Social Psychology Ch.1 Notes PDF

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Intro to Social Psych; professor Barone...

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Social Psychology Chapter 1 Book Notes What is Social Psychology? ● Social psychology: the scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context. ○ Social psychology is a science (this is the thing that sets it apart) ○ Applies the scientific method of systematic observation, description, and measurement to the study of the human condition ● Social psychologists investigate a wide variety of attitudes and context, such as individuals’ attitudes toward particular groups of people or how their attitudes are affected by their peers or their mood ● Social psychology typically focuses on the psychology of the individual ○ When social psychologists study groups of people, they usually emphasize the behavior of the individual in the group context ● What makes social psychology unique is the emphasis on the social nature of individuals ● Nonsocial factors social psychologists examine ○ Ex: whether hot weather causes people to behave more aggressively ● Social psychological pursuits- thoughts, feelings, or behaviors either concern other people or are influenced by other people ● The “social context” referred to in the definition of social psychology does not have to be real or present ○ Ex: college student imagining living a day in the life of a professor and as a result is likely to perform better later on an analytic test ● The social nature of people runs so deep that even very subtle clues about our social connection with others can have a profound effect on our lives ● Sociology focuses on the group level ● Social psychologists do not focus on disorders; rather, they focus on the more typical ways in which individuals think, feel, behave, and influence each other ● Personality psychology seeks to understand stable differences between individuals, whereas social psychology seeks to understand how social factors affect most individuals regardless of their different personalities

History of Social Psychology ● The field of social psychology is a relatively young one ● The title “founder of social psychology” has many potential recipients, but most have pointed to American psychologist Norman Triplett; a case can also be made for Max Ringelmann

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○ Triplett is credited w/ having published the 1st research article in social psychology at the end of the 19th century ○ Importance of Triplett’s work: after observing that bicyclists tended to race faster when racing in the presence of others than when simply racing against a clock, he designed an experiment to study this in a controlled, precise way (scientific approach) ○ Contrast b/t Triplett & Ringelmann: ■ Both studied the effects of the presence of others on the performance of individuals, but in contrast to Triplett, Ringelmann noted that individuals often performed worse on simple tasks such as pulling rope when they performed the tasks w/ other people The years just before, during, and soon after World War II marked an explosion of interest in social psychology In 1936, Gordon Allport & and a number of other social psychologists formed the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Interactionist perspective: established by Kurt Lewin; emphasizes the dynamic interplay of internal and external factors, and it marked a sharp contrast from other major psychological paradigms: psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on internal motives and fantasies; and behaviorism, with its focus on external rewards and punishments Milgram’s experiments, which demonstrated individuals’ vulnerability to the destructive commands of authority, became the most famous research in the history of social psychology Social cognition: the study of how we perceive, remember, and interpret information about ourselves and others

Social Psychology Today ● Social cognition in 1970s & 1980s ○ “Cold” perspective: emphasized the role of cognition and deemphasized the role of emotion and motivation in explaining social psychological issues; dominant perspective ○ “Hot” perspective: focuses on emotion and motivation as determinants of our thoughts and actions ○ Today, there’s an interest in integrating “hot” and “cold” perspectives ● Behavioral genetics: a subfield of psychology that examines the role of genetic factors in behavior ● Evolutionary psychology: a subfield of psychology that uses the principles of evolution to understand human social behavior

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○ Ex: to understand a social psychological issue such as jealousy, we should ask how tendencies and reactions underlying jealousy today may have evolved from the natural-selection pressures our ancestors faced Culture: a system of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions, and practices shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next Crosscultural research: Research designed to compare and contrast people of different cultures Multicultural research: research designed to examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures Behavioral economics: an interdisciplinary subfield that focuses on how psychology -- particularly social and cognitive psychology-- relates to economic decision making Social neuroscience: the study of the relationship between neural and social processes Embodied cognition: an interdisciplinary subfield that examines the close links between our minds and the positioning, experiences, and actions of our bodies ○ Ex: participants made to sit in an upright position experienced higher self-esteem and lower fear in response to a stressful situation than did those sitting in a more slumped position J J j...