Weeks 1-2

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

Scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
- Gordon Allport

Question 2

What is a major difficuly of social psychology?

Answer 2

Making reliable inferences about internal states from overt behaviour.

Question 3

What three things do we rely on to create successful social interactions?

Answer 3

Cognition - thought
Affect - emotion
Behaviour - actions, interactions

Question 4

What is the person-situation interaction?

Answer 4

How characteristics of the person and characteristics of the social situation interact to determine behaviour

Question 5

What is the equation used to define the person-situation interaction?

What does it mean?

Answer 5

Behaviour = f (person x social situation)

The behaviour of a given person at any given time is a function of both the characteristics of the person and the influence of the social situation.

Question 6

What is social influence?

Answer 6

The process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and through which we change theirs.

Question 7

What is the belonging hypothesis?

Answer 7

The need to belong or the need for affiliation.

Our basic need to be with and be accepted by others.

All humans share a fundamental motive to seek and maintain social contact with others.

Question 8

What are the differentiating factors beween most and least happy people?

What factors were not significant?

Answer 8

High quality relationships

Gender, income, religion

Question 9

What happens to people who do not feel they belong?

Answer 9

They are more vulnerable to depression and problems with physical health.

Question 10

What is meant by “implied presence” in the definition of social psychology?

Answer 10

The way that human interaction assigns meaning to things, typically constructed and transferred through language.
E.g. Norms such as littering. We don’t litter, even when no one else is around and there is no chance of being caught. The presence of other people is implied, and determines our behaviour even when there’s no one around.

Question 11

How is social psychology different from general psychology?

Answer 11

It focuses on social interaction, between individuals and within and between groups.

Question 12

How is social psychology different from sociology and anthropology?

Answer 12

It focuses on the role of psychological process of an individual in a social context, as opposed to the organisation of groups (sociology) or culture (anthropology), which deal with the group as a whole.

Question 13

What is reductionism?

Answer 13

The practice of explaining a phenomenon in terms of the language and concepts of a lower level of analysis.

E.g. Society is explained in terms of groups, groups in terms of interpersonal processes, interpersonal processes in terms of intrapersonal cognitive mechanisms, etc…

Question 14

What is a major problem with reductionist theorising?

Answer 14

It may leave the original question unanswered.

E.g. An explanation of social neuroscience may not necessarily address how one person interacts with another.

Question 15

What is one criticism of social psychology?

Answer 15

It tries to explain social behaviour in terms that are not social, such as cognitive and motivational processes, o rneural activity and genetic predisposition.

Question 16

What is a level of analysis?

Answer 16

The type of concepts, mechanisms and language used to explain a phenomenon.

Question 17

What is social identity theory?

Answer 17

Both individual cognitive processes and large-scale social forces are used to explain intergroup behaviour.

Question 18

Whaqt solution did Doise propose to reductionist issues with social psychology?

Answer 18

Accept that different levels of explanation exist, but construct theories that formally integrate concepts from different levels.

Question 19

What are the four levels of explanation in social psychology?

Answer 19

Intrapersonal
How people organise their experience of the social environment

Interpersonal and situational
Analysis of interpersonal interaction excluding external factors such as social status.

Positional
Analysis of interpersonal interaction in specific situations, including external factors such as social position

Ideological
Analysis of interpersonal interaction that considers the role of general social beliefs, and of social relations between groups.

Question 20

What is the scientific method and why is it used in social psychology?

Answer 20

Method for studying nature that involves the collecting of data to test hypotheses

Question 21

What are a hypothesis and a theory?

What does each attempt to do?

Answer 21

A theory is a well-substantiated explanation for something based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.

Hypotheses are predictions based on theories or past observations. Data is then collected to test if the hypothesis is correct.

Question 22

What is methodological pluralism?

Answer 22

When a hypothesis is supported a number of times by different research teams using different methods. This proves the result was not an artifact of the research method.

Question 23

What is an experiment?

Answer 23

A hypothesis test in which something (manipulation of the IV) is done to see its effects on something else (changes in the DV).

Question 24

What is a confounding variable?

Answer 24

A third variable in a study examining a cause-and-effect relationship that may influence the findings.

Question 25

What is a one-factor design?

Answer 25

An experiment in which there is only two levels of only one independent variable

Question 26

An experiment is conducted to test the hypothesis that aggression in children is increased by TV programs that contain realistic violence.

To test this hypothesis, The participants would be randomly assigned across four experimental conditions in which they watched (1) a non-violent fantasy program, (2) a non-violent realistic program, (3) a violent fantasy program, or (4) a violent realistic program. What are the factors and levels of this experiment design?

Answer 26

Two-factor design with two levels.

IV1 - violence of the program (low vs high)
IV2 - realism of the program (realistic vs fantasy)

Question 27

What process does the scientific method follow?

Answer 27

1. Hunches from observations
2. Theory development
3. Hypothesis / predictions / questions
4. Empirical research to test hypotheses
5. Theoretical support, redevelop, or abandonment

Question 28

Why do social psychology experiments often occur in labs?

Answer 28

In order to control as many potentially confounding variables as possible and to isolate and manipulat a single aspect of a variable.

Question 29

How does social psychology intersect with biochemical and brain activities?

Answer 29

E.g. We may wish to know why stress or anxiety sometimes occur when we interact with other people, and so might measure the change int he level of the hormone cortisol in our saliva.

Question 30

What is one drawback of laboratory experiments in social psychology?

Answer 30

Lab findings can’t be generalised to the real world where conditions are less ‘pure’

Question 31

How are lab findings applied to social psychology in the real world?

Answer 31

They address theories about human social behaviour, and we can generalise these theories to apply to conditions other than those in the lab.

Question 32

Why are lab experiments low on external validity?

Answer 32

They are dissimilar to real world conditions (mundane realism)

Question 33

Why are lab experiments high in internal validity?

Answer 33

The manipulations must be full of psychological impact and meaning for the participants (experimental validity)

Question 34

What are subject effects?

Answer 34

Effects that are not spontaneous, owing to demand characteristics and/or participants wishing to please the experimenter.

Question 35

What are demand characteristics?

Answer 35

Features of an experiment that seem to ‘demand’ a particular response.

E.g. Giving participants information about a hypothesis may influence them to answer in a way that they think will make the researcher happy or in a way that will confirm the hypothesis.

Question 36

What are experimenter effects?

Answer 36

The experimenter is aware of the hypothesis and may inadvertently communicate cues that cause participants to behave in a way that confirms the hypothesis.

Question 37

What is a field experiment?

Answer 37

An experiment to test a hypothesis done outside a controlled laboratory.

Question 38

What are the pros and cons of a field experiment?

Answer 38

Pros
May have high external validity as participants are usually unaware that an experiment is taking place

Cons
There is less control over extraneous variables
Random assignment may be difficult
May be difficult to obtain accurate measurements of subjective feelings

Question 39

What kinds of theories may not be studied through experimentation?

Answer 39

Theories where we have no control over the variables.
E.g. The relationship between biological sex and decision making - we can’t manipulate sex to see what effects emerge.

Theories where ethics are a concern
E.g. Hypotheses about the effects on self-esteem of being a victim of violent crime - we can’t subject participants to violent crime.

Question 40

What is archival research?

Answer 40

A non-experimental method for investigating large-scale, widely occurring phenomena that may be remote in time, such as a stockmarket crash or a disastrous decision by a government. The research can’t conduct an experiment and must make do with data that is already available.

Often used to make comparisons between different cultures or nations regarding things such as suicide, mental health or child-rearing strategies.

Pros
Not subject to demand characteristics

Cons
Can be unreliable because the researcher has no control over the primary data collection, which might be biased or unreliable in other ways (e.g missing vital data)

Question 41

What are case studies?

Answer 41

A non-experimental method involving in-depth analysis of a single case (a person, group, or event). Best suited to the study of unusual or rare phenomena such as serial killers, cults or distasters, etc.

Pros
Useful as a source of hypotheses

Cons
Findings can be compromised by researcher bias

Question 42

What is discourse analysis?

Answer 42

Focuses on what people actually say innaturally occurring conversation or ‘discourse’ and what is behind the words to detect underlying discursive themes.

Pros
Can be effective at detecting attitudes and feelings that people are careful to hide, such as racism or sexism, etc.

Cons
Interpretation of discourse is influenced by the perspective and expertise of the researcher

Question 43

What is survey research?

Answer 43

Participants answer questions on a subject

Pros
Can obtain a lot of data from a large sample of participants
Representative of the population as a whole

Question 44

What is a field study?

Answer 44

A non-experimental equivalent of a field experiment. A non-intrusive and ‘invisible’ researcher observes, records and codes naturally occurring behaviour.

Pros
Investigating spontaneous action sequences in a natural context

Cons
Prone to observer bias
Prone to distortions by the unintended impactof the researcher on the people being investigated
Lack objectivity
Make for poor generalisations

Question 45

What are the five ethical principles that receive the most attention in socail psychology?

Answer 45

Protection from harm
Right to privacy
Deception
Informed consent
Debriefing

Question 46

What did early social psychologists call themselves?

Answer 46

Folk psychologists

Question 47

What is the group mind?

Answer 47

Either
1. A societal way o fthinking within the individual
or
2. A form of trans-individual mentality that could encompass a whole group of people

Question 48

What are norms?

Answer 48

Accepted standards of behaviour in social groups

Question 49

Do work groups perform better with democratic or autocratic leaders?

Answer 49

Democratic

Question 50

Do people perform better individually or when competing?

Answer 50

When competing

Question 51

What are group dynamics?

Answer 51

Focuses on interaction within groups, group processes, and intergroup relations.

Merely being categorised into groups is sufficient to cause people to discriminate between groups.

Question 52

What is minority influence?

Answer 52

People can be swayed by a minority.

E.g. A consistent minority brought people to apparently see blue as green.

Question 53

What are heuristics?

Answer 53

Mental short cuts we use to make cognitive inferences

Question 54

What is confirmation bias?

Answer 54

The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

Question 55

Why do researchers use non-experimental methods?

Answer 55

An experimental method might be inappropriate for the hypothesis, such as for practical or ethical reasons.

Question 56

What is correlation?

Answer 56

Where changes in one variable reliably map onto changes in another variable, but it cannot be determined which of the two variables caused the change.

Question 57

What is causation?

Answer 57

Where changes in one variable can be predicted by changes in another variable.