Social psychology

Question 1

What are the similarities and difference between Social Psychology and Sociology?

Answer 1

• Both focus on similar issues like groups, social/ cultural norms, social representations + intergroup behaviour.
• Differ in levels of analysis:
Sociology = emphasis on groups.
Social Psychology = emphasis on individuals – how does group membership affect in individual behaviour.

Question 2

What are personality psychologists interested in?

Answer 2

Personality psychologists are mainly interested in how individual differences influence individual behaviour.
However, personality psychologists are also interested in social situations: Can certain individual dispositions (e.g., traits) be caused by social context?

Question 3

What are social psychologists interested in?

Answer 3

Social psychologists are mainly interested in how social situations influence individual behaviour.
However, social psychologists are also interested in individual differences: how individual differences may impact social behaviour (e.g., prejudice). How individual differences may make people more susceptible to situational influences (e.g., self-monitoring).

Question 4

What is self monitoring?

Answer 4

Self monitoring is a concept showing how much people monitor their self presentations, expressive behaviour and nonverbal affective displays.

Question 5

What are the Big Five Personality traits?

Answer 5

OCEAN:
Openness 
Conscientiousness
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

Question 6

What is a confederate?

Answer 6

An accomplice of the researcher who is presumed to be another participant.

Question 7

What is a cover story?

Answer 7

A false, but plausible story for the purpose of the experiment that masks the true aims.

Question 8

What is priming?

Answer 8

Exposure to one stimulus increases accessibility of related stimuli and behaviours

Question 9

What are the reasons for the replication crisis?

Answer 9

• Small samples
• Replication/ scientist error
• Publication culture – ‘Wow rather than How’ (Kruglanski et al. 2017). ‘Wow’ findings get more exposure but are less theoretically sound and won’t show success rate in order to seem neater
• The finding may not be universal e.g., individual & cultural differences.
• Social psychological research is often a historical inquiry. We should consider findings on a continuum of historical durability (Gergen, 1973). Essentially all studies are bound by the time that they were conducted due to culture/ norms changing over time.
• Durable: numerical anchoring effects (Jacowitz & Kahneman, 1995; replicated by Klein et al., 2014)
• Not durable: Americans primed with flag become more conservative (Carter et al., 2011; not replicated by Klein et al., 2014)

Question 10

What is the fundamental Attribution Error?

Answer 10

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) a bias in reasoning that makes people emphasise internal characteristics (e.g. the person) rather than external factors (e.g. the situation) as explaining behaviour.

Question 11

What does Mischel argue?

Answer 11

• Mischel argues that personality traits aren’t good enough as predictive measures of how people behave in given situations.
• Trait – behaviour correlation r=0.2 – 0.3 (<10% behavioural variance) – personality coefficient.
• Personality traits are assumed to be relatively stable, but there is little evidence that behaviour is consistent across situations.

Question 12

What are responses to Mischel’s claims?

Answer 12

• Personality may not be a powerful determinant of single behaviours but traits are broad dispositions that are more important in determining general tendencies in behaviour.
Individual behaviours moment to moment are unlikely to be strongly predicted by a broad level, dispositional influence.

• Most studies measure one behaviour in a specific moment – this is too narrow and too prone to error measurement.
Should take an aggregate approach (Epstein)

Question 13

Explain Esptein’s (1979) aggregate approach to examining personality as a determinant of behaviour.

Answer 13

• Participants first completed various personality tests.
• Participants then kept records of their behaviour (e.g. number of social contacts and number of phone calls made) across 14 days.
His method takes the random accounts and minimises the variance to get a more accurate estimation of how sociable somebody is over the course of time.

Question 14

What were Epstein’s findings?

Answer 14

• Extraversion and social contact (r=0.52)

* This is considerably higher than Mischel’s personality coefficient

Question 15

According to Fleeson (2001), how might behaviour be considered stable and unstable?

Answer 15

Fleeson argues that behaviour is remarkably stable and unstable. Our behaviour is dramatically different from moment to moment, perhaps due to social influences or situational circumstances. But if we look at it more as a holistic aggregate across time, we are remarkably consistent and stable.

Question 16

Explain how Fleeson found behaviour to be stable and unstable?

Answer 16

• He collected data about an individual based on their levels of extroversion – how sociable they are one hour of the day vs another random hour in that week and the data doesn’t show any correlation.
• If we were to assume that people’s behaviour was very stable, we would see a much stronger cluster of variables.
• He then shows how if we take an average of a person’s extroversion each week, there are incredibly strong correlations.
• So, a participant on an average week displays a similar amount of extroversion as they do the next week. Which shows how behaviour can be classified as very stable and unstable from moment to moment.
• Our behaviour is dramatically different, perhaps due to social influences or situational circumstances. But if we look at it more as a holistic aggregate across time, we are remarkably consistent.

Question 17

How do people have an influence on situations?

Answer 17

• People choose situations that match their personality (e.g. Furnham, 1981 Zuckerman 1974)
• May explain why in lab scenarios people with different personalities behave similarly to each other.
• Ultimately in a real natural setting, some would have never put themselves in that situation.

Question 18

What is situation evocation?

Answer 18

Unintentional alteration of situation by one’s own presence (Buss 1987)
e.g. interviewer who’s anxious evokes less favourable responses than someone relaxed. (Word et al. 1974)

Question 19

What is a strong situation and give an example.

Answer 19

Strong situations – situations in which demands are likely to cause everyone to behave in the same way. Personality is less likely to predict behaviour e.g. wearing a mask in the covid-19 pandemic.

Question 20

What is a weak situation?

Answer 20

Appropriate behaviour isn’t obvious & people are free to decide what to do. Personality more likely to predict behaviour.

Question 21

Why are situations and personality important?

Answer 21

• Situations are the strongest predictor of one’s behaviour in a particular moment.
• Personality may be more relevant in understanding one’s behaviour over a more considerable period of time.
• Individual differences and situations may interact to explain behaviour.