Chapter 1: What is Social Psychology? – Flashcards

- is the scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context - distinctive characteristics of social psychology include a focus on the individual as well as a broad perspective on a variety of social contexts and behaviors - the socialness of social psychology varies as social psychologists sometimes examine how nonsocial factors affect social thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and sometime study how social factors influence nonsocial thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

- it is a science - it applies the scientific method of systematic observation, description and measurement to the study of the human condition

similarities: help understand societal and immediate factors influencing behavior, have similar training and publication differences: social psychology focuses on an social and nonsocial factors influencing an individual , sociology focuses on factors influencing a group of people. In addition social psychology is less likely than sociology to study the relation between broad societal variables and people's behaviors and is more likely to use experimentation

social psychology focuses not on disorders but rather on the more typical ways that individuals think, feel, behave, and interact

personality psychology focuses on differences between individuals that remain relatively stable across a variety of situations; social psychology focuses on how social factors affect most individuals, regardless of their different personalities.

cognitive and social psychologists share an interest in mental processes such as thinking, learning, remembering, and reasoning, but social psychologists focus on the relevance of these processes to social behavior

often causes people to question how social psychology is different from common sense, or traditional fold wisdom.

-many social psychological theories and findings appear to be like common sense. one problem with common sense, however is that it may offer conflicting explanations and provide no way to test which is correct. Another problem is that common sense is often oversimplified and therefore misleading. - need to distinguish between facts and myths

- early research by Norman Triplett and Max Ringelmann established an enduring topic is social psychology: how the presence of others affects an individual's performance - Norman Triplett is credited with having published the first research article in social psychology at the end of the 19th century; he designed an experiment to study the phenomenon that bicyclist race faster when in presence of others. - the first social psychology textbooks in 1908 and 1924 began to give he emerging field of social psychology its shape.

- credit for this creation goes to the writers of the first three textbooks in social psychology; the English psychologist William McDougall (1908), and two Americans, Edward Ross (1908) and Floyd Allport (1924). - Floyd Allport's book in particular with its focus on the interaction of individuals and their social context and its emphasis on the use of experimentation and the scientific method helped establish social psychology as the discipline it is today. - these authors announced the arrival of a new approach to the social aspects of human behavior. Social psychology was born.

- social psychology began to flourish because the world needed an explanation for the violence of war and solutions to it. sheriff's work laid the foundation for later studies of social influence and the legacy of Kurt Lewin is still evident throughout much of social psychology - the 1940s and 1950s saw a burst of activity in social psychology that firmly established it as a major social science

- 1936 - Floyd Allport's younger brother and author of the 1924 textbook - him and a number of other social psychologists formed the society for the psychological study of social issues. the name of the society illustrates these psychologist's concern for making important, practical contribution to society.

- 1936 - published a groundbreaking experimental research on social influence. - research on the influence powerful groups can have on their individual members - his research was crucial for the development of social psychology because it demonstrated that it is possible to study complex social processes such as conformity and social influence in a rigorous, scientific manner.

- Adolf Hitler - brainwashed an entire country

- 1935, 1947 - helped establish that behavior is a function of the interaction between the person and the environment - later became known as the interactionist perspective - emphasized the dynamic interplay of internal and external factors, and it marked a sharp contract from other major psychological paradigms during his lifetime; psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on internal motives and fantasies; behaviorism, with its focus on external rewards and punishments.

an emphasis on how both an individual's personality and environmental characteristics influence behavior

- Stanley Milgram's experiments demonstrated individuals' vulnerability to the destructive commands of authority - while social psychology was expanding in many new directions, there was also intense debate about the ethics of research procedures, the validity of research results, and the generalizability of conclusions drawn from research.

- 1960 - his research was inspired by the destructive obedience demonstrated by Nazi officers and ordinary citizens in WWII, but it also looked ahead to the civil disobedience that was beginning to challenge institutions in many parts of the world. - his experiments which demonstrated individuals' vulnerability to the destructive commands of authority, became the most famous research in the history of social psychology - established social psychology as a mainstream division

- the laboratory experiment - critics of this method asserted that certain practices were unethical, that experimenters expectations influenced their participants behavior and that the theories being tested in the laboratory were historically and culturally limited - those who favored laboratory experimentation on the other hand contended that their procedures were ethical, their results were valid, and their theoretical principles were widely applicable

- during the 1970s social psychology began to take a pluralistic approach to its research methods, the integration of perspectives such as social psychology and cognitive psychology into a subfield called social cognition and the development of international and multicultural perspective - subfield of social cognition - development of international and multicultural perspectives - acceptance of other methods of investigation

the study of how people perceive, remember, and interpret information about themselves and others

- researchers are becoming more interested in how emotion, motivation, and cognition can operate together in influencing individuals thoughts, feelings, and behaviors - individuals sometimes are faced with a conflict between two motivations that can affect cognitive processes: wanting to be right and wanting to feel good about oneself - a great deal of recent social psychological research has explored the automatic versus controllable nature of a number of processes, such as stereotyping

- biological perspectives including perspectives based on neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary principles are being applied to the study of social psychological issues such as gender differences, relationships, and aggression

the study of the relationship between neural and social processes

a subfield of psychology that examines the role of genetic factors in behavior

a subfield of psychology that uses the principles of evolution to understand human social behavior

- increasing numbers of social psychologists are evaluating the universal generality or cultural specificity of their theories and findings by examining similarities and differences across cultures as well as between racial and ethnic groups within cultures - for example in one experiment Canadian participants chose more desirable than undesirable traits as characteristic of themselves, whereas Japanese participants chose a balance of desirable and undesirable traits

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

research designed to compare and contrast people of different cultures

research designed to examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures

- the emerging subfield of behavioral economics studies how psychology particularly social and cognitive psychology relates to economic decision making - research on embodied cognition focuses on the connections between the mind and the body, such as in how body gestures or movements can influence and be influenced by our thoughts and feelings - social psychological research that intersects with political science can offer valuable insights into a variety of important contemporary issues, such as whether prejudice affects people's attitudes towards political policies or candidates or how learning about other people's reactions to a presidential debate influences an individual's own judgments about the candidates

an interdisciplinary subfield that focuses on how psychology particularly social and cognitive psychology relates to economic decision making

an interdisciplinary subfield that examines the close links between our minds and the positioning ,experiences, and actions of our bodies

- advance in technology such as improved brain imaging techniques have given rise to groundbreaking research in social psychology - virtual reality technology enables researchers to test questions that otherwise would be impractical, impossible, or unethical - the internet has fostered communication and collaboration among researchers around the world enabled researchers to study participants from diverse populations and inspired researchers to investigate whether various social psychological phenomena are similar or different online versus offline - as rapidly advancing technologies change how individuals communicate and access information, the ways that they interact are also likely to change. the social psychology of the next era will explore these issues

- PET - ERP -TMS -fMRI these are used to study the interplay of the brain and discrete thoughts, feelings, and behaviors