David Myers
11e
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
1
Chapter One
 Introducing Social Psychology
 What’s the point about Cinder Ella?

Does her self-perception matter?
 A sub-discipline of psychology ψ
 What is psychology?
 What are some other sub-disciplines?

©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
2
What Is Social Psychology?
 Scientific study of how people think about, influence,
and relate to one another
 B = f (p*e)
 Social thinking
 Social influence
 Social relations
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
3
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IS . . .
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
4
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas
 We Construct Our Social Reality
 We react differently because we think differently


1951 Princeton-Dartmouth football game demonstration
Objective reality
 Beliefs about others
 Beliefs about ourselves
 What really happened in Ferguson MO?


Did the grand jury make the right decision?
Perspectives from M. Brown? D. Wilson? Bystanders? Public?
 What’s the point here?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
5
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas
 Our Social Intuitions Are Often Powerful but
Sometimes Perilous
 Dual processing (Kahneman “Thinking fast & slow”)


Conscious and deliberate – system II
Unconscious and automatic – system I
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
6
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas
 Social Influences Shape Our Behavior
 Locality – give an example
 Educational level -give an example
 Subscribed media give an example
 Culture –same sex marriage ok with you?
 Ethnicity
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
7
 Personal Attitudes and Dispositions
 Internal forces

Inner attitudes about specific situations
 Personality dispositions (individual differences)

Different people may react differently while facing the same
p
situation B = f ( *e)
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
8
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas
 Social Behavior Is Biologically Rooted
 Evolutionary psychology

Natural selection predisposes our actions and reactions
 Prejudice happens early at the brain level
 We prefer the familiar things – why?
 Hint: evolution
 Social neuroscience

We are bio-psycho-social organisms
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
9
Social Psychology’s Big Ideas
 Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable in
Everyday Life
 How to know ourselves better
 Implications for human health
 Implications for judicial procedures
 Influencing behaviors
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
10
Social Psychology and Human
Values
 Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology
 “personal convictions” give an example of one for a
social psychologist…and how it can influence her work.
 Research topics
 Types of people

Do business students differ from ψ students?
 Object of social-psychological analysis



How values form
Why they change
How they influence attitudes and actions
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
11
Social Psychology and Human
Values
 Not-S0-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology
 Subjective aspects of Science


Culture –which is better, competition or cooperation?
Social representations – shared beliefs taken for granted
 Are there any real group differences for race/gender?
 Psychological concepts contain hidden values



Defining the good life
Professional advice
Forming concepts
 How could high self-esteem be the same as “defensive”?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
12
Labeling – some examples
• “terrorist” or a “freedom fighter”
• “welfare” or “aid to the needy”
• nationalism v. patriotism.
• open marriage” or “adultery”
• “Brainwashing”
• “Perversions”
Can you think of others?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
13
Is Social Psychology Simply
Common Sense?
 What did Cullen Murphy and Arthur Schlesinger have
in common?
 Paul Lazarsfeld
 “Better-educated soldiers suffered more adjustment problems than did less educated soldiers.”
 Problem with Common Sense
 Invoked after we know the facts (post hoc)
 Hindsight bias (I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon)


Missed or misinterpreted clues of 9/11
2008 world financial crisis
 Caveat: STUDY THE MATERIAL
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
Why?
14
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Forming and Testing Hypotheses
 Theory (falsifiable)


Integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed
events: see Kerlinger:
http://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/632/kerlinder%20definitions.h
tm
 Hypotheses

Testable proposition that describes a relationship that may
exist between events
 What’s the difference between a “fact” and a “theory?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
15
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Correlation Research: Detecting Natural Associations
 Location


Laboratory
 Controlled situation
Field
 Everyday situations
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
16
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Correlation Research: Detecting Natural Associations
 Method


Correlational
 Naturally occurring relationships among variables
Experimental
 Seeks clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one
or more variables while controlling others
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
17
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Correlation Research: Detecting Natural Associations
 Correlation and causation

Allows us to predict but not tell whether changing one
variable will cause changes in another
 Self esteem <-> high achievement (which causes which?)
 Does IQ and family status play a role?
 Bachman & O’Malley, (1977)
 What happened in the study with 715 Minnesota kids?
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
18
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Correlation Research: Detecting Natural Associations
 Survey research






Random sample (from a population)
Unrepresentative samples
Order of questions
Response options
 What % of energy from nuclear power?
 One v. three options – “what happened”
Wording of questions
 “Welfare” v. “assistance to the poor”
Framing – e.g. “forbid” v. “not allow”
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
19
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Experimental Research: Searching for Cause and Effect
 Control: Manipulating variables


Independent variable
 Experimental factor that a researcher manipulates
 Corr or causation
 Prejudice to obese persons (Snyder & Haugen, ‘94)
 TV violence (Boyatzis et al. ‘95)
Dependent variable
 Variable being measured; depends on manipulations of the
independent variable
 Can you manipulate or just measure? See: Table 1.1 p 25
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
20
Random Assignment
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
21
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Experimental Research: Searching for Cause and Effect
 Random assignment: The great equalizer


Process of assigning participants to the conditions of an
experiment such that all persons have the same chance of
being in a given condition
Eliminates extraneous factors
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
22
Research Methods: How We Do
Social Psychology
 Ethics of Experimentation
 Mundane realism
 Experimental realism
 Deception
 Demand characteristics
 Informed consent
 Debriefing
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
23
Generalizing from Laboratory
to Life
 We can distinguish between the content of people’s
thinking and acting and the process by which they
think and act
©2013 McGraw-Hill Companies
24