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Social Psychology

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The thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals as shaped by the actual, ... Thomas Hobbes: egoism (everyone is seeking power, conflict is inevitable) ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Social Psychology


1
Social Psychology
  • Historical and Scientific Underpinnings

2
Definitions
  • Aronson
  • The influences that people have upon the beliefs
    or behavior of others
  • Gordon Allport
  • The thoughts, feelings, and behavior of
    individuals as shaped by the actual, imagined, or
    implied presence of others

3
In the beginning..
  • Norman Triplett (1897) first social
    psychological experiment 18 years after the
    birth of psychology as a science
  • Interested in increased ability in the presence
    of others
  • Led to the complex body of literature on social
    facilitation

4
History framed in a human lifespan
  • Gleam in the Eye and the Fetus (dawn of time to
    1908). Simple and sovereign principles a
    single theory could explain virtually all social
    behavior
  • Jeremy Bentham hedonism
  • Thomas Hobbes egoism (everyone is seeking power,
    conflict is inevitable)
  • Ends in 1908 with publication of Ross
    McDougalls Social Psychology text

5
Lifespan, continued
  • Child Development of Theories (1908-1935)
  • Major areas of research involve public opinion
    polling and test construction
  • Thurstone (1928) and Likert (1932) develop their
    measurement scales

6
Lifespan
  • Adolescent (1936-1947)
  • An overall framework for social psychology begins
    to develop. Inspired by the father of modern
    social psychology Kurt Lewin
  • Lewin proposed the formula behavior is a
    function of the person in the environment
  • Quote Nothing is as practical as a good theory
  • Sherif describes norm formation in a classic
    experiment

7
Lifespan
  • Young Adult (1948-1968)
  • Time of immense productivity
  • Hovland and colleagues on persuasion
  • Asch on conformity
  • Festinger on cognitive dissonance
  • Heider on attribution
  • Milgram on obedience
  • Darley and Latane on the Bystander Effect

8
Lifespan
  • Mid-Life Crisis (1968-late 80s)
  • Nothing left to discover
  • Field was drifting aimlessly
  • New Productivity (Currently)
  • Social Cognition
  • Self and Identity
  • Health Psychology

9
Key Idea Power of the Situation
  • Personality psychologists looks for consistencies
    in human behavior. Explain behavior through
    internal dispositions
  • Social Psychologists emphasize the influences and
    constraints of the situation
  • Explanations for behavior are known as
    attributions. Internal explanations are referred
    to as dispositional, external as situational

10
Fundamental Attribution Error
  • When looking at other peoples behavior, we tend
    to explain it dispositionally. We tend to ignore
    the impact of the situation.
  • Yet, think about how we explain our own failures
    do we tend to blame our selves or something
    about the situation?

11
Social Psychology and Science
  • To succeed in this class you will need to read
    and understand scientific literature
  • Thoughts to have while doing this
  • Maintain skepticism although the works assigned
    are classics and well done, they are not
    infallible. Question, doubt, and wonder.
  • View yourself not just as a consumer of
    knowledge, but as a producer

12
Scientific Method
  • There are numerous ways to seek out knowledge
    (e.g., logic, intuition), but our technique
    involves the Scientific Method
  • The steps are
  • Observation
  • Formation of a theory
  • Formation of a testable hypothesis
  • Creation of an experiment to test the hypothesis
  • Replication

13
Complexity of working with Humans
  • Due to the humanity of humans, we cant always
    perform experiments. Therefore, some knowledge
    is gained through correlational and descriptive
    methods.
  • Also, humans are inquisitive and active. Rarely
    do they act as passive participants in an
    experiment (unlike a fruit fly)

14
Control versus Realism
  • Desired state in an experiment is isolation and
    manipulation of one variable.
  • Does this lead to a contrived and unrealistic
    situation? If so, how does that impact the
    validity of your findings?
  • Are your findings generalizable to the real
    world?
  • Often a delicate tradeoff between realism and
    control

15
Realism
  • Experimental Realism impact of an experiment on
    a subject. Does the participant take the
    experiment seriously
  • Mundane Realism similarity of the experimental
    environment to the real world
  • Experimental realism can occur in the absence of
    mundane realism

16
Ethics
  • Often necessary to deceive participant during
    experiment although this deception is often
    minor (disguising the hypothesis of interest)
  • Reasons for this need
  • Self Presentation Biases
  • Good Subject Bias
  • Question arises is this right?

17
Ethics, continued
  • Decision on experiment and deception is based
    upon a cost/benefits analysis
  • Are the potential costs to the participant worth
    the benefits of the knowledge gained?
  • Increasing the difficulty of answering this
    question is that you cant be sure what results
    the experiment will produce!!
  • Problem of deception can be reduced with a
    thorough debriefing

18
Other Important Terms
  • Independent Variable
  • Variable manipulated by the experimenter
  • Dependent Variable
  • Outcome measure
  • Random Assignment
  • Placement of subjects into experimental groups so
    that each subject has an equal chance of being in
    any group
  • Minimizes impact of pre-existing individual
    differences
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