Week 2 Flashcards
What is Social & Community Psychology
- Study of how thoughts feelings and behaviour is influenced by society
- People are embedded in society
- Social and Community Psychology are embedded in society
History Social Psychology - Wundt
- Pre 1879
- Aristotle - Importance of society in shaping humans
- Comte - Individuals are cause and consequence of society,
i.e they cause change and are the product of the change in society
Modern History Social Psychology
- 1879 Wilhelm Wundt - first psychology lab
- Separates psychology from biology and philosophy
- First to call himself a psychologist
- Placed importance on experiments
- Partially natural science and partially social science
History Social Psychology - Triplett & Dewey
** * Norman Triplett **
* First social psychology study published
* Before this there were studies on suggestibility on children and social facilitation
* Social Facilitation
** * John Dewey **
* Collectivist work on shaping societies that benefit the mass rather that influencing individuals to benefit society
History Social Psychology - McDougall & Ross
- McDougall - Introduction to psychology
- Ross - Social Psychology
History Social Psychology - Allport & Sumner
Floyd Allport
* First social psych textbooks
* father of social psych and father of social experiments
* Concerned with focus on individual dispositions not society circumstances
* Concerned that tendenicy of individuals to be blamed as source of society problems
Sumner
* this became popular in 20’s & 30’s during great depression
* Strenght of societal ties mitigate adverse consequences of the Great Depression
* Stress from depressions increased societal prejudice and led to WWII
Sumner Critiques Social Psych
- Critique of treatement of African Americans
- IQ Tests designed by White men used to demonstrate inferiority of African American people
- Need to consider socio-economic structures and historic inter group relationships
- First African American psychologist and Father of US Black psychology
WWII inspires experiments
- people wanted to know why atrocities happened
- Inspired experiments on conformity, obedience and authority
- Festinger - Insistence that experiments be performed in labs and under controlled conditions , measure variables
- Deception might be needed in experiments so preconceptions don’t influence
- Lewin - Interactionism and practical applications
- Less attention on oppressed groups
Cognitive Revolution
- Inspired in conflict with Behaviourism
- people act because they are inquisitve not because they are conditioned to.
- Lewin - Interactionism and practical applications
- Individuals see the world through their own hopes, objectives and biases
- Subjective experiences are more important and impactful on people than objective ones.
- Used psychology to get people to eat animal brains or other organs so the soldiers would get the traditional cuts
- Demonstrated how to resist propoganda
History of Social Psychology - Move Away From Collectivism
- moved away from collecivist attitudes
- Ceased recognising needs of oppressed groups
- Reacted to needs of powerful groups
- Partially blamed on pervasive Anti-Communism sentiment
History of Social Psychology - 1960s - 1970s
- Stanford Prison & Milgram Obedience
- Do lab observations apply to real life
- Who should social psychology serve? Government, military and law enforcement
- Crisis of Experimental Ethics - questioned research methods
History of Social Psychology - 1970s - 2000s
- Strengthened by Pluralism of research methods - correlational research & field studies allows more variables and wider picture
- Recognise diversity of participants and cultures
- Indigenisation of psychology - Interdepenced in India
- Create adherence to ethical standards - cognition and thought process & informed consent
- Liberation movement refocus psychology to oppressed groups
Social Facilitation
- Scientific attempt to explain thoughts feelings and behaviour
- Whether real or imagined or implied prescence of others
Social Facilitation - Triplett
- Three races - Unpaced, Paced and Paced Competition
- Riders had different times based on which type of race they were in.
- Paced Competition riders had the fastest times.
- More riders around cause faster times rather than faster riders causing more riders around
Triplett - Suction Theory
- Riders in tandem create vacuum that sucks single riders along to make them go faster
Triplett - Shelter Theory
- Riders at the front shelter riders behind from wind
- Riders behind can go faster due to reduced wind resistance
Triplett - Hypnotic Suggestion
Spinning wheels from first bike hypnotise subsequent riders into having more endurance
Triplett - Encouragement Theory
- Having friends in tandem lifts the spirit of the single rider
Triplett - Brain Worry Theory
- Riding alone or riding in front is mentally taxing
- Causes muscles to tire quickly because worrying thoughts induce stress
Triplett - Automatic Theory
- Leader has to strategies about their ride
- Following riders don’t have to think about this and get tired less
Triplett - Dynamogenic Factors
- Mere prescence of others creates competitive instinct even if its not actually a race
Triplett - Social Facilitation Experiment Design
N = 40 children, 8-17 years old
Reel the fishing line alone (3 times)
Reel the fishing line in competition (3 times)
Results:
20 (50%) participants reeled faster in competition compared to alone
10 (25%) participants reeled slower in competition compared to alone
10 (25%) participants showed no difference in time in competition vs. alone
Triplett Social Facilitation Results
- Reeling a fishing line is not comparable to riding a bike - e.g. wind resistance or suction
- Concluded that the differences in performance were probably due to dynomagenic factors
- Prescence of others influences performance - arouses competetive instincet
Social Facilitation - Floyd Allport
- Coined term Social Facilitation - Prescence of others enhances performance
- Consistent findings to Triplett’s observations
- This enhancement happens in animals as well
- Chickens eat more with other chickens than alone - Bayer 1929
- Ants work harder to move dirt when others around -
Chen 1937
Social Facilitation Experiment - Pessin
N = 60 college students
Memorise three lists of 7, three-letter nonsense syllables
Mechanical: Alone, but with the light constantly flashing and a buzzer going off
Social: With a spectator
Control: Alone in a quiet booth
Social Facilitation Experiment - Pessin Results
- Unintentionally contradicted previous research
- Found people work better alone in quiet environment
- Performed better when there was no one watching rather that when they were being observed
- performance was enhibited by mere prescence of other people
Drive Theory
- Robert Zajonc 1965
- Type of arousal facilitates performance of dominant response
- Prescence of others can enhance or inhibit results depending on individual disposition
- Based on dominant tasks vs non-dominant tasks
- Task difficulty is a product of environment not disposition e;g; 5 year ols reeling fishinglines
Drive Theory - Michaels et al
- Compared performance of expert and novel pool players alone and with others
- Novices - Arousal inhibited performance - non dominant
- Experts - Arousla increased performance - dominant task
Critiques of Social Facilitation Theory
- No objective criteria for identifying task difficulty
- Limited meta-analytic supporl
- Presence of people only accounts for small amount of variance
- Studies are inconsistent or contradictory
- Assumes inhibition is due to difficulty and facilitation due to easyness
- Dispositional factors are ignored.
Disposition not Environment
- Uziel 2007
- Socially confident people had better performance in prescence of others
- Socially apprehensive people had inhibited performance in front of others
- Not determined by task difficulty
- Self assured people had higher esteem and positive orientation
- Avoidant tendency were more neurotic, lower esteem and negative orientation
Strube looks at Fishing Reel Experiment
- Triplett did not use any statistical techniques to analyse his data
- Strube re-analysed Triplett’s data using null hypothesis significance testing
- No significant differences
- No social facilitation effect
Replication Crisis
- John Ioannidis (2005) – Most Published Research Findings are False
-
Daryl Bem (2011) - Feeling the future: Did experiments and published a paper proving the existence of ESP
This challenged people’s perception of the scientific method -
Open Science Collaboration (2015) – Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science
Few studies in psychology can be replicated
The more we see the same thing the less we believe it is false positive
Importance of Replication
- Must be able to replicate results or they don’t become general knowledge
- Gives us confidence that the result actually exists
- Become authentic the more we get the same results
- Protects against false positive
Two Types of Replication
- Exact/Direct Replication
- Conceptual Replication
Exact/Direct Replication
- attempt to recreate the exact methods used
- Uses similar conditions of the first study
- Were the results the same?
Conceptual Replication
- Attempt to confirm previous findings using different methods and conditions
- Tests the same idea with changes to conditions
Open Science Collaboration
- 100 scientists replicated one study each
- Followed methodologies as closely as possible and published
- only 25% social studies and 50% cognitive studies replicated
- Effect sizes of original studies had higher confidence intervals
Priming
- Exposure to one stimulus influences responses to next stimulus
- Can be unconscious and without intention
i.e. giving people words associated with old age caused them to walk slowly to an elevator
Reasons for Non-Replication
- Original data was falsified
- Publish or perish pressure
- Nonsignificant results have been hidden
- Small sample sizes
- Effects are not universal across culture and world events
