An Introduction to Social Psychology
Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology
Essay questions
1. What do we learn about the discipline of social psychology from the classic studies
outlined at the beginning of Chapter 1?
A. You will find relevant content on pages 3–7.
You should include a discussion of the following in your answer:
The outlines of the four studies obviously give an indication rather than a complete
picture of the discipline of social psychology.
The table below, which draws on the outlines of the four studies at the beginning of
Chapter 1 and the commentary that follows show the kinds of conclusions you might
draw about social psychology in relation to topics of interest, methods of
investigation, focus (i.e. social influence as part of Allport’s (1954) definition),
findings and conclusions.
You should also refer to:
 Allport’s (1954) definition of social psychology – ‘the attempt to understand and
explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals are influenced
by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings.’
o ‘Imagined’ presence refers to reference persons – e.g. parents.
o ‘implied’ presence refers to the social roles and cultural norms that shape
much human behaviour.
 Characteristics not made explicit by Allport:
o the use of scientific methods – in these examples, the experiment
o the rationale for the use of deception in experiments
o an interest in cognitive processes
o the focus on the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals and
rejection of the notion of group consciousness as separate from the
minds of the individuals comprising the group.
Topic
Sherif
(1954)
Intergroup
prejudice and
discrimination
Tajfel et al.
(1971)
Intergroup
prejudice and
discrimination
Method
Field experiment
Participants
11–12-year-old
boys
Laboratory
experiment
14–15-year-old
boys
Macrae et al.
(1994)
Suppression of
stereotypical
thoughts/ impact
of stereotypes on
behaviour
Laboratory
experiment
Students
Bargh et al.
(1996)
Priming/ impact
of stereotypes on
behaviour
Laboratory
experiment
Adults?
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Control
Deception
Social influence
Findings
Conclusions
Sherif
(1954)
No control group
but comparison
of impact of
intergroup
competition over
time
Participants in
each group not
informed of the
existence of the
other group for
the first week;
intergroup
tournaments
arranged as if in
response to
request from
participants
Tajfel et al.
(1971)
No control group
but alleged group
membership
reversed
Macrae et al.
(1994)
Control group
Bargh et al.
(1996)
Control group
Random
allocation of
participants to
groups but they
were told it was
related to
performance on
the task – to
under- or overestimation of dots
on the screen
Participants not
made aware that
the time it took
for them to walk
from the
experimental
room to the
nearest lift was
part of the
experiment, nor
that this would be
measured
Mainly the
members of the
other group but
also members of
own group
Participants
showed
intergroup
hostility
In Allport’s (1954)
words ‘the
imagined
presence’ of
others
Participants
showed
intergroup
discrimination
Participants told
this was a study
of people’s ability
to construct life
event details from
visual
information; in
second study
participants
incorrectly told
that they were
going to meet the
skinhead
Suppression or
activation of
beliefs about
other groups
Participants
exposed to the
elderly prime
subsequently
walked more
slowly from the
experimental
room to the lift
than members of
the control group
Support for
Sherif’s realistic
conflict theory –
conflict and
competition
between groups
over valued
resources can
create intergroup
hostility and
prejudice
Division into
groups is
sufficient to
trigger
discriminatory
behaviour
Participants who
were asked to
suppress
stereotypical
thinking about
skinheads did so
successfully;
when the same
participants were
subsequently not
given this
instruction their
stereotypical
thoughts were
stronger than the
control group’s
Demonstrated
rebound effect in
relation to both
attitude and
behaviour –
higher level of
stereotypical
thinking than if
participants had
not tried to
suppress these
thoughts in the
first place
Suppression or
activation of
beliefs about
other groups
Demonstrated an
unconscious
behavioural
response to the
elderly prime
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2. Identify the key characteristics that distinguish social psychology from related
disciplines.
A. You will find relevant content on pages 7–10.
You should include a discussion of the following in your answer:
Using an example of a social psychology experiment to illustrate the differences in
focus between social psychology, general psychology and personality psychology
Chapter 1 uses an experiment conducted by Asch (1955) to do this. Explain how an
experiment that looks at first sight as if it is about perceptual thresholds is actually
about social influence. Key points:
 What appears to be a methodological flaw – asking participants to respond in
groups and call out their responses – is actually a way of testing the extent to
which individuals are influenced by a discrepant majority judgement.
 The deception often used in social psychology experiments, referred to earlier in
the chapter, is evident in the fact that only one of the eight members of the
group was a naïve participant.
 The experimental setting created by Asch allowed for the manipulation of
variables to study the social influence that a false majority judgement would
have on the thoughts and behaviours of individuals.
 Had this been a general psychology experiment studying perceptual thresholds,
the methodology would have been different – Asch would have varied the
difference in the lengths of his standard and comparison stimuli systematically to
assess the extent to which such variations affected perceptual judgements. And
he would have kept the social context constant. Given the purpose of Asch’s
actual experiment, he kept the physical stimuli relatively constant but varied the
social context.
 Had this been a personality psychology experiment, the hypothesis to be tested
might have been why some participants are influenced by the erroneous
judgements of the majority while others remain unaffected – i.e. a focus on the
role of personality traits in participants reaching their decision – and whether, for
example, there was a relationship with intelligence or an authoritarian or nonauthoritarian personality.
 Personality psychologists would also be interested in how individual differences
came about – e.g. because of upbringing.
Finding a way to distinguish between social psychology and personality psychology
given the overlaps
The distinction is less straightforward than:
 personality psychologists are mainly interested in studying how particular traits
are acquired and their influence on an individual’s behaviour
 social psychologists are interested in the impact of the social situation on
individual behaviour.
This is because social psychologists also:
 use attitudes to predict individual behaviour
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
are interested in studying individual difference variables, such as the degree to
which individuals are prone to prejudice, susceptible to Fascist ideologies,
oriented to situational cues or reactions of others.
BUT the focus is different:
Social psychologists:
 are typically interested in personality variables as moderators
 emphasize the power of strong social situations to relegate personality
influences to the background.
Distinguishing social psychology from sociology
Again, there is significant overlap:
 Both are interested in social groups and group norms.
 And most sociologists, like social psychologists, subscribe to methodological
individualism – the assumption that even collective behaviour is essentially
behaviour of the individuals who form the collective and therefore has to be
explained in terms of rewards and costs of this behaviour to the individual.
BUT there are also major differences:
 Sociologists are more likely to trace social behaviour upwards to structural
variables such as norms, roles or social class – e.g. why levels of aggression are
higher in some societies or groups than others.
 Social psychologists trace social behaviour downwards to the individual’s goals,
motives and cognitions – e.g. the cognitive and affective processes through
which anger can, given the right contextual cues, explode in aggressive
behaviour.
3. Based on the information available in Chapter 1, to what extent does Triplett’s
(1898) study of social facilitation effects conform to the definitions of social
psychology in Chapter 1 and why have his conclusions now been discredited?
A. You will find relevant content on pages 10–12.
You should include a discussion of the following in your answer:
Identify the key characteristics of social psychology discussed in Chapter 1 (pages
3–7)
 Concern with social influence.
 Focus on the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals.
 Interest in cognitive processes.
 Use of scientific methods.
Ways in which Triplett’s study fits with these characteristics
Social influence
Triplett was interested in:
 the phenomenon whereby cyclists go faster when racing with others or when
being paced than when riding alone, racing against the clock
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
dynamogenic factors – i.e. the presence of another rider as a stimulus to the
racer in arousing the competitive instinct.
Thoughts, feelings and behaviour
As above, Triplett was interested in the behaviour of cyclists when racing with or
being paced by others.
Cognitive processes
As above, Triplett was interested in dynamogenic factors.
Scientific methods
 Triplett used a research tool, archival analysis – he drew on records of the
average speed of cyclists under different conditions. This demonstrated the
phenomenon but the effect could have been due to self-selection.
 He hypothesized that the phenomenon could be accounted for by:
o aerodynamic or psychological advantages for a rider who was paced or in
a competition
o dynamogenic factors – i.e. the presence of another rider as a stimulus to
the racer in arousing the competitive instinct.
 He devised an experiment to rule out the self-selection possibility:
o schoolchildren were asked to perform a simple task – turning a fishing
reel – either alone or in competition with another
o each participant was to undertake a practice session followed by six trials
– three alone and three with a competitor to eliminate practice and
fatigue effects
o participants were divided into two groups, members of each group
undertaking the sequence of lone and competitive tasks in a set but
different order – this served as a control.
Was this a reliable experiment?
Results
Triplett categorized participants into three groups on the basis of their performance,
those who were:
 stimulated positively by competition and performed faster (N = 20)
 overstimulated and performed more slowly (N = 10)
 not affected (N = 10).
Conclusions
On the basis of a visual inspection of the results, Triplett concluded that ‘the bodily
presence of another contestant participating simultaneously in the race serves to
liberate latent energy not normally available.’
How this was received
Most textbooks have reported that Triplett’s study provided the first evidence for
social facilitation.
BUT
 Conclusions based on visual inspection of results are no longer accepted.
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



Journal editors now require researchers to conduct statistical analyses of their
results and test how likely it is that the results are due to chance.
Strube (2005) reanalyzed Triplett’s data, finding that only one of several analyses
resulted in a significant effect, which disappeared when account was taken of
two left-handed participants instructed to carry out the task with their right
hand.
It is now known that the presence of others facilitates performance for easy
tasks only – this should have strengthened the social facilitation effects.
Strube concluded that Triplett’s data ‘indicate barely a statistical hint of the
social facilitation of performance to which his experiment has been credited’
(2005, p. 280).
4. What were the principal criticisms that led to the crisis in social psychology in the
late 1960s/early 1970s?
A. You will find relevant content on pages 17–18.
You should include a discussion of the following in your answer:
Context
Expansion of social psychology from World War II on for the reasons explained on
pages 14–17.
What sparked the crisis?
Probably two critical papers:
 Ring (1967) – contrasted the serious vision of Kurt Lewin that social psychology
should contribute to the solution of important social problems with what he
regarded as the ‘fun and games’ approach of contemporary social psychology,
though he gave no examples.
 Gergen (1973) – questioned the scientific value of social psychological research;
it did not, he claimed, result in a body of culmulative knowledge:
o knowledge of social psychological principles could change our behaviour
in ways which would negate these principles – e.g. once groups were
aware of their tendency to make extreme decisions they might
consciously counteract this tendency in their decision-making
o since the basic motives assumed by many theories are unlikely to be
genetically determined, they might be affected by cultural change – e.g. it
could not be assumed that the assumptions underlying social comparison
theory and dissonance theory were replicable from one society to
another.
Other critical voices
 Wicker (1969) challenged the usefulness of the concept that social attitudes
were useful in predicting behaviour, which Allport (1935) had argued was central
to social psychology.
 Orne (1962) suggested that most experimental situations contained demand
characteristics that would help participants guess the hypothesis to be tested in
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
a given study. This would lead participants to do their best to support the
hypothesis.
Rosenthal (Rosenthal & Fode, 1963) argued that experimenter expectancy effects
could be caused by experimenters reacting positively to responses that
supported their hypotheses and negatively to those that were inconsistent with
their expectations, so affecting participants’ behaviour.
5. In what ways did social psychology respond to the criticisms of the late
1960s/early 1970s?
A. You will find relevant content on pages 18–19.
You should include a discussion of the following in your answer:
The critics
 The critics eventually founded their own psychological schools – e.g. social
constructionism (e.g. Gergen, 1999) in the US, and discourse analysis (e.g. Potter
& Wetherell, 1987) in the UK.
Mainstream social psychologists
These took place over several years.




Development of several applied areas to contribute to the solution of real-life
problems – e.g. health psychology addressing health-impairing behaviours in
relation to smoking, overeating and unsafe sex.
Development of meta-analytic procedures in reviewing research, allowing the
statistical integration of results of independent studies of a given phenomenon,
with a view to establishing whether the findings exhibit a pattern of relationships
that is reliable across studies (Cooper & Hedges, 1994). This helped to address
the criticism that social psychological research did not result in cumulative
knowledge.
Greater clarity about the relationship between attitudes and behaviour – Azjen
and Fishbein (1997) demonstrated that attitudes are related to behaviour if both
components are assessed with measures that are:
o reliable – measures have to consist of multiple items
o compatible – attitude and behaviour have to measured at the same level
of specificity, eg by measuring an individual’s attitude to jogging rather
than physical exercise generally to predict whether they are likely to jog.
Designing experiments that minimize demand characteristics and experimenter
expectancy effects (e.g. using computers so that experimenters and participants
do not meet). It may also be true that demand characteristics and experimenter
expectancy effects were weaker than the critics thought, bearing in mind that
most experiments do not turn out as expected.
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Fill in the blanks Questions
1. Fill in the blanks: The study conducted by Macrae et al. (1994) into people’s ability
to suppress their prejudicial thoughts showed that when people no longer tried to
suppress their stereotypes, they showed a higher level of stereotypical thinking than
if they had never tried to suppress their thoughts in the first place. This is known as a
___________ effect.
A. rebound
2. Fill in the blanks: ‘There is no psychology of groups which is not essentially and
entirely a psychology of individuals. Social psychology must not be placed in
contradistinction to the psychology of the individual; it is a part of the psychology of
the individual, whose behaviour it studies in relation to that sector of his
environment comprised by his fellows.’ This quotation comes from a classic textbook
of social psychology published in 1924 and written by __________ __________.
A. Floyd Allport
3. Fill in the blanks: A typical approach of social psychological research is to
manipulate important aspects of the social context in order to assess the impact
these changes have on the thoughts, feelings and __________ of the target person.
A. behaviour
4. Fill in the blanks: Sociologists tend to trace social behaviour to social structural
variables, whereas social psychologists usually concentrate on ____________
processes.
A. individual
5. Fill in the blanks: More than 100 years after Triplett conducted his fishing reel
study (1898), which was prompted by the observation that cyclists who are paced or
ride in a competition perform better than those who ride alone, the findings were
reassessed by Strube (2005). Strube, using modern statistics, found little support for
the original conclusions. Had __________ tests been available and required by
journal editors in 1898, Triplett’s study might never have been published and been
credited as the first experiment in social psychology.
A. significance
6. Fill in the blanks: Through his investigations into the maximum performance of
workers pulling a load under different conditions, French agricultural engineer Max
Ringelmann found the first evidence of productivity loss in groups, a phenomenon
that was later named ___________ __________.
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A. social loafing
7. Fill in the blanks: The development of social psychology in the second half of the
twentieth century was strongly influenced by an academic émigré from Austria –
__________ __________ – who stimulated two theoretical traditions, namely
consistency theories and attribution theories.
A. Fritz Heider
8. Fill in the blanks: The most illustrious figure in the field of experimental social
psychology in the post-war period was undoubtedly Leon Festinger, whose theory of
______________ _______________ dictated the research agenda in social
psychology during the 1960s and 1970s.
A. cognitive dissonance
9. Fill in the blanks: In ‘Social Psychology as History’, a critique of the ____________
value of social psychological research, Kenneth Gergen made two important
arguments: (1) that knowledge of social psychological principles could change our
behaviour in ways which would negate these principles, and (2) that since the basic
motives assumed by many of our theories are unlikely to be genetically determined,
they might be affected by cultural change.
A. scientific
10.
Fill in the blanks: Several developments have been initiated in mainstream social
psychology as a result of the crisis in the 1970s. One of these is that social
psychologists have contributed to the attempt to resolve real-life, societal problems
by developing several __________ areas, such as health psychology.
A. applied
MCQs Questions
1. Sherif (1954) argued that the findings of his study of two groups of 11–12-year-old
boys at a remote summer camp demonstrated that when two groups are competing
for the same goal and only one group can achieve, there will be:
A. attempts to negotiate an agreement.
B. intragroup competition.
*C. intergroup hostility.
D. a destabilizing effect within each group.
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2. A laboratory experiment conducted by Tajfel et al. (1971) with 14–15-year-old
boys who knew each other well showed that intergroup conflict:
A. is dependent on whether participants know each other.
*B. is not an essential cause of intergroup discrimination.
C. is dependent on whether participants know who is in which group.
D. is an essential cause of intergroup discrimination.
3. In their series of experiments on stereotype suppression, Macrae et al. (1994)
found that the rebound effect of stereotype suppression affected participants’:
*A. thoughts and behaviour.
B. thoughts but not behaviour.
C. behaviour but not thoughts.
D. neither thoughts nor behaviour.
4. An experiment conducted by Bargh et al. (1996) found that participants exposed
to an elderly prime:
*A. walked more slowly than other participants to the lift following the experiment.
B. behaved in exactly the same way as participants not exposed to the elderly prime.
C. adopted behaviours that might be associated with elderly people during what
they understood to be the experiment.
D. were more likely than other participants to list Bingo as an activity they wished to
pursue long term.
5. Social psychology is concerned with all the following EXCEPT:
A. the cognitive processes involved in understanding the world around us.
B. social influence.
*C. personality traits that explain why individuals behave differently in similar social
situations.
D. the use of scientific methods.
6. In thinking about the nature of social psychology as compared to related fields of
study in psychology, which of the following should we take account of?
i.
How particular traits are acquired and how these traits influence the
individual’s behaviour.
ii.
The impact of the social situation on individual behaviour.
iii.
The ways in which personality variables act as moderators of social
behaviour.
iv.
Perceptual judgements in relation to variations in physical stimuli.
A. i and ii.
*B. ii and iii.
C. iii and iv.
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D. ii and iv
7. Which ONE of the following statements is accurate?
A. Sociologists are likely to trace social behaviour to the individual’s goals, motives
and cognitions. Social psychologists are not.
B. Social psychologists subscribe to methodological individualism. Sociologists do
not.
C. Social psychologists are likely to trace social behaviour to structural variables such
as norms, roles or social class. Sociologists are not.
*D. Both sociologists and social psychologists are interested in social groups and
group norms.
8. Newcomb’s (1943) Bennington study is consistent with the basic assumptions of
social psychology rather than other related fields of study because:
A. it is a longitudinal study.
B. it is about political attitudes.
*C. it illustrates how individual beliefs and attitudes can be shaped by the group
context.
D. it investigated the attitudes of women.
9. Which of the following was NOT a factor in the development of social psychology
in the US in the mid-twentieth century?
*A. The influence of a strong network of social psychologists in Europe.
B. The immigration of academics fleeing Nazi persecution.
C. The promotion of psychological research into war-related topics, such as the
effectiveness of army propaganda on soldiers’ morale.
D. Interest in topics such as obedience and authoritarianism as a result of the rise of
totalitarian regimes in some European countries.
10. Among the reasons Kurt Lewin was an influential social psychologist are that:
i.
his field theory lent itself to testable hypotheses.
ii.
he offered an alternative to behaviouristic theories.
iii.
he published a wide range of empirical studies.
iv.
he believed social psychology should study real-world problems
experimentally.
v.
his graduate students went on to become highly influential.
*A. ii, iv and v.
B. i, iii and v.
C. ii, iii and iv.
D. i, ii and v.
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11. Fritz Heider’s influence on social psychology during the second half of the
twentieth century was largely because of his:
A. covariation model of attribution.
B. field theory
C. autokinetic theory.
*D. consistency and attribution theories.
12. A crisis in social psychology developed in the late 1960s/early 1970s. This was
largely the result of:
A. a waning interest in social psychology that began at the end of World War II.
B. publication of a paper by Kenneth Ring that criticized social psychology for being
too focused on solving social problems.
*C. an article by Kenneth Gergen questioning the scientific value of social
psychology.
D. a body of research clearly demonstrating that there are no universal social
processes.
13. The crisis was gradually overcome by developing:
i.
areas of applied social psychology.
ii.
meta-analytic techniques.
iii.
more effective measures to show the relationship between attitudes and
behaviour.
iv.
experiments that invariably meet the expectations of the researchers.
v.
experiments that minimize the effects of demand characteristics and
experimenter expectancy.
A. i, ii, iii and iv.
*B. i, ii, iii and v.
C. ii, iii, iv and v.
D. i, ii, iii, iv and v.
14. Before the 1960s:
A. Europe had little influence on the development of social psychology in the US.
*B. there was no European collaboration in social psychology.
C. Europe had already developed a theoretical perspective distinct from that of the
US.
D. a European association was unnecessary because there were so few social
psychologists in European countries.
15. In the first of their series of experiments on stereotype suppression, Macrae et
al. (1994) used skinheads as the group about whom participants would be asked to
construct life event details from visual information because:
i.
there was widespread prejudice against skinheads.
ii.
skinheads had frequently been shown to act aggressively in the news.
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iii.
iv.
there were unlikely to be skinheads within the participant group of
students.
prejudice against skinheads was not considered politically incorrect.
A. i and ii.
B. iii and iv.
C. ii and iii.
*D. i and iv.
True/False Questions
1. The attitudes and behaviour, in Sherif’s (1954) study, of the two groups of 11–12year-old boys at summer camp towards each other demonstrated that the boys had
prejudiced personalities and needed scapegoats to displace their aggression.
a) T
*b) F
2. The study conducted by Tajfel et al. (1971) of randomly grouped 14–15-year-old
boys showed that division into groups was sufficient to trigger discriminatory
behaviour.
*a) T
b) F
3. In one of the series of studies of stereotype suppression conducted by Macrae et
al. (1994), the researchers found that participants instructed to do so successfully
suppressed their stereotypes of skinheads in their essays. However, when asked to
write a second essay with no such instruction these participants showed a higher
level of stereotypic thinking than the control group participants who had received no
instruction about suppressing stereotypes before writing the first essay.
*a) T
b) F
4. In the experiment conducted by Bargh et al. (1996) participants exposed to the
elderly prime behaved in exactly the same way on leaving the experimental room as
did participants who had been exposed to a neutral prime.
a) T
*b) F
5. In his definition of social psychology, Gordon Allport (1954) wrote of ‘the attempt
to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals
are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings.’
By ‘implied presence’ he was referring to reference persons – our parents for
example – who might influence our behaviour.
a) T
*b) F
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6. In an experimental situation, a control group is the one in which no change is
made to independent variables.
*a) T
b) F
7. Of the classic experiments outlined at the beginning of Chapter 1, one of the
differences in the methodology of Sherif’s (1954) study was that there was no
control group.
*a) T
b) F
8. All the classic studies outlined at the beginning of Chapter 1 could be described as
laboratory experiments.
a) T
*b) F
9. Researchers in social psychology always explain the true purpose of an experiment
to participants.
a) T
*b) F
10. Social psychology is interested in the cognitive processes that guide our
understanding of the world.
*a) T
b) F
11. Social psychology is interested in group consciousness.
a) T
*b) F
12. That participants were asked to call out their answers in Asch’s (1955)
experiment – in which participants compared a standard line with three others – was
a serious methodological fault.
a) T
*b) F
13. Social psychology differs from the approaches of general psychology and
personality psychology in that experiments usually manipulate important aspects of
the social context.
*a) T
b) F
14. In many ways, the interests of social psychology and personality psychology
overlap. They are both, for example, concerned with personality variables. Social
psychology, however, typically focuses on personality variables as moderators.
*a) T
b) F
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15. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) introduced two novel approaches to social psychology:
investigating problems that had real-world applications, and doing so in laboratory
experiments.
*a) T
b) F
16. There has been an unbroken development and confidence in social psychology
since the end of World War II.
a) T
*b) F
17. Ring’s (1967) paper praised social psychology for its serious approach to realworld problems.
a) T
*b) F
18.
Alan Wicker (1969) challenged the assumption that attitudes are related to
behaviour.
*a) T
b) F
19. Two serious criticisms of the experimental method in social psychology in the
early 1960s related to demand characteristics and experimenter expectancy effects.
*a) T
b) F
20. Experimenter expectancy effects are less likely today than they once were
because of computer technology.
*a) T
b) F
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