Introduction to Social Psychology

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Introduction to Social Psychology
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Social psychology and related disciplines

• Social psychology and sociology
• Social psychology and personality psychology

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Is social psychology simply common sense?

• Hindsight bias
• The tendency to exaggerate, after learning an
  outcome, ones ability to have foreseen it
• Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon

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How do we do Social Psychology?Correlational
Research(Correlation Versus Causation)

• A. Correlation
• Natural associations b/t two or more variables
• B. Experiment -
• Manipulation of one variable to see affect on
  another

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Survey Research

• Random sampling
• Potential biases
• Unrepresentative samples
• Order of questions
• Response options
• Question wording

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Experimental ResearchSearching for Cause and
Effect

• Control Manipulating Variables
• Independent variables
• Often done in laboratory

Condition
Treatment
Measure
Participant pool
experimental
Violent tv
aggression
control
Nonviolent tv
aggression
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Random assignment

• Assigning participants to conditions so that each
  person has an equal chance of being in any given
  condition.
• Random assignment random sampling

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Correlation vs. Experiment(or How to tell the
difference)

• Can participants be randomly assigned?
• Is there an independent variable and a dependent
  variable?

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Demand characteristics

• Cues in an experiment which reveal expected
  behavior

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Ethics in Experimentation

• Institutional Review Board
• Suggestions by APA
• Tell potential Pp enough about the experiment to
  enable informed consent
• Be truthful avoid deception
• Protect people from harm and significant
  discomfort
• Keep participant information confidential
• Fully explain the experiment afterward, including
  any deception, unless it would be distressing

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