SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology PDF

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology Diva Wong SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology Table of Contents SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology ....................................................... Week 1 Introduction to social Psychology ....

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Table of Contents SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology ........................................................1 Week 1 Introduction to social Psychology ............................................................................................ 2 Week 2 Persuasion.............................................................................................................................. 5 Week 3 Close Relationships ............................................................................................................... 11 Week 4 Social Influence .................................................................................................................... 18 Week 6 Intergroup relations .............................................................................................................. 23 Week 7 Attitudes and Social Cognition .............................................................................................. 30 Week 8 Seminar................................................................................................................................ 36 Week 8 Aggression............................................................................................................................ 37 Week 9 Altruism and Justice.............................................................................................................. 39 Week 10 Personality and individual differences 1 .............................................................................. 41 Week 11 Personality and Individual differences 2 .............................................................................. 47 Week 12 The social self: Understanding ourselves ............................................................................. 51 Week 13 Introduction to Developmental Psychology ......................................................................... 59 Week 14 Methods of studying development ...................................................................................... 66 Week 15 Development of Attachment ............................................................................................... 68 Week 16 Education and Learning ....................................................................................................... 73 Week 18 Moral Development ............................................................................................................ 80 Week 19 Development across cultures .............................................................................................. 85 Week 20 Development of sensory perception .................................................................................... 92 Week 22 Understanding others/ Theory of Mind ............................................................................... 99 Week 23 Development of pro-social behaviour and collaboration .................................................... 102

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

Week 1 Introduction to social Psychology • • • •

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Connections to other sub disciplines of psychology or just disciplines in general Social Psychology definition: Study of how people think about, influence and how they relate to each other Social psychology focuses on individuals 4 different strands o Thinking and Feeling ▪ The social self: understanding the self ▪ The social perceiver: understanding the social world ▪ The social judge: Attitudes, emotions and behaviour o Relating ▪ Communication ▪ Relationships ▪ Persuasion o Belonging ▪ The social group ▪ Social influence ▪ Group behaviour ▪ Intergroup relations o Applying ▪ Improving intergroup relations ▪ Understanding and controlling aggression ▪ Altruism and justice Social psychologist focuses on processes occurring with the individual, groups, social issues and specific contexts General aim: Further knowledge about the relationships between people and social world “Critical” social psychologists vs “Empirical” social psychologists o “Empirical” psychologists see psychology as a scientific discipline ▪ Empirically putting theories to the test ▪ Exposing subjects to experimental manipulations to work out whether theories have support ▪ Testing commonality in people and by testing these, we would be able to know how people find themselves in the social world ▪ Explain how most people think and behave in most social situations o However, “Critical” psychologists argue there is no universals ▪ Cannot simply generalise and have to focus on specific contexts ▪ Two different perspectives are conflicting with each other Social psychologist only started to be adopted from 1700s o British scholars David Hume and Adam Smith (1700s) ▪ Emotions and how people are influenced by their interactions with other people o German scholars Immanuel Kant and Wilhelm von Humboldt and French scholar August Comte ▪ Issues such as the self, society and the relationship between language and thoughts o Processes can be studied as phenomena are in the natural sciences o 19th century German scholars referred to the collective mind – groups of people tend to think and act in the same way ▪ individual ways of thinking are influenced by group behaviours o Social psychology only began to emerge as a unique discipline in the later 1800 – early 1900 Influences in social psychology o Behaviourism ▪ understand how we behave as individuals and members of groups based on the principles of receiving rewards and punishments ▪ can be seen as an attitude (favourable/unfavourable) would be reinforced or extinguished o Gestalt psychology ▪ important to look at the whole picture rather than specific aspects

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

Historical context ▪ understand why things have happened throughout history by applying social and psychological theories, by looking at previous researches ▪ Darwinian theory, sub branch (evolutionary psychology) What about Personality psychology o Personality psychology, how people come to be who they are, what individual characteristics are o Can particular personality characteristics predict how people will feel about particular social groups How do you do social psychology o We are all social psychologist as we observe and try to understand why people feel, think and behave the way they do o Navigate our way through this complex social world o Not common sense o Social psychologists attempt to answer these sorts of social questions scientifically The Research Process (see picture) What else is important o Critical thinking is very important in social psychology, think deeply about each part of evidence and come up with alternative explanations Tools of social psychology o Dependent on the research question being asked o Qualitative ▪ Hear about people’s perspective ▪ See how people think and feel ▪ Thematic analysis ▪ Conversational analysis ▪ Narrative analysis ▪ Discourse analysis ▪ Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) ▪ Observations ▪ Case study o Quantitative ▪ Find relationship in different variables ▪ Show one variable cause a change in another variable ▪ Surveys and questionnaires ▪ Experiment ▪ Field experiment ▪ Archival study ▪ Observations ▪ Case study Issues in social psychological research o Where do participants come from (different for qualitative and quantitative) o Quantitative is interested in basic social psychological processes and these processes shouldn’t be hugely different, often on undergraduate students, crowd source o Qualitative is more interested in specific interactions and contexts and are interested in listening to others perspective, more specific o Reliability and Validity o Statistical significance ▪ Need to find whether it is a robust finding and is meaningful ▪ Determining the probability that the findings could have occurred by chance o Fabricating of data -> replicability of some findings, need to be a robust finding to explain a meaningful social phenomenon o

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology •

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Diva Wong

Basic and applied research o Basic research focuses on fundamental questions in social psychology ▪ Basic questions at the heart of human nature o Applied research applies basic research to problems or issues o One of the ways in which psychology links with other disciplines Cultural issues o Many universals in social psychology but some key aspects on which culture differs o Culture can be a powerful influence in how people see the world and interact o Whether the culture is individualistic or collectivistic Ethical issues o Respect for human participants o Informed consent o Minimal deception o Debriefing

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

Week 2 Persuasion Persuasion: A process by which a message changes a person’s attitudes or behaviours •

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Pros and Cons of effective persuasion (issues surrounding persuasion) o Devastating power of persuasion o Persuasion can be used for the greater good o Can be used to break bad habits o Make healthier food choices o Donate to charity o Promote environmental friendly behaviour How does persuasion work Key for persuasion to work, source, message, target o Source ▪ Clear ▪ Who or what is delivering the message ▪ Very important ▪ Humans are very susceptible to messages that come from specific types of sources ▪ Sex sells • Attractiveness, likeability and similarity enhances the effectiveness of persuasion ▪ Eagly and Chaiken (1975) • Attractive versus unattractive people campaigning for petition signatures • Attractive 41% success rate, Unattractive 32% success rate ▪ More likeable they seem, the more successful the attempt ▪ Additional research suggests that we are more susceptible to people who seem likable to us especially if the message is conveyed to us through audio or visual, when they can more easily use their charisma ▪ Chaiken and Eagly • No effect in written persuasion but significant in audio or visual • Distracts us from the message and towards the characteristics of the source ▪ Similarity • Extent to which the person delivering the message is similar to us • More influenced by members of our in-group but strength of message matters, and we don’t necessarily blindly agree with what our ingroup says • If made to pick we would typically agree with the stronger message • But if the source of the message is from an outgroup member, we tend to disregard the argument no matter if it is weak or strong (reveals biasness) • People who act in similar way are more persuasive ▪ Extent to which we see the source credible , trustworthy and experienced ▪ Takes message from experts more rather than others • More trustworthy ▪ People seem more trustworthy if they speak fast • People that speak quickly are perceived to be more intelligent ▪ Recently exposed to an obviously non-credible source then we would be more likely to be persuaded by a trustworthy persuasive source ▪ The sleeper effects • Persuasiveness can grow over time, can forget source but not message • Learn something you are sceptical about it but may recall message without source thus believing it o Message ▪ What point is it delivering? ▪ Length • Long messages are more effective only if its strong but less so if its weak

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

Strong: having objective facts about one issue, central to the points we are trying to make • Weak: Peripheral to the issues Consistency • More easily persuaded by sameness when the message is with one’s beliefs • If the message is too distant from the target’s attitude, it is likely to be ignored or reacted against • Hard to change people’s mind, open them to new perspectives Repetition • Ads are more effective in persuasion if it is exposed to a person 2-3 times a week (Tellis), strikes a balance to repeat message and being effective • Need to mix up different ways of presenting ads • Works best when people are already familiar with object of advert and had initial positive reaction • Delivering messages in different way would not wear out effect after a while • Effects can ‘wear out’ after repeated exposure Main aim of advertisements: make us feel good and optimistic Fear arousal • Frequently used in health campaign but does not always work as people engage denial if the problem seems unsolvable • Fear is able to persuade us then how much do people need to be scared to have an attitude change • People may ignore fear persuasion if they are in denial of the extent to which the problem or an issue can be solved or prevented • Denial can be overcome and fear can be used to persuade people if we provide them with a realistic way to make them feel they are making a difference Factual vs emotional appeal • Best approach has to be based on different people • Factual advertising appeals to more analytical people, educated • Evaluative advertising appeals to more disengaged or disinterest people • Emotive based on sentiment appeals to more disengaged or disinterest people • Also depends on how the original attitude was acquired Method • Two sided messages o When persuasive person acknowledges counterarguments are more successful o Increases persuasive methods o Makes one seem more consciousness, likeable o “stealing thunder” (Jones & Brehm) o Make them seem more trustworthy and earnest • Framing o Message which emphasizes gain rather than something negative Primacy effect • Information presented first is the most persuasive and more favourable than information that is presented last • People favour arguments presented first and often choose the first option they see in relation to everyday product choices Recency effect • Information presented last is sometimes most persuasive as people forget the first message especially if there is a delay between the two sets of information The channel • Visual and face to face channels are usually the most persuasive •

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology • • o

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Diva Wong

Should be simple and easy to comprehend as people are not able to effectively process oral or visual information But if information is complex, written channels can be more effective

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Everyone has a comprehensive profile built by companies about what we generally like and dislike ▪ Can be sent advertisements specifically for self ▪ Gender • Woman are more susceptible to persuasive attempts especially face to face, than men • Because women are more cooperative than men • These findings can be biased and tests itself is biased • Can conform to stereotypical biasness • Any research on gender needs to be heavily controlled • Tests on men and women are controversial • Statistical moderation: an effect is changed depending on a strength of another variable ▪ Age • Young adults are more susceptible than older age groups • Probably because they have less table attitudes and show less resistance to authority • Older gain experience and scepticism so are less influenced • People are generally open to attitude change cross lifespan but core attitudes and values resistant to change throughout • Adults are generally less influenced than children are they are more influenced by meaningful ads ▪ Personality and individual differences • A continuum • Need for cognition o Measure in quite a lot of experiments o The extent to which someone derives fulfilment and enjoyment from thinking about things o When one has a high need for cognition they tend to dig a little deeper and would not take things for their service values o Higher need for cognition are not easily persuaded • Need for cognitive closure o The extent to which a person is close-minded, desiring quick and/or certain answers to questions and is resistant to ambiguity or disconfirmation ▪ Mood • Messages will sometimes be persuaded by good feelings • Good feelings make us optimistic and enhances positive thinking which can lead to impulsive decision-making • Good feelings break down scepticism • Happiness leads us to over confidence How does persuasion work o The elaboration likelihood ▪ The routes to persuasion depend on the extent that we are likely to engage in elaborate thinking about the issues relevant to the topic that we are being persuaded on ▪ Related to need for cognition ▪ States that we focus on different aspects of an argument depending on how much cognitive effort we devote to it ▪ Depending on our level of cognitive engagement we follow two paths

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

People that think carefully about a message they are attending to its central cues and have been persuaded via the central route o Quality of argument o Facts o Experiments conducted • People are persuaded by the more superficial aspects of the message they are attending to its peripheral cues and have been persuaded via the peripheral route o Low effort o Persuaded by peripheral cues (aesthetics) Dual Process model •

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The heuristic-systematic model ▪ Systematic processing occurs when targets actively scan and process the arguments put forward in a message ▪ Heuristic processing (mental shortcuts) occurs when people do not carefully consider the arguments, but resort to cognitive shortcuts instead ▪ Easier to apply a simple rule to make a quick judgement about something rather than to weigh up all the pros and cons ▪ Unimodel • The two processes proposed by the dual process models above are functionally equivalent in the persuasion process • All things equal was relying on just one thing o Similar that they are dual process model ▪ Explain various psychological phenomena ▪ Two processes or two different routes that lead to psychological outcome ▪ A lot more prominent Factors determining the processing route o The persuasive target’s ability to focus ▪ Distraction decreases ability to generate counterarguments ▪ When we are distracted by the environment we are more persuaded by the peripheral cues and are more persuaded by weaker arguments (Petty et al) Tactics to persuade others o Ingratiation ▪ Make the target like you in order to persuade them ▪ Too obvious and suspicion of ulterior motives would back fire o Reciprocity principle ▪ Doing a favour for a person before asking them to do something for you. ▪ People are more likely to be persuaded after receiving a favour o Door in the face technique ▪ Large, unrealistic request before making a smaller more realistic request that is likely to be successful ▪ Related to reciprocity principle ▪ Only works if the same person makes both requests ▪ Cialdini et al • Aim: To examine the door in the face technique o

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SP302 Introduction to Social and Developmental Psychology

Diva Wong

Method: o Group 1: Subjects were asked to escort a group of juvenile delinquents to the zoo; 83 % refused to volunteer. (17% agreed) o Group 2: Participants were approached and asked to spend 2 hours per week as a peer counsellor to juvenile delinquent children for around 2 years; no one agreed to volunteer. o Followed up the student's’ refusal to be peer counsellors, with the request to take the juvenile delinquents to the zoo, approximately 50% of the students agreed. • Results: o Large request: 0% compliance o Small request only: 17% compliance o DITF group: 50% compliance o Principle of Reciprocity: one feels that the person has already compromised on what he or she wanted, and that this compromise should ther...