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Social Psych

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Empirically studies the individual within the context of a group, including cultural influences. Social psychology studies the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of an individual within a group. This discipline focuses on how other people affect the individual.

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Anthropology

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Studies humankind, past and present, focusing on multiple dimensions of culture to see how it influences behavior. This discipline uses a variety of investigative methods, including field studies. The focus is not on the individual, but the culture and historical era. The features of different modern or ancient societies are compared.

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Sociology

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Empirically studies societal groups, including culture, social structures, demographics, and social outcomes. Sociology seeks to find ways to improve society. It does not focus on the individual, but the large group. Examines how social and cultural forces impact behavior, using existing groups, rather than manipulating factors in an experiment. Sociology does not focus on the inner attitudes and physiological events for the individual.

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Political Science

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Studies methods of government, principles and operations of political institutions. Political science uses theoretical analysis more than experiments.

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Political Psychology

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Social psychologists and political scientists work together to understand human political behavior, including analysis of persuasion, groups, attitudes, heuristics, etc..

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Similarities (between social psychology v.s. sociology v.s. Anthropology)

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All three study culture and its impact on behavior. All three study groups. They all use empirical methods, but in different ways. The methods differ somewhat between anthropology and social psychology or cross-cultural psychology. The three disciplines sometimes share data, commenting upon such data through divergent theoretical lenses.

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Differences (between social psych vs sociology vs anthropology)

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Only social psychology focuses on the individual. Only anthropology studies the past extensively, using archaeological data. Sociology is uniquely interested in producing positive social changes, but political science and political psychology also seek social change and reform of society, in accordance with theoretical leanings.

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Roots of Psychology

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It is important to recognize that the roots of psychology are in philosophy. The first psychology professors worked in philosophy departments, and studied philosophy extensively. Psychology developed when experimental science became integrated into philosophy.

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Social Contract

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The idea that, over time, groups of human beings have developed sets of rules to govern society and civilization. These rules include a basic understanding of morality and ethics, and members of society agree implicitly to follow such rules and standards. These rules of civilization were created in order to permit prosperity and decrease aggression or other social problems. The social contract often includes formalized codes of behavior, which sometimes become attached to law. The social contract also includes a consideration for the rights of others.

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Developmental Psychology

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Studies how human beings change over time. This field studies the lifespan, considering behaviors, abilities, and traits for different age groups. Some social psychological studies include aspects of developmental psychology if they are focused on differences between age groups or developmentally-linked traits.

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Personality Psychology

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studies traits or dispositions that help to explain human behavior. Some types of personality psychology focus on the idea that traits have relative stability or permanence, but other theories in personality psychology suggest that there is an interaction between the situation and such traits, or that human behavior is unpredictable and free. Social psychology often uses some investigation of personality traits (i.e. self-esteem, self-monitoring, preference for consistency, etc...) to predict how such traits intersect with groups. However, the basic thesis of social psychology is that human behavior is primarily influenced by the situation and the group, rather than traits. Social psychology may intersect most fully with personality psychology, despite the difference in this basic assumption (which relates to the fundamental attribution error).

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Cognitive Psychology

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Studies how the mind works, including memory, learning, consciousness and decision-making. The area of social psychology that is called social cognition overlaps in significant ways with cognitive psychology because they are using experiments to test how we think about social situations. Some theories are shared between the two fields.

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Clinical Psychology

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Studies abnormality, health, and the ways to assess and improve human functioning. While social psychologists do not focus on diagnosis or treatment of mental illness, they do share some points of study with clinical psychology, such as the study of problems like: low self-esteem, loneliness, shyness, divorce and relationship problems, and how social situations and thoughts impact depression or anxiety. Clinical psychologists and counseling psychologists maintain professional licenses to work with clients. Social psychologists, developmental psychologists, and cognitive psychologists do not. The latter are researchers only. Some clinical psychologists or counseling psychologists conduct original research.

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Physiological Psychology

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Studies brain-behavior relationships, and how the body relates to psychological events. Many experiments in social psychology include some form of physiological assessment that ties into the individual's experience in a group.

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Gestalt Psychology

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Contributed important theoretical ideas for social psychology. Gestalt psychology opposed behaviorism, which assumed that human behavior was governed by the pursuit of reinforcers and the avoidance of reward. Gestalt psychology focuses on the individual's subjective perception of events, and how we tend to perceive events holistically. Gestalt psychology focuses on the freedom of the individual and the importance of seeing a person as a whole, rather than reducing them to a sum of parts. Kurt Lewin, an early Gestalt psychologist, is often called the "father of social psychology."

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What does social psychology study?

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(main areas of investigation) Aggression, love, romantic attraction, prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes, social cognition and biases in thinking, group dynamics, helping behavior, affiliation and liking, attitudes and how they impact behavior, attitude changes and persuasion, conformity, compliance and obedience, self-concept, gender, dispositional traits and how these impact social behavior.

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Evolutionary Psychology

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Studies how human behavior is influenced by drives for survival and reproduction, as well as the need to solve problems and adapt the environment.

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Difference between common sense and social psychology?

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Common sense does not make risky predictions or hypotheses that could be disconfirmed. Social psychology does. There is no way to falsify common sense because it does not set up experiments. Common sense statements are set up as if they are true and self-evidence. Social psychology seeks to actually confirm what is real.

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Hindsight Bias

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The tendency, after-the-fact, to believe that one "knew it all along." For instance, while a student might predict only 50% of the findings correctly in social psychology, there is a tendency after learning about various findings to assert that, "Oh, that makes sense. I already knew that!"

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What is correlational research?

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When research discovers that two or more variables are related, but we don't know which one caused which, or whether they each exerted a mutual influence on one another.

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Why does correlation not imply causation?

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Because there is not enough experimental control to make any causal statements. Hidden, third variables and confounds could have caused the observed result. Unless we have random assignment to conditions, we cannot assert causation

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Drawbacks and limitations for correlations and self-report data?

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People may use a response bias, such as agreeing or disagreeing to everything without really thinking things through, or lying, or presenting themselves in an overly positive, or overly negative, light. Self-report also is limited by our self-awareness and lack of objectivity regarding our own thoughts and actions. Correlations are limited because they merely observe relationships, but they really tell us nothing about why these relationships exist. They are limited in that they are often misconstrued by those who do not possess training in the scientific method, or by those who wish to manipulate others with stats that appear legitimate.

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Experimental Realism

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The extent to which the study's setting feels compelling, interesting, believable, or involving to the participants, thus eliciting natural or spontaneous behavior. The subjects need to feel like what is happening is real, so that they won't behave in artificial ways. This sometimes necessitates deception in research, or the use of confederates. For instance, in the shock-obedience study, the participants needed to believe that they were actually delivering electric shocks to a victim in order for the study to work. If the participants thought the situation was fake or imaginary, the results would have been meaningless.

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Mundane Realism

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The extent to which the study's setting looks and feels like the real outside world. If the setting feels realistic, it helps with external validity, or generalizing the results to the real world. While the shock obedience study had experimental realism, it did not have mundane realism because in our daily lives, we don't usually go into a lab and deliver electric shocks to another person. A realistic setting might be if we observed people in a grocery store and exposed them to some kind of a sign with a message about a product. Since people go to grocery stores all of the time, this is a realistic setting.

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Interaction

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When two or more variables in a study interact in their effects in an "if...then" way. Things are found be true only in certain experimental conditions. For example, if males are exposed to interpersonal conflict in an experiment, then they show higher physiological arousal, but lower external facial expressions of stress than women. However, the opposite effect was shown for women. If under interpersonal stress, the women showed lower physiological arousal, but they externally showed their distress much more on their faces. In comparison, after exposed to video images of violence, men showed less physiological reaction than women.

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Factorial Desgin

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A study that involves two or more independent variables

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Demand Characteristics

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Cues that suggest to participants how they are supposed to respond during an experimental study. This can lead to cofounds (extraneous variables, sources of potential error).

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Archival Research

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A study based on records that already exist. For examples, I want to study the census information fro 1986.

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Field studies

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Instead of conducting a study in a lab, you study it in the real world. For example, you stage a fake emergency on the beach, and then watch to see what happens.

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Representative sample

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The qualities of the subjects in your study represent the population well. For example, the study shows similar demographics (age, race, gender, SES) to the general population in Iowa.

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Random Sampling

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Each person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen for the study. For example, I randomly call phone numbers of 100 people in Colorado Springs, and each person in CS has an equal chance of being selected for my call.

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Operational Definiton

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A very specific, detailed definition that can be measured. For example, I define disrespect as the number of times that a second-grader throws objects at other people in his classroom during a one- hour observation.

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Psychometrics

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the field within psychology that studies how we can measure psychological phenomenon. This field includes the construction of new psychological tests, the experiments to find out if such tests are valid and reliable, the use of such tests in research, and the applied use of tests to help human problems.

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Unobtrusive Measures

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assessments that are used in an experiment that are subtle, preventing the participant in the study from guessing what is being measured. These types of measures are used to prevent socially desirable responding and confounds.

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Random Assignment to Conditions

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When the experimenter controls who goes into which group. For example, I decide that some of you will play Tetris, and others will play Black Ops. Often, in psychology, we don't have random assignment because it is either impossible or unethical. For example, I can't force you to become depressed, so that you can be in my depression group.

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Placebo Group

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the group that receives a fake (like a sugar pill) or benign version of the independent variable, so that self-fulfilling prophecies don't spoil the results. For instance, in a study that compares pastoral counseling to other forms of counseling, I might have a placebo group that just receives supportive counseling (the therapist shows active listening and empathy), and then I might have another group that receives cognitive therapy, while the other group receives pastoral counseling.

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Control Group

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The group that does not receive the I.V. For example, the group that does not receive any counseling at all.

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How to eliminate Extraneous Variables?

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Primarily through standardized procedures and random assignment to conditions.

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Reliability

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Does my measurement tool really measures what I say it measures?

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Internal Validity

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The degree to which a study provides casual information about behaviors that can be trusted.

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External validity

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The degree to which the findings can be generalized to other know about ethical precautions in research

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Threats to Internal Validity

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This is when there are circumstances that interfere with my ability to make correct, accurate causal conclusions in my study. There are many specific types of threats. For example, one type is history. This occurs when some unexpected event causes a change in your results, rather than the I.V. For example, let's say that I am measuring the happiness levels that people report based on the types of careers that they hold. I am looking at the happiness levels of accountants, tax analysts, stock brokers, stock analysts, and managers. I am studying these people for six months. I am trying to see whether my career counseling methods help them to be happier. All of the sudden, there is a huge stock market crash. This historical event might totally affect my results, impacting some of the workers much more than others. Maybe their change in happiness was due to the event, rather than my career counseling.

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Socially Desirable Responding

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When a person answers a survey or interview in a way that makes them look socially desirable to the experimenter. For instance, "I have never lied in my entire life," or "I have liked every person I have ever met."

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Response Set

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Any bias in how someone responds to a survey, interview, or other self-report measure.

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Acquiescence Response Act

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A bias where you want to agree with everything you are asked.

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Schemas

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Mental representations of objects or categories. These are sets of beliefs that cluster together. These sets of beliefs tell us how we think something works. For instance, we have a concept of what it means to be a mother, or what school entails. There are sets of concepts that tend to cluster around a theme.

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Spreading Activation

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If we use one schema, it tends to increase the likelihood that we will use other schemas. One set of beliefs tends to trigger other sets of beliefs. One belief will cause our memories to be activated for other ideas. Associative network: A large system of schemas that are linked together because the beliefs share a meaning or experience. This helps us to organize information. For instance, we may have an associative network of ideas that relate to the notion of "religion."

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Priming

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When you expose subjects to some kind of situation, idea, or stimuli that causes them to change their behavior, emotions or thoughts.

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chronic Accessibility

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the degree to which schemas are easily activated for an individual across time and situations. For instance, a depressed person might have a C.A. schema for the idea that he or she is rejected, where they easily draw this to mind, even when it doesn't fit the situation.

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Attribution

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Beliefs about what caused what. For instance, I attribute my success in a class to hard work, or luck, or how easy the class was.

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Mental Accessibility

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: How easily something is drawn to mind. If I am obsessed with violence, then aggressive thoughts are mentally accessible to me.

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Automatic Process

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a judgment or thought that we cannot control. It occurs unintentionally, often beneath the surface of awareness.

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Controlled Process

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a judgment or thought that we command through an act of will. This thought is intentional, requires significant cognitive resources, and occurs within awareness.

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Outgroup Homogeneity Effect

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often this term is seen in the prejudice chapter as well. The tendency to think that members of an outgroup are all the same, while members of our own group are quite diverse.

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Heuristic

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A cognitive shortcut, informal rule, or rule of thumb used to make a rapid judgment. Heuristics are often prone to bias. These are rapid assumptions that we make without really thinking things through. When we use superficial forms of reasoning, we typically rely on heuristics rather than logic. Heuristics are fast, easy to use, and help us to avoid spending much effort on actually thinking.

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Cognitive Miser Model

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This is a theory that proposes that people typically use heuristics rather than engaging in thoughtful, careful, and rational analysis. Because it conserves mental energy, people avoid careful reasoning as much as possible.

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Gambler's fallacy

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After a series of wins, a gambler is likely to believe that even more wins are possible, or they may superstitiously believe that they are now likely to lose, even though the odds remain the same regardless of prior wins or losses.

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Illusory correlation

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Forming the idea that two things are related, when in fact, they are not. For instance, every time I do a particular ritual, I then receive an unexpectedly happy circumstance the next day.

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Sunk Cost Effect

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Because I have already invested so much time and energy in something, I don't want to give it up, even though it might be irrational or destructive to keep doing it.

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Mood Congruent Recall

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(mood congruity effect): The tendency to recall things that are consistent with one's current mood.

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Confirmation Bias

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Selectively searching for information that confirms one's views.

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Contrast effects

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something may stand out more to our attention, merely because it follows something that is very different. For instance, if one had a very terrible relationship in the past, a new (but mediocre) relationship might seem to be "the answer I was always looking for."

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Ego Depletion

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After willpower or intellectual stamina has been taxed, there is less left over for new temptations or challenges.

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Accessibility

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Things that are easily brought to mind are mentally accessible. Social psychology experiments can "prime" a research participant to think or feel a particular way, based on exposing them to triggers.

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Availability Heuristic

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When things are easily brought to mind because they are mentally accessible, we tend to over-estimate how frequently these things occur. If it is easy for us to remember examples of plane crashes, for instance, we may (erroneously) think that plane crashes happen all of the time. This is a form of bias in thinking.

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Preference for Consistency

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Some personalities have a strong need for things in their life to be consistent, including their thoughts and ideas. Everything needs to neatly line up in order to reduce feelings of discomfort.

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Need for cognition

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People with a high need for cognition enjoy thinking about complex things and solving complex problems. People with low need for cognition dislike complicated thoughts or ideas, because it takes too much effort to really think about it or solve problems.

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Cognitive miser model

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a cognitive miser does not want to exert much energy in thinking. They are stingy about their thoughts.

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Overconfidence effects

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The tendency to be overly confident in one's ability to remember facts or details—to over-estimate one's own accuracy level.

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Augmenting Principle

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If a person had to go through tremendous obstacles in order to accomplish a goal, we tend to assume that their motivation was very strong. We give more weight to the reasons why they sought the goal, since they had to endure such hardship in order to achieve it.

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Anchoring and Adjustment heuristics

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When we are uncertain about what is true, we are more likely to rely on reference points or anchors to guide us. However, this produces a bias in our estimates or educated guesses, since the reference point could be totally false. Our thinking is susceptible to comparisons to

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False Hope Syndrome

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Continuing to work towards something that is doomed to fail, due to unrealistic optimism. This can cause someone to not work hard enough to prevent potential hazards or dangers.

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Framing Effect

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The way that a question is worded can change the way that the public responds. Companies, politicians, and salespeople use this to manipulate another person or a group. Twisting the wording in order to get others to think in a particular way.

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Self-Monitoring

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People who are high on self monitoring are constantly evaluating their own behaviors to see whether others approve of them. They adjust how they act in various social situations in order to be accepted, to fit in, and to get others to like them.

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Fundamental attribution error (Correspondence Bias)

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Over-estimating the role of personality in another person's behaviors, while under-estimating the role of the situation in affecting them.

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Uncertainty orientation

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being drawn towards ambiguous or uncertain situations, rather than needing a lot of structure and proof.

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Actor-observer bias

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When you make a mistake, you believe that external forces caused you to do it (bad luck, hardship, other people), but when others make a similar mistake, you blame it on their "bad personality" (they are such a rude, thoughtless person). Giving yourself the benefit of the doubt.

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Discounting Principles

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The more expertise and knowledge you have about something, the less certain you tend to be that any single explanation is entirely true. If many plausible explanations exist, you may have a high degree of uncertainty about all of them.

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Base Rate Error

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Over-estimating or under-estimating the frequency of something in an irrational way that produces distress. For instance, over-estimating the likelihood of dying in a plane crash because you don't really believe that is has such a low statistical probability

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Representativeness Heuristics

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Assuming that another person who has certain qualities must be a member of a particular group. For instance, if a young man enjoys football and beer, he must be a frat boy. This is similar to a stereotype.

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Self-Serving Bias

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When you succeed, you think that it is due to internal causes (how smart you are, how hard working you are). When you fail, you blame it on the external circumstances, not yourself.

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Effort Justification

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If you put a lot of effort into something, you may over-estimate how much you like it or value it. We are unconsciously trying to justify all of this effort that we placed into it by making it seem important.

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Over-justification effect

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If we are rewarded for something we already enjoy without a reward, we tend to enjoy it less. This may be because we start to believe that, the only reason we were doing it was to gain the reward.

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Cognitive Dissonance

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When our beliefs and behaviors don't match, or when two or more beliefs compete with one another, it creates an unpleasant tension. In order to relieve the tension, we will either change our beliefs or our behaviors.

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False Consensus Bias

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Over-estimating the extent to which others agree with us. Thinking everyone else is just like us inside of a group.

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Pluralistic Ignorance

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Assuming that, if nobody else is complaining about something, they must not care about it. Blindly believing that, the way that a group acts externally is an accurate representation of how members of that group really feel, when the reality could be that group members hide their true feelings and misgivings about what is going on.

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Conjunction Fallacy

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The bias in thinking where a person believes that two events are more likely than one event. It is an example of how irrational human beings are.

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Counterfactual Thinking

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Thinking about alternative realities that run counter to the facts of what really happened, and then getting upset about it. For instance, "If only I wouldn't have hit that stoplight on the way to the airport, I wouldn't have missed my plane!" Using "if-only" thinking produces distress.

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Belief Perseverance

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The tendency to want to keep believing what we believed from the beginning. We don't want to change our beliefs, even if presented with tons of good evidence that those beliefs are false.

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Perseverance Effect

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This occurs when someone continues to believe something false about themselves, even though they have been shown why the information was false. An example of this effect will follow. In some social psychology experiments, research participants are given false feedback about themselves. For instance, they are told that they scored really low on a measure of social sensitivity, when in fact they did not! After the study is over, the participants are told that they did not really score low on social sensitivity, and yet they continue to believe that they have low social sensitivity. Perhaps this is because the negative feedback caused them to draw to mind memories of when they lacked sensitivity.

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Counterfactual Thoughts

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reflections about how things could have turned out differentl

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Upward Counterfactual thoughts

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Reflections about how past events could have turned out better. The "if only" effect.

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Downward counterfactual thoughts

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Reflections about how past events might have turned out worse than they actually did. this instills relief.

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Self-serving judgements

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Perceptions or comparison that enhanced the perceived worth of the self

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Intuitive Scientists

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psychologist Harold Kelley suggested that people often make causal judgments in a rather scientific manner, as if they were untrained, lay scientists. One of the subpoints of his theory is described below.

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Convariation model of attribution

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When we try to figure out the cause of someone's behavior, we think back about memories we have about the situation, the person, and a variety of settings. This process of trying to figure out why other people did what they did is quasi scientific.

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Display rules

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Rules set up by society about how much emotion we should express in publi

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looking Glass self

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The tendency to internalize other people's judgement about us into our self-concept.

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Spotlight effect

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Over-estimating the extent to which others are paying attention to you and your minor faults, emotional reactions, or strengths. Feeling as if you are walking around with a big spotlight focused on you—everyone is watching you and you are transparent.

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Self-promotion

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Drawing attention to one's successes in order to cause others to view us as competent.

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Ingratiation

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Attempts to get other to like us

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self-handicapping

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Unconsciously sabotaging yourself from achievement by creating obstacles to your success, so that you can blame external situations if you fail.

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Cutting off reflected failure

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The tendency to want to distance yourself from undesirable or low status situations or other people, in order to maintain your own reputation and status with a group, and to maintain self esteem.

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Basking in reflected glory

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Wanting to affiliate ourselves with those who are successful, lucky, or powerful, or whom have just won.

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Artifacts of power

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objects, status symbols, affiliations, or people who make us appear powerful to others. These objects may allow us to have some kind of informational power, or to in some way gain social dominance or an advantage over others.

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Trappings of competence

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objects, skills, status symbols, affiliations, or people who make us appear competent to others.

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Learned Helplessness

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If we believe that, no matter what we attempt, punishment will be unavoidable, we give up on trying new strategies.

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Upward and downward social comparison

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Upward, comparing ourselves to those who seem to be better off than us. Downward, comparing ourselves to those who seem to be worse off than us

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Social Comparison Orientation

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a personality trait that predisposes you to engage in frequent social comparisons.

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Self-efficacy

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Trusting that you are capable and skilled and likely to succeed at a particular thing.

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Self-perception theory

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We judge our own internal state by thinking about our past behaviors, and inferring internal states consistent with those behaviors unless there is a clear external cause for the behaviors.

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Bias Blind Spot

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The tendency to think that biases and errors are more common in other people than in ourselves.

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Unrealistic Optimism

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the tendency to believe that our own future is better than average, or that more positive events will happen to us than to other people.

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False Hope Syndrome

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The tendency to try repeatedly but unsuccessfully to achieve a goal because of unrealistic expectations about the likelihood of success.

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Self-Discrepancy Theory

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a theory that we perceive differences between our actual self and our ideal self. Awareness of these differences makes us depressed. When we become aware of differences between our actual self and our ought self, we feel anxious.

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Actual self

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A concept of the self that describes our perception of hoe we really are

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Ideal Self

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Our perception of how we would ideally like to be

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Ought self

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a concept of how we think we should be

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Self-promotion

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a behavior to make someone respect us or think we are competent

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