STUDY UNIT 1

Question 1

WHAT DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIST DO?

Answer 1

Social psychology features experiments and the scientific
method. It studies inner states and processes as well as
behaviour.
Social psychology is concerned with the effect of other
people on (mainly adult) human beings’ thoughts,
feelings and behaviours.

Question 2

ABC TRIAD

Answer 2

A - affect (how people feel)
B - behaviour (what people do, their actions)
C - cognition (what people think about)

Question 3

WHAT IS NATURE?

Answer 3

Nature is the physical world around us, including its laws and processes.

Question 4

WHAT IS CULTURE?

Answer 4

Culture is an information-based system in which many
people work together to help satisfy their biological and
social needs.

Question 5

WHAT IS “THE PSYCH”?

Answer 5

The psyche is a broad term for mind,
including emotions, desires, perceptions and indeed all
psychological processes.

Question 6

NATURE NURTURE DEBATES

Answer 6

Many social scientists have grown tired of nature–
nurture debates and wish to put an end to them, though
others continue to pursue them vigorously

Question 7

NATURE AND CULTURE

Answer 7

Nature and culture have shaped each other. Nature has prepared human beings for culture.

Question 8

THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Answer 8

Proposed by Charles Darwin. Focuses on how change occurs in nature.

Question 9

NATURAL SELECTION

Answer 9

Process whereby those members of a species that survive and reproduce most effectively are the ones that pass along their genes to future generations.

Question 10

BEING SOCIAL

Answer 10

Being social is a strategy that enables some species to survive and
reproduce effectively. That is the biological starting point
of social psychology: being social improves survival and
reproduction.

Question 11

SOCIAL ANIMALS

Answer 11

People that seek connections to others and prefer to live, work and play together with other people.

Question 12

CULTURAL ANIMAL THEORY

Answer 12

The view that evolution shaped the human psyche so as to enable humans to create and take part in culture.

Question 13

CULTURE

Answer 13

Culture is an advanced way of being social.

Question 14

FEATURES OF CULTURE

Answer 14

• shared ideas
• social system
• praxis

Question 15

SHARED IDEAS

Answer 15

Culture is the world of shared ideas. Culture enables
you to interact with people you have never met before;
just because you belong to the same culture, you have
enough in common that you can do things together. To say that culture consists of ‘shared ideas’ is to say that no single person has culture
by himself or herself.

Question 16

CULTURE AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

Answer 16

Culture exists as a network linking many different people.
The idea of a network is useful because it captures the
essential point that culture connects many people together
and exists in what they share. The problem with the idea of
a network is that it doesn’t sufficiently capture the dynamic
(changing) aspect of culture. Culture never sits still.

Question 17

PRAXIS

Answer 17

Practical way of doing things.

Question 18

CULTURE AS PRAXIS

Answer 18

Anthropologists now argue among themselves as to
whether a culture should be understood more on the
basis of shared beliefs and values or shared ways of doing
things.