Topic 13: Introduction to Social Psychology

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

Social psychology is a scientific field that seeks to understand the causes and consequences of individual behaviour and thought in social situations.

Question 2

What is hindsight bias?

Answer 2

The tendency to believe ‘I knew it all along’ after knowing outcome.

Question 3

Why was there a surge in obedience and conformity research after WWII?

Answer 3

The events of the Holocaust put a focus on these psychological phenomena as the question was asked, how could so many ‘normal’ people commit such awful atrocities? The development of social psychology was in part due to the influential psychologists Asch and Lewin who fled Germany in nazi wartime.

Question 4

What is culture and what is cultural psychology?

Answer 4

Culture is the values, traditions and beliefs shared by a particular group of people. E.g. A nation such as England have a tradition of eating fish and chips on a friday.
Cultural psychology refers to the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members.

Question 5

What are the psychological stances on the influence of culture?

Answer 5

Absolutism - Culture makes little or no difference for most psychological phenomena.
Relativism - Psychological phenomena are likely to vary considerably across cultures.

Question 6

Who are WEIRD people?

Answer 6

WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) .
96% of samples studied in Psychology are WEIRD, therefore it could be argued that most psychological research is not generalizable to other parts of the world.

Question 7

Study on the cultural variation in attention to context. (Masuda and Nisbett, 2001)

Answer 7

Compared US and Japanese adults ability to recall details of an underwater scene with fish in the forefront and background details like seaweed.
Japanese ppts recalled 60% more background elements than US ppts. Could be linked to Japan being a collectivist culture that generally pays more attention to the relative context.

Question 8

What are some cultural variations in attitudes towards success and responsibility?

Answer 8

Individualistic - where success and responsibility are focused on individual achievement.
Collectivistic - where success and responsibility are seen as a reflection of group effort.

Question 9

What are cultural variations in group identity?

Answer 9

Independent individuals see themselves as automonous, authoritorial and often isolated in terms of abstract, internal attributes.
Interdependent individuals see themselves as part of wider social construct and define themselves by relationships and social roles.

Question 10

Is reality as we see it?

Answer 10

Our minds translate raw sensory input into meaningful perceptions and concepts. You can think of our subjective reality like the desktop of a computer, organising the messy complicated reality of the inner workings of a computer into specific functional features.

Question 11

What are schemas?

Answer 11

Schemas are mental models of the world that allow us to interpret incoming sensory information and predict future information.
E.g. Dog schema - four legs, furry, barks

Question 12

What are social schemas?

Answer 12

Social schemas organise information about people. E.g. Friendships - shared interests, equal status.
OR E.g. stereotypes - type pf schema that guides beliefs about social groups.

Question 13

What is categorisation and how is it useful socially?

Answer 13

Categorisation allows us to class individuals who share certain attributes. This helps us to organise large amounts of information and make inferences when situations are ambigious.
Social categorisation allows us to make additional inferences about people. E.g. Student - Wakes up late, drinks a lot, lazy

Question 14

What are stereotypes?

Answer 14

A generalized belief about a category of people. Categories that we instantly percieve and therefore are more likely to hold stereotypes about are race, gender and age.

Question 15

1 limitation and 1 risk of sreotyping:

Answer 15

Stereotypes are oversimplifications as they may be true on average for a social group but not on an individual level. E.g average man’s height is taller than women’s but on an individual level there is a fair chance a woman would be taller. Stereotypes are also often negative and target minority groups, leading to prejudice and discrimination.

Question 16

What influence do sterotypes have on our perception of others behaviour?

Answer 16

Ambigiously negative behaviour is more likely to be percieved negatively when enacted by a member of a negatively stereotyped group. E.g. Police officers speaking with less respect to black drivers.

Question 17

How do stereotypes influence memory?

Answer 17

Traits which fit into a stereotype are more likely to be encoded and integrated into memory. If you meet a librarian who is introverted, conscientious, confident and lazy you are more likely to remember the first two as they are stereotypic of librarians.

Question 18

What is a stereotype threat?

Answer 18

A stereotype threat is the fear of confirming a negative stereotype of a social group you belong to. Can have adverse effects e.g. race stereotypes about african american intelligence can cause AfrAmer individuals to perform worse on tests when they are asked to write down their race prior to the test.

Question 19

How can stereotypes be self fufilling?

Answer 19

Stereotype threat effects performance which ends up confirming the stereotype. E.g. woman avoids sports her whole childhood missing the critical period for developing spatial skills causing later sports abilities to be underdeveloped for age.

Question 20

What is rational thought and some characteristics of this way of thinking?

Answer 20

Rational thought is having awareness of thought processes and is based on conscious deliberation. Also known as system 2 and is characteristically slower, has greater awareness, less efficiency and greater control.

Question 21

What is intuitive thought and some characteristics of this way of thinking?

Answer 21

Rational thought is having a lack of awareness of thought processes and is based on feelings/instincts or mental shortcuts (heuristics). Also known as system 1 and is characteristically faster, has less awareness, greater efficiency and is more automatic.

Question 22

What is a dual-process model?

Answer 22

It is the view that both systems of thinking exist and are integrated. Most pychological processes involve dual processes - neither completely intuitive or completely rational.

Question 23

What are some characteristics of our awareness of stimuli?

Answer 23

Subliminal perception - we may be unaware of our perception of certain stimulus.
Sometimes we are aware of a stimulus but unaware of the processes of categorisation or stereotyping that affect our response.

Question 24

What is intention?

Answer 24

Intention is to be in control of the instigation of a mental process. E.g. we do not intend to hear sounds, perception just occurs.

Question 25

What is efficiency?

Answer 25

Refers to the extent to which a mental process can operate with little attentional resources. E.g. sound perception is efficent but solving mathematical equations is not.

Question 26

What is control?

Answer 26

Controllability refers to the extent to which we can counteract the effect of a stimulus on
thoughts & behaviours.
e.g. stereotypes come to mind automatically but you can control your subsequent judgements and actions.

Question 27

Can processes shift between systems of thought?

Answer 27

Yes!
Driving a car becomes more automatic. System 2 —–> System 1
Mindfulness parctise can bring more attention/ awareness to the breath.
System 1 —–> System 2