Social Flashcards
What is social psychology?
Taking cognition and putting it in its social context
- Scientific study of the reciprocal influence of the individual and their social context
What is the social aetiology of cognition?
Social learning theory, social roles theory
What is the social approach to methodology?
Discourse analysis, thematic analysis, setting cognition in context
Why is social psychology important?
People do not exist in a vacuum - cognition occurs in a natural context surrounded by people
Our most important functions are social - understanding humans as a species
The way people perceive their social groups - leading to discrimination (our psychological biases have real world consequences)
How is social psychology investigated? (4 methods)
1) Lab experiment
e.g. Milgram’s obedience studies
2) Observations
e.g. Lycett and Dunbar - male use of phones to show off/ status
3) Questionnaires
- More participants, but more likely to be biased
4) Interviews and focus groups
e.g. Campbell’s female aggression research
What are quantitative methods in social psychology research?
Experimental research - manipulate element of a situation and observe change in outcome
Correlational research - assesses the linear relationship between two continuous variables (does not equal causation)
What are qualitative methods in social psychology research?
Sources of data: interviews, archive reports and text, observations
Analytical methods:
Thematic analysis - pull out core themes in data
Discourse analysis - analysing communication of information between people
Grounded theory - let data create the themes, cluster statements into similar categories to create hierarchical structure of concepts in data
Quantitative compromise: content analysis - prespecify important themes, go through data and count every time something comes up
What is social learning theory?
Empiricist
Our behaviour is shaped by the social environment in which we have grown up and in which we operate
What is constructivism?
Qualitative
Important concepts that shape how we think are constructed in the social world and we internalise this
What is the standard social science model (blank slate)?
Not even Skinner thinks we are born as blank slates, nevertheless our social environment still shapes us
What are cognitive constraints and models?
Social behaviour driven by cognitive processing factors
What is evolutionary social psychology?
Looking at specific behaviours that enhance reproductive success and genetic underpinnings of behaviour are subsequently passed on to future generations
- Random variation
- Natural and sexual selection
What are criticisms of evolutionary social psychology?
Levels of explanation - proximate perspective (literal neural mechanism), ultimate perspective (evolutionary background to neural mechanism)
Biological determinism and the naturalistic fallacy, there can still be an over-reliance on western gender roles and a tendency to default to biology
What is the replication crisis?
75% of social psychology studies and 50% of cognitive studies in this project failed the replication test (inconsistency)
What are WEIRD samples?
Western educated industrial rich democratic samples - make up the majority of psychology samples
What is Tajfel’s minimal group paradigm?
Humans have a tendency to see their ingroup as an important part of their identity
- Humans can be sorted into groups for which paintings they prefer, and they wanted to maximise the success of the ingroup compared to the outgroup
What is Dunbar’s number?
150
Average size of hunter-gatherer society
Average number of Christmas cards
Average number of Facebook friends
- Thought that living socially was a major driving force in the evolution of the human brain
What did Berkman and Breslow find in their 20 year longitudinal study of health and social contact?
Controlling for health factors (smoking, alcohol, weight etc), those with fewest relationships were twice as likely to die
Why is social support important for our health?
- Social support protects against depression (esp for women)
- Providing social support may be more important than receiving it
- Camraderie protects against emotional burnout in firefighters
- Synchronised training creates higher pain tolerance in rowers
- Feeling happy reduces cortisol levels, therefore less stress and less directing of energy away from basic body systems
What does early trading and hunting show?
Trading - early homo sapiens trading shells for food
Hunting - social chasing methods of hunting
Shows advantages of a social brain
What did Sherif et al (1961) find out about group psychology?
Group divisions were spontaneous
Group conflict became intense and they were very loyal towards own group
Only when given a superordinate goal were they able to become one group (repairing the water supply for the camp) - for survival
Therefore, group psychology is important to humans, however the group is flexible
What did Newson et al (2018) find out about group psychology through Brazilian football fans?
Intergroup violence supports social cohesion
Fans of same team were very socially fused with each other
What human activity is seen as an equivalent for grooming in primates?
Gossip - humans spend 20% of waking time in conversation (should spend 42% of the time grooming if we were like other primates)
What did Dunbar (1993) find out about dining hall conversations?
Social relationships and personal experiences took up 70% of conversation time
Half of this was about third parties
Shows keeping track of social relationships to properly navigate your social world