Week 1 Flashcards
Literature Reviews
What is Stanley Milgram Famous for?
Milgram’s Obedience Research
What is social psychology?
Social psychology is the scientific study of how individuals think, feel and behave in a social context”
What is Attribution Theory?
The theory that we can explain someone’s behaviour by crediting either their stable, enduring traits – also known as their disposition – or the situation at hand.
Are a person’s behaviour situational or dispositional
What is Fundamental Attribution Theory?
The tendency for observers, when analysing another’s behaviour, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
What is the Foot-in-the-door phenomenon?
The tendency for people to more readily comply with a certain big request after they’ve first agreed to smaller, more innocuous requests
What is Philip Zimbardo known for?
Stanford Prison Experiment
What was the finding from the Stanford Prison Experiment?
The participant’s behaviour was situational as they all reverted after the experiment ended.
The power of a given situation can easily override individual differences in personality
What was the Stanford Prison Experiment?
14 day experiment, 70 applicants screened, 24 male college students selected, $15 day per day paid, half prisoners half guards, guards told it was the prisoner’s behaviour was being studied, prisoners told they were just going to jail, no instructions, real policemen came and arrested and jailed prisoners properly, initial trauma of the humiliation of the arrest, the booking, strip-searching and waiting kicked off a loss of identity in prisoners, few prisoners became so emotionally distressed had to leave after one day, guards could act in any manner they wanted as long as they didn’t physically hurt anyone however, soon encounters became cruel, hostile and dehumanising, guards hurled insults, referred to prisoners only by number, put some in solitary confinement, prisoners started breaking down, others rebelled, others became passively resigned as if they deserved to be treated badly, experiment ended early after only 6 days.
What did Leon Festinger contribute to social psychology?
The notion that we experience discomfort, or dissonance, when our thoughts, beliefs, or behaviours are inconsistent with each other.
E.g., Bruno is generally considered a peaceful person but then punches his friend on a fender bender. → Bruno now likely facing some cognitive dissonance
Bruno might now relieve this tension by modifying his attitude of himself to match the action he already committed – Maybe I am not a nice guy after all maybe I am a bully –
He could also relieve tension by changing how he thinks about the situation – Might still think he is a peaceful person but unusual situation lead to unusual action –
An inverted fundamental attributable error
The point is that this mismatch between what we do and who we think we are induces tension – cognitive dissonance – and that we tend to want to resolve that tension.
What was Milgram’s Obediance Study?
1961 - Stanley Milgrim – Question – How ordinary people were able to commit atrocities in Nazi Germany
Theory → People obey wicked leaders leading to them committing atrocities
3 different people involved
Student (Victim) – actor
Teacher (Test Subject) – volunteer
Experimenter (Authority Figure) – actor
Student would answer questions from experimenter and teacher would shock the student with increasingly more fatal volts with every wrong answer
The teacher before-hand would get a little shock to understand what the student would experience.
Of significant value, the teacher and experimenter were in different rooms to the student with no visible way to see each other.
100% went all the way to 300v with 65% reaching 450v.
What did Stanley Milgram conclude after his famous study?
Stanley Milgram researched the effect of authority on obedience. He concluded people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to appear cooperative–even when acting against their own better judgment and desires.
Milgrim concluded that we may be puppets controlled by society but we are puppets with perception and awareness with awareness perhaps being the first step towards being a liberated society.
What other fields does social psychology intersect with?
Sociology
Personality psychology
Cognitive psychology
Clinical psychology
What are some differences and intersections between the study of social psychology and sociology?
How are they different
- Sociology tends to focus on the group level
- Social psychology tends to focus on the individual level
I.e., individual in context
How do the fields intersect?
- They often share the same training and publish in the same journals
- Both can help in understanding societal and immediate factors that influence behaviours.
What are some differences and intersections with social psychology and personality psychology
How are they different
- Personality psychologists are interested in differences between individuals
- Social psychologists are interested in how social factors affect most individuals
How do the fields intersect?
- They are closely linked. They complement each other
- Both may examine how situational factors interact with individual differences.
Differences and intersections between social psyc and cog psyc
How are they different?
- Cognitive psychologists study mental processes overall
- Social psychologists are interested in mental processes with respect to social information and how these processes influence social behaviour.
How do the fields intersect?
- Social cognition has become an important area within social psychology.
Differences and intersections btwn social psych and clinical psych
How are they different?
- Clinical psychologists seek to understand and treat people with psychological difficulties or disorders
- Social psychologists do not focus on disorders; they focus on the more typical ways in which individuals think, feel, behave and influence each other.
How do the fields intersect?
- Numerous ways.
- E.g., both may address how people cope with anxiety or pressure in social situations, how people perceive or act toward others; or how bullying or stereotyping can affect health.
Social psychology is the scientific study of ….
1. Social thinking
- How we perceive ourselves and others
- What we believe
- Judgements we make
- Our attitudes
2. Social influence
- Culture and biology
- Pressures to conform
- Persuasion
- Groups of people
3. Social relations
- Prejudice
- Aggression
- Attraction and Intimacy
- Helping
What were the 5 stages in history of social psychology?
1. Birth and Infancy
2. Call to action
3. Confidence and crisis
4. Pluralism
5. Present day
What was the birth and Infancy phase of social psychology?
- 1880 - 1920s
- Early research by Triplett and Ringelmann > how the prescence of others affects an individual’s prescence
- The first social psychology textbooks in 1908 and 1924 began to shape the emerging field.
- Writers of the first three textbooks in social psychology: the English psychologist William Mcdougall (1908) and two Americans, Edward Ross (1908) and Floyd Allport (1924). Allport’s book, in particular, with its focus on the interaction of individuals and their social context and its emphasis on the use of experimentation and the scientific method, helped to establish social psychology as the discipline it is today.
What was the call to action phase of social psychology?
- Response to try and explain the actions of Nazis in ww2 and find solutions so it will never occur again.
- Burst of activity in social psych.
- Sherif and Lewin solidified it’s place as a science
