Tuesday May 29th

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Social Psychology

• Tuesday May 29th

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Todays Agenda

• Introductions
• Syllabus
• What is social psychology where did it come
  from?
• Questionnaire

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Introductions Who are you?

• Name what you would have us call you
• Where youre from
• Major year
• Why youre taking this course
• Something to let us get to know you a bit

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Syllabus
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What is Social Psychology?

• The scientific study of the feelings, thoughts,
  and behaviors of individuals in social situations
• The scientific study of the way in which peoples
  thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced
  by the real or imagined presence of other people
• Branch of psychology that seeks a broad
  understanding of how human beings think, act, and
  feel

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Characterizing Social Psychology

• Broad discipline
• Science, baby!
• Theories subject to empirical test and
  falsification
• Empirical Verifiable or provable by means of
  observation or experiment
• Nomothetic
• pertaining to or involving the study or
  formulation of general or universal laws
• Nomos law

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Characterizing Social Psychology

• Focuses on individual within the situation
• Psychology in general focuses on the individual
• Experimental
• Social psychology has a long history of using
  true experiments, unlike other social sciences
• Fuzzy boundaries
• Overlaps with cognitive, health, evolutionary,
  I/O, educational, counseling psychology

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Some examples would be nice

• How people are influenced by others
• How our opinions are influenced by others
• How our behavior changes depending on who else is
  around
• Influence of situational variables on behavior
• Inferences about others attitudes and
  personalities
• Does she like me?
• Attribution Why did he do that?

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More examples

• How culture affects how we act, think
• Relationships
• Attraction
• Stay or go?
• Inter-group relations
• Stereotypes
• Prejudice
• Discrimination

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How is Social Psych different?

• Sociology is closely related
• Social psychology actually started in sociology!
• Deals with many of same issues, but looks at
  groups
• Anthropology also looks at some of same issues
• How people are same/different across cultures,
  human evolution
• Observational methods
• Personality psychology is like a sibling
• Study of individual differences
• Idiographic pertaining to or involving the study
  or explication of individual cases or events

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How is Social Psych different?

• Clinical Psychology
• Focuses on abnormal populations
• Social psychologists study normal people
• Industrial/Organizational psychology
• This is largely social and personality psychology
  applied to the workplace
• Cognitive psychology
• Study of peoples thinking, reasoning, memory,
  attention
• Lots of overlap

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The Power of the Situation

• A recurring focus in social psych is the power of
  the situation in determining an individuals
  behavior, feelings, and thoughts

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The Power of the Situation

• Fundamental Attribution Error
• the failure to recognize the importance of
  situational influences on behavior, together with
  the tendency to overemphasize the importance of
  dispositions or traits on behavior

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Questionnaire

• On your note card
• Name
• Date
• Is this your 1st time taking social psych (Y/N)
• Rate your agreement with the following statements
  on a 1-5 scale
• 1Strongly disagree
• 2Disagree
• 3Neither agree nor disagree
• 4Agree
• 5Strongly Agree

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1strongly disagree 5strongly agree

• I think social psychology is interesting
• I like to watch videos in class
• I enjoy class discussion
• I generally feel comfortable discussing course
  material in class
• I would prefer we talk about racial issues as
  little as possible
• I would prefer we talk about sex and sexuality as
  little as possible
• I checked you out on RMPs before signing up for
  this course

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On the back

• Lastly, please write anything else youd like to
  tell me on the back of the notecard
• I will see you here tomorrow