Social psychology

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Social psychology

• The scientific discipline that attempts to
  understand and explain how the thoughts,
  feelings, and behaviors of individuals are
  influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied
  presence of others.

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Emphases

• Power of the situation
• Power of the person
• Importance of cognition
• Application of social psychology principles

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Social psychology vs Sociology

• Individual
• Immediate stimuli, psychological states,
  personality traits
• Experimentation

• Group
• Societal variables
• Surveys, observation, and correlations

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The Early Years (1895-1934)

• Triplett
• MacDougall and Ross
• Floyd Allport

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Coming of Age (1935-1945)

• Kurt Lewin a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.
• Introduced the idea of interactionism Person
  and situation influence social behaviors.

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Other Cool things about Kurt Lewin

• Zeigarnik Effect
• The icky meat campaign and other wartime programs

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The Self

• People are profoundly influenced by their self
  concepts.
• It molds and defines their social reality.

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Culture

• The total lifestyle of a people, including all of
  the symbols, ideas, preferences and material
  objects they share.

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• Ideology a set of beliefs and values held by the
  members of a social group, which explains the
  culture both to itself and the other group
• Individualism vs. Collectivism Do cultures
  stress individuality or emphasize group needs
  over individual needs?

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The Hot vs. Cold Approach

• Do you think with your heart or your head?

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Well, thats lovelybut who actually does this
social psychology stuff?
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and what are you going to do with that?

• Most social psychologists are Ph.D.s
• 75 are employed by colleges and universities

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Self-Fulfilling prophecy

• A process by which someones expectations about a
  person or group lead to fulfillment of those
  expectations

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Conducting Research in Social Psychology

• Select a topic
• Develop a theory and hypothesis
• Select a research method
• Collect the data
• Analyze the data
• Report the results

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Step 3 Selecting a Research method

• Experimental vs. Correlational factors

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Experimental method

• Directly manipulating Variables
• Independent Variable (manipulated)
• Dependent variable (the result)
• Experimental method is great because you can say
  one thing causes another thing, but you are
  limited by ethics.

Rowenas overused Green MM example
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Correlational Method

• Looks at how variables are related
• On the down side, it cannot say that one thing
  causes another
• Can investigate a variety of topics
• correlation Things move together
• - correlation move apart
• On a scale of 1 to 0

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ETHICS

• Can we do this?
• Milgrams study
• and deception
• Institutional review boards
• Informed consent
• debriefing