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INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY What is Social Psychology Scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people (Allport, 1985) - Social psychologists are interested in studying how and why our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are shaped by our social context o Understanding and predicting behaviour Classic study of life stress found that most stressful events in a person’s life are painful because they entail loss of relationship Social Psychology feels so close to home because it deals with universal psychological processes to which people can easily relate - Ex. need to belong relates to everyone, we all have a strong need to make friends, start families etc. - Feels good to belong to a group o Introverts report being happier when they are in social situations o People who feel lonely are more vulnerable to depression and problems with physical health Scientific Study Social psychology applies the scientific method (most of the time) to the study of the human condition - Systematic observation - Description - Measurement Psychologists separate concepts into categories such as clincal, developmental, and social out of scientific necessity - These distinctions do not actually exist, there is heavy overlap between various areas of psychology Varying Level of Analysis - Culture / Environment o Ex. toddler watching mother make a phone call o Uses observational learning to teach herself about this machine - Relationships / Groups o Ex. toddler frowns and grabs at phone when mom uses it, ignores when stepbrother makes call - Behaviour - Thoughts / Feelings / Perceptions - Physiology (hormones, blood, brain) - Chemistry / DNA Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviours Social psychology concerns a diverse set of topics - Examines the relationships between: o Private (even nonconscious) beliefs  Ex. degree to feel compassionate towards homeless people o Emotions o Public behaviour - Focus is on the individual within the social context

Social Context - Examines the social nature of individuals o The socialness of social psychology varies o Relevant when thoughts, feelings or behaviours either  Concern other people  Are influenced by “other people” - “Other people” do not have to be real or present o Even the implied or imagined presence of others can have important effects on individuals What is Included in Social Psychology Social psychology is the study of group processes, 5 categories: - Attraction o Large amount of study in social psychology has focused on attraction o Ex. when rating the faces or strangers (white people) Maasai tribal people and African Americans were in general agreement about which faces were better looking  Agreed about the faces of strangers but not about the faces of people they knew  Focused on actual facial features when rating strangers / features were not that important when rating friends - Attitudes o Opinions, feelings and beliefs about a person, concept or group o Most studied topics in attitude research are stereotyping and prejudice  Stereotyping: way of using information shortcuts about a group to effectively navigate social situations or make decisions  Ex. elderly people are physically slower and frail than 20 year olds  Prejudice: refers to how a person feels about an individual based on their group membership  Ex. prejudice against tattoos may feel uncomfortable sitting next to tattoos o Discrimination occurs when a person is biased against an individual because of membership  Comes when you act on a stereotype o Ex. study on stigmatized people, had people listen to recordings of an individual’s life  Half were told to be objective and fair, others were told to see life through their lens  When people are instructed to have empathy, gives them empathy for the whole group - Peace and Conflict o Interested in why people fight, how they fight and cost + benefits o Better understanding of these forces might help researchers, therapists, and policy makers intervene more effectively in conflicts - Social Influence o Heart and soul of social psychology, nobody can escape it  Topic of most interest to social psychologists o Studies on conformity (being persuaded to give up our own opinions) and obedience (following orders or requests from people in authority) o Persuasion is the act of delivering a particular message so that it influences a person’s behaviour in a desired way  Direct Persuasion (ex. bully threatens and makes him give his lunch money) o Indirect / Subtle social influence ex. being exposed to new ideas, rethinks his original attitudes

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Social Cognition o Way we think about the social world and how we perceive others o Social Attribution: educated guesses about the efforts or motives of others o Fundamental Attribution Error: consistent way we attribute people’s actions to personality traits while overlooking situational influences

Why Study it? Curiosity - People are interesting, desire to understand self, reduce future attempts to influence self - Many important problems are fundamentally social o Environmental issues, health / well being, political issues, relationship issues What is Social Psychology - Other disciplines (anthropology, sociology) are also interested in how people are influenced by their social environments - Social psychology differs because it is concerned more with how people are influenced by their construal (interpretation) of their social environment Construal The way in which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world (Lewin 1943) - Construals are subjective interpretations of social phenomena o Ex. you feel guilty because you persuaded your professor to raise your grade on an exam o Ex. power of love can influence our construals o Ex. the perceived aggressiveness of girls versus boys Construal in Action - Naïve realism: our conviction that we perceive things “as they really are” o People believe they perceive things as they are o Different people interpret the same evidence differently  Believe their choices are more popular than they actually are (Ross, et al. 1977)  Those who believe as we do are reasonable, and others are biased  Ex. understand that perceptions are biased, and try to be more objective Social Psychology is Empirically (experimentally) based - Ideas and assumptions tested using the scientific method o Goes above and beyond speculation or simple “common sense” answers that may be incorrect  Social psychologists, Journalists, and Politicians are most likely to rely on common sense to explain social influence  Common sense are filled with contradictions o Common sense is frequently wrong or oversimplified Solutions Much social psychology research has attempted to understand and find solutions to social problems - Sample topics: o Reducing feelings of prejudice

o Examining the effects of violent television on behaviour o Discouraging unhealthy behaviours o Understanding how our social natures shape our responses from bedroom to boardroom to courtroom HISTORY OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Mid 1800s Wilhelm Wundt - Philosophical approach “Folk” or “Culture Psychology” - Collective or group mind - Influence of society is difficult to investigate because it resides within the human mind - Culture is intangible 1897 Norman Triplett - First social psychology study - Amateur cyclist who noticed that people race much faster when there are other people in a race than when they merely race the clock Social Facilitation Presence of others can enhance behaviourial performance - Triplett demonstrated this effect in a laboratory task in which 40 children wound a fishing reel either with others or alone o Kids were generally faster in presence of other children 1908 First Social Psychology Textbooks published - William McDougall o Social behaviour is innate and stems from inherited instincts  Instincts push people toward goals (that may not even be known to them)  Because these instincts are common to people within close societies, they become part of the culture or “group mind” - Edward Ross 1924 First modern social psychology text published by Floyd Allport Argued that group behaviour can be studied with experimental methods - “Behaviourist” approach (social behaviour comes from others’ actions) Floyd Allport - Father of experimental social psychology - Introduced experimental background for study of: o Conformity o Facial expressions of emotions o Influence of others o Social norms

o Cognitive dissonance o Attribution theory 1930s – 1950s - Who had the most dramatic impact on social psychology? o Quite possibly adolf hitler o Resulted in search for answers to social psychological questions - Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues formed in 1936 - Sherif’s (1936) – groundbreaking experimental research on social influence (which may not be true) o Young boys assigned to cabins and given mascots and mottos, forced to compete - Kurt Lewin, another important contributor to field o Behaviour is a function of the interaction between person and environment, which became known as the interactionist perspective - Government work in WWII – protect soldiers from the enemy’s propaganda, persuade citizens to support the war effort and select officers for various positions o WWII also led to examining the nature of prejudice, aggression, and conformity - Gordon Allport – published the Nature of Prejudice - Solomon Asch – research on conformity - Leon Festinger – research on social comparison 1960s – Mid 1970s - Milgram – famous obedience experiments - Period of expansion and enthusiasm - Also a time of crisis and heated debate o Zimbardo (1971): published Stanford Prison Experiment o Strong reactions to the laboratory experiment as the dominant research method Mid 1970s – 2000s Crisis led to a stronger discipline - More rigorous ethical standards - More stringent procedures to guard against bias - More attention to possible cross-cultural differences Emergence of pluralism - Acceptance of many methods of investigation in addition to the laboratory experiment - Increased interest in processes relevant to cognitive psychology, leading to the creation of social cognition as a subfield - Development of international and multicultural perspectives 2010 – Present Replication Crisis - Many social psychology experiments don’t replicate o Casts doubts on the building blocks of the discipline o Call to strengthen experimental / research methods

THINKING LIKE A PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENTIST (Perusall) Scientific Versus Everyday Reasoning Scientific and everyday reasoning both employ induction (drawing conclusions from specific observations) - To make the best decision, important to differentiate between personal opinions and scientific Features that distinguish scientific thinking from everyday thinking: - Accuracy: explanations and theories match real world observations - Consistency: theory has few exceptions and shows agreement with other theories within and across disciplines - Scope: extent to which a theory extends beyond currently available data, explaining a wide array of phenomena - Simplicity: when multiple explanations are equally good at explaining the data, the simplest should be selected - Fruitfulness: usefulness of the theory in guiding new research by predicting new, testable relationships Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) suggested that science can be distinguished from pseudoscience because scientific claims are capable of being falsified - Pseudoscience: beliefs that are presented as being scientific, but are not scientific - Falsify: ability of a claim to be tested and refuted, defining feature of science - Popper argued against statements that could not be falsified, claimed they blocked scientific progress Interpretation of Research Results Three possible outcomes of a proposed study: - Support for Hypothesis o Does not prove, many questions left unanswered o A study cannot prove a hypothesis, instead the results of the study offer evidence in support o Inductive reasoning is based on probabilities  Probability: measure of degree of certainty of occurrence of an event o Inductive Reasoning: taken current observations and compared to historical patterns  Ex. local weather forecast says high likelihood of rain, used inductive reasoning o Deductive Reasoning: general principles that are applied to scientific instances  More associated with proof  Ex. all living cells contain DNA, reason deductively that specific living cell contains DNA - Evidence Against Hypothesis o Must admit the evidence does not support hypothesis o Single study should not outweigh conclusions of many studies  New study does not on its own, falsify the hypothesis - No Difference Between two Groups (evidence against hypothesis) o No support for hypothesis o Observations aren’t representative of general population  Representative: degree to which a sample is typical example of population o Anecdotal evidence is limited by quality and representativeness of observations  Piece of biased evidence from personal experience used to support a conculsion

o Well-designed research relies on observations, representative of population it claims

Why Should I Trust Science if it Can't Prove Anything? Null-hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST): test created to determine the chances that an alternative hypothesis would produce a result as the one observed if null hypothesis were true - Assesses the probability that the collected data would be the same if there were no relationship between the variables in the study o Involves a null hypothesis (two variables are not related) o Involves alternative hypothesis (two variables are related) - Four possible outcomes: o Accurate Detection: conclusion mirrors reality o Researcher finds no evidence for phenomenon, no evidence (also Accurate Detection) o Type I Error: when researcher concludes there is a relationship when there is not o Type II Error: when data fail to show a relationship between variables that exist

Scientific Theories Comprehensive framework for making sense of evidence regarding a particular phenomenon - Good theories describe, explain, and predict in a way that can be empirically tested and falsified o Empirical: concerned with observation and/or the ability to verify a claim - We must be willing to change our views in accordance with new evidence Is Science Objective? Thomas Kuhn suggested that there is no such thing as objective theory or data, informed by values - Facts (information about the world) and Values (beliefs about the way the world ought to be) o Values influence how we engage with facts o People who endorse this value might be more attentive Level of Analysis: - Idea that a single phenomenon may be explained at different levels simultaneously - One level is not more correct than another o Low Level vs High Level Science in Context Many ways to interpret the world around us (common sense, personal experience, faith) - Causality: the determination that one variable causes an effect - Generalize: degree to which one can extend conclusions drawn from findings of a study...