom?; IV: where confederate stands; DV: latency to and characteristics or ‘micturition’; when males had their personal space invaded, they had a less steady stream and higher arousal than men who had more personal space
Field Observational Studes
observe behaviour in its natural settings; no manipulations, no situational control; high generalizability
Festinger, Rieken, Schachter - When Prophecy Fails
study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world; used participant observation to see how members responded when world didnt end; instead of questioning themselves, the decided that their cult had actually saved the world (cognitive dissonance)
Confounds
any uncontrolled factor that could alter your research results; occur when uncontrolled factors co-vary with the IV
Self-selection bias
subjects are those who choose to participate in the experiment; ignores the type of person who wouldn’t choose to attend
Kinsey on Human Sexuality
used subjects that attended his lectures; forgot to take into account that those who attended his lectures were already comfortable with the topic
Self-presentation/social desirability bias
we all want to be presented a certain way, so many people answer accorded to how they wish to be viewed rather than how they would naturally behave (use anonymity, confidentiality, bogus pipelines)
Confirmation Bias
you may end up setting up your experiment to confirm rather than disprove your hypothesis or behave in a way that may alter your result (use blind experimenters)
Experimental Demand
your subjects might do what they are expected to do rather than what they would naturally do (use blind subjects/cover stories)
Thorne & Himmelstein - Confirmation Bias using Subliminal messaging in music
subjects listen to backwards songs; IV1: ‘write down any words or phrases your hear’ IV2: ‘write down any satanic words or phrases your hear”; DV: % of subjects who report hearing satanic phrases; primed group had a significantly higher outcome
Ethics on experimenting on Human Subjects
Institutional review board approval; informed consent; debriefing, voluntary withdrawal, informing about research goals
Construral
the way which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world
Individual Differences
the aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from other people
Fundamental Attribution Error
the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behaviour stems from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors
Gestalt Psychology
a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds, rather than the objective physical attributes of that object.
Self-esteem
people’s evaluations of their own self-worth - that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent and decent.
Social Cognition
how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret and use social information.
Natural selection
the process by which heritable traits that promote survival in s particular environment are passed along to future generations, because organisms with that trait are more likely to reproduce
Evolutionary psycholougy
the attempt to explain social behaviour in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection
Hindsight bias
the tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted the outcome after knowing that it occurred.
Theory
an organized set of principles that can be used to explain observed phenomena
Hypothesis
a testable statement or idea about the relationship between two or more variables
Operational Definition
the precise specification of how variables are measured or manipulated
Observational method
the technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements of their behaviour
Ethnography
the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside without imposing any pre-conceived notions they might have
interjudge reliability
the level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set f data; by showing that two or more judges independently come up with the same observations are not the subjective impressions of one individual
Archival analysis
a form of observational method whereby the researcher examines the accumulated documents or archives of a culture
surveys
research in which a representative sample of people are asked questions about their attitudes or behaviour.
random selection
a way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population, by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for their sample.
internal validity
ensuring that nothing other than the independent variable can affect the dependent variable; this is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions
External validity
the extent to which the results can be generalized to other situations and other people
Mundane realism
the extent to which an experiment is similar to real-life situations
Psychological realism
the extent to which the psycholgical processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occie in everyday life; can be high in an experiment even when mundane realism is not.
Cover story
a description of the purpose of a study given to participants that is different from its true purpose; used to maintain psychological realism
replication
repeating a study, generally with different subject populations, in different settings, or by using different methods
meta analysis
a statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable
Cross-cultural research
research conducted with members of different cultures to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present across cultures or whether they are specific to a single culture
basic research
studies that are designed to find the best answer as to why people behave the way that they do and that are conducted purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity
applied research
studies designed specificaly to solve a particular social problem; building a theory of behaviour is usually secondary to solving the specific problem.
Types of social power
reward power coercive power legitimate power referent power expert power informational power
reward power
some people have power to reward us for conforming
coercive power
people with this power have the ability to punish us if we dont conform
