Social psychology methods Flashcards
Definition of social psychology
The scientific study of how thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined and implied presence of others
Why is social psychology a science?
It involves the creation of hypotheses based on observations that can be empirically tested to test their validity
What is the process of the scientific method?
- Make an observation which then has a theory made about it
- Hypothesis is made
- Empirical research is carried out
- Hypothesis is either disconfirmed or supported
- Disconfirmed hypotheses are modified and supported hypotheses are replicated by others to compare results
What are experimental methods?
Methods that involve the manipulation of a variable and observe the effect on a dependant variable (such as lab experiments, field experiments etc)
What are non-experimental methods?
Methods that don’t manipulate a variable and instead observe the correlation between variables (such as case studies, surveys etc)
What are the main strengths of lab experiments?
- Can establish cause and effect
- Gives control over variables
- Can objectively assess behaviours
What are the main weaknesses of lab experiments?
- An artificial setting (low external validity)
- Difficult to assess long term behaviours
What are the main strengths and weaknesses of field experiments?
Strengths
- High external validity
Weaknesses
- Less control over extraneous variables
- Difficult to get accurate results
What are schemas?
Mental structure that organise and collect information about something
What are implicit research methods
Methods that measure automatic processes and tap into schemas
What is the implicit association test?
People are asked to categorise stimuli that are split into congruent and incongruent pairs.
Assess reaction times which are thought to be faster with congruent pairs
What is priming?
The presentation of a stimulus before a test to increase the accessibility of related schemas
What are lexical decision tasks?
Computer based tasks where people judge if a string of letters form a real word to infer the accessibility of schemas
What are WEIRD samples?
People that are Western Educated from Industrialised Rich Democracies
