What is social psychology

Question 1

What is Social Psychology?

Answer 1

defined as the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

how people might actually influence your behaviour or how poeople might

Question 2

Social psychologists are interested in studying

Answer 2

how and why our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are shaped by our social environment.

Question 3

Social influence

Answer 3

• defined as the effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behaviours
• could be direct or indirect

Question 4

Direct social influence

Answer 4

involves explicit methods like intimidation, peer pressure, and intentional persuasion

Question 5

what matters most in social psychology?

Answer 5

what matters most is not so much the objective properties of the social environment, but rather how people perceive, comprehend, and interpret their social world.

Question 5

Indirect influence

Answer 5

occurs through the presence of others or the transmission of cultural values, even in the absence of direct interaction

Question 6

Construal

Answer 6

subjective interpretations of social phenomena (your intepretation of the situation

Question 7

Social psychology compared with folk wisdom and common sense

Answer 7

• Folk psychology and common sense are other ways of understanding human nature (But the conclusions reached by these methods are unreliable, oversimplified and contradictory), tends to underestimate the power of the particular situation (there are some conditions under which one is true, and other conditions under which the other is true)

Question 8

The Westgate Studies by Newcomb (1943)

Answer 8

looked at how college roommates’ attitudes and values affected their social relationships. The findings revealed that over time, roommates became more alike in their attitudes and values, suggesting that people with similar traits are more likely to become close friends.

Question 9

Byrne and Clore’s (1970)

Answer 9

research suggest that people may be attracted to those who complement their emotional needs in certain situations (e.g., anxious people prefer people who are more calm).

Question 9

“birds of a feather flock together” and “opposites attract” – Which is it??

Answer 9

it’s contextual, most psychologist agree with “birds of a feather flock together”

Question 10

Experiment-based science

Answer 10

• tested by the objective and systematic collection of data using the scientific method

Question 11

Asch conformity experiment

Answer 11

◦ Participants were asked to compare the lengths of lines.
◦ However, the majority of the group was composed of confederates who intentionally provided incorrect answers.
◦ The real participant, unaware of the deception, often conformed to the incorrect group consensus.

Question 12

Social psychology compared with sociology

Answer 12

Both share an interest in situational and societal influences on behaviour.

Question 13

Social psychology compared with sociology: level of analysis.

Answer 13

◦ Social Psychology = Micro (studies individuals).
◦ Sociology = Macro (examines broad societal factors).

Question 14

Social Psychology differs from Sociology in its goal

Answer 14

Social Psychology identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture.

Question 15

Social Psychology faces challenges

Answer 15

due to its relatively early stage of development.
- Most of our research is rooted in North America (WEIRD populations), and thus exhibits a bias in assuming universal human nature.
◦ Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic
- lack comprehensive cross-cultural testing.

Question 16

Social psychology compared with personality psychology

Answer 16

Both share an emphasis on individuals and the reasons for their behaviour.

Question 17

Social psychologists emphasize

Answer 17

the psychological processes shared by most people that make them susceptible to social influence. (focus on group)

Question 18

Personality psychologists focus on

Answer 18

individual differences, which are the aspects of people’s
personalities that make them different from others (focus on individual differences in people)

Question 19

Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2004)

Answer 19

• Asked students to predict if fellow students would behave competitively or cooperatively in a strategy game.
• The students who played were told it was either a “Wall Street Game” or a “Community Game”.
• Players were mostly influenced by the name given to the game (the situational factor).
• The name of the game conveyed strong social norms about what kind of behaviour was appropriate in this situation

Question 20

fundamental attribution error

Answer 20

tendency to overestimate the extent to which a person’s behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of external, situational factors

Question 21

fundamental attribution error: Internal Attribution for Others’ Negatives

Answer 21

◦ People often ascribe internal explanations for others’ negative behaviors or outcomes.

Question 22

fundamental attribution error: External Attribution for Others’ Positives

Answer 22

individuals tend to attribute good things happening to others to external, situation-based factors.

Question 23

fundamental attribution error: External Attribution for Personal Negatives:

Answer 23

◦ As a means of preserving self-esteem, individuals often attribute external explanations for their own unfavorable outcomes.

Question 24

fundamental attribution error: Internal Attribution for Personal Positives:

Answer 24

◦ Conversely, individuals credit internal factors for their positive behaviors or outcomes

Question 25

Underestimating the power of the situation, leads to:

Answer 25

oversimplification of complex situations. Oversimplification decreases our understanding of human behavior.

Question 26

Behaviorists seek to understand

Answer 26

the power of the situation by considering the effect of reinforcing properties of the environment on human behavior. (we need to consider how individuals construe or perceive the situation.)

Question 27

Behaviorism

Answer 27

is a psychological school that focuses on understanding human behavior through environmental reinforcement.

Question 28

Behaviorism Fundamental principle:

Answer 28

Behavior that is rewarded is likely to continue, while behavior followed by punishment is likely to cease.

Question 29

“Little Albert” Experiment (Watson & Rayner, 1920)

Answer 29

Goal: Create a fear response in Little Albert.
Steps: Introduced a 9-month-old baby, Little Albert, to different stimuli like a white rat, rabbit, monkey, masks, and burning newspapers.
Initially, Albert showed no fear.
During conditioning, every time Albert touched the white rat, researchers simultaneously made a loud noise.
Eventually, Albert developed a fear of the rat alone.
Results: Albert showed fear not just of the white rat but also of similar things, indicating a generalized fear response.

Question 30

Limitations of Early Behaviorism:

Answer 30

Since early behaviourists did not concern themselves with cognition, thinking, and feeling, this approach has proven inadequate for a complete understanding of the social world. They especially overlooked the importance of how people interpret their environments.

Question 31

Gestalt psychology

Answer 31

• important to look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in it, to see how they construe the world around them.
• we should study the subjective way an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object.

Question 32

Kurt Lewin

Answer 32

often more important to understand how people perceive, comprehend, and interpret each other’s behaviour than it is to understand the behaviour’s objective properties.

B=f(P,E)
Behaviour = function of the person and the environment

Question 33

naïve realism

Answer 33

◦ the conviction that we perceive things “as they really are,”
◦ and that reasonable others see things just as we do,
◦ anyone with an alternative perspective must be biased. ◦ E.g., “My way or the highway”
When we think this way, we are underestimating how much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see.

Question 34

two central motives that steer people’s construal’s and approaches towards situations:

Answer 34

◦ The need to feel good about ourselves.
◦ The need to be accurate about ourselves and our social world.

Question 35

Self-esteem Approach:

Answer 35

The need to feel good about ourselves
Self-esteem is an evaluation of one’s self-worth.
Most of us have a need to maintain a positive view of ourselves.
So much so that we will often sacrifice the need to be accurate in order to protect our self- esteem.

Question 36

Self-Justification:

Answer 36

• We may alter our recollections of past actions of which we are unhappy, upset, or ashamed, in order to feel good about our past actions and decisions.
• We may also modify our attitudes about painful situations we have chosen to endure, in order justify our participation to ourselves.

Question 37

Social Cognition:

Answer 37

• The need to be accurate
• Researchers who investigate processes of social cognition begin with the assumption that all people try to view the world as accurately as possible.
• They regard human beings as amateur sleuths who are doing their best to understand and predict their social world.
• a cognitive approach to social psychology; it is the study of how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.

Question 38

Social psychologists’ job as researchers is to

Answer 38

ask the right questions and to find a way to capture the power of the social situation and bring it into the laboratory for study.

Question 39

Social psychology and social problems:
Fear

Answer 39

• does not always increase the persuasiveness of an intervenlon or drive posilve behavioural change in every social issue.
• fear taclcs neither dissuaded drivers from speeding nor persuaded French-Canadian students to practice safer sex, parlcipants reverted to denial, choosing to address their other molvalonal need, to maintain self-esteem, rather than to confront their past and present behaviour accurately.