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Psychology
Experiments
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Welcome!
In this little PDF, youll get a quick sense of Once you get the comment cards back, youd
social psychology through 5 really neat studies. want to compare the ratings of Soup A tasters
By looking closely at specific studies, youll see to Soup B tasters, and the ratings differ, the only
how psychologists learn about human thought possible reason is that the celery made the dif-
and behavior and how tiny changes can have big ference because its the only thing that was dif-
consequences. ferent. Thats the beauty of an experiment. With
everything the same except the celery and with
In case youre not already familiar with psycho- each persons soup being decided at random, we
logical research, heres a quick rundown of how know exactly what to blame for any difference in
psychology experiments work and why we can reactions.
trust their results.
Part II: Understanding the Results
Part I: The Design of an Experiment In our soup test, what if the results are that Soup
Basically, a psychology experiment involves A gets an average of 4.3 stars and Soup B gets an
taking a whole bunch of people and giving them average of 4.5 stars. Is that big enough to matter?
an experience to see how they react. Most of If you got a new group of people, maybe Soup
the time, this experience isnt all that exciting; it A would get 4.5 stars and Soup B would get 4.3
might involve reading a written message or writ- stars.
ing a short essay. They key, though, is that the
researcher changes this experience just slightly To know whether these differences are big
for some of the participants. So at random, some enough to matter, psychologists uses statistical
people in the study get one version of the experi- tests to see whether those differences are likely
ence and everyone else gets the other version. to reflect real differences or whether theyre due
to chance. Im not about to review these statis-
By comparing the reactions of people in Experi- tics, though, so Im asking you trust me on this
ence A to the reactions of people in Experience part. In this ebook, Ill show you the results of 5
B, we can see whether that general reaction experiments, and Ill say that there were differ-
depends on whats different between A and B? ences between groups. Rest assured, the results I
share are statistically reliable. I just dont make a
big deal of it here.
If youre not with me, maybe this will help. Lets
say youre a chef, and you want to know whether
your signature minestrone soup recipe should There you have ita quick crash course in
have celery in it or not. You can run an experi- psychological research. In these 5 experiments,
ment. Make one pot of soup with celery in the I want you to come away with an understanding
recipe and another pot without it. Ladle it into of psychology, but its also important to know
bowls and randomly give half your guests Soup how we know these things.
A and half of them Soup B. When theyre done,
they fill out a comment card and rate the soup Lets dive in.
from 1 to 5 stars.
The Because
#1 Heuristic
One Word That Takes People from No to Yes
Would you please read this whole PDF, because I
want you to read this whole PDF?
You say your feelings are hurt, but you dont gests that there might be more than mere wordplay
mean it feels like you stubbed your toe, right? going on. Theres more overlap between the phys-
ical and the emotional than you initially thought.
You say you get a warm feeling when your fianc
is around, but your body temperature hasnt gone Heres one examplewe use the word warm to
up, right? describe people who are generous and caring, but
thats weird, isnt it? We dont actually think that
We often use metaphors to express abstract, psy- the person is warm to the touch, but still use the
chological experiences, but recent research sug- metaphor.
2. Embodied Cognition (continued)
In one experiment by Lawrence Williams and John By the time they got to the research room, ev-
Bargh, people read some information about a per- eryone had given back the coffee cup and was
son whom theyd never met. Their only task was ready to read about the person I described earlier.
to form an impression of this person and rate that The question is: would the coffee cups tempera-
person on a number of traits. Some of these traits ture change peoples perception of metaphorical
were about how warm the person seemed. For warmth?
example, people would report how generous and
caring the person seemed. The other traits were If you look at peoples responses to the personali-
personality characteristics that werent related to ty questions that werent about warm traits, the
personal warmth. answers werent any different between people who
held a warm coffee and people who held an iced
The critical piece, though, is that before anyone coffee. When you look at peoples perceptions of
read about this person, they were briefly made to personality warmth, however, the people who had
feel physically warm or physically cold. When the briefly held a hot cup of coffee gave higher ratings
participants arrived for the study, they were met for warm personality traits than the people who
by a researcher in the lobby, and they rode the ele- had briefly held a cold up of coffee.
vator to the room where the study would happen.
On this elevator ride, the experimenter asked the The idea here is that the physical feeling of warmth
participant to briefly hold her cup of coffee. Some- got people thinking about warmth in general,
times it was a hot cup of coffee, and sometimes it which biased their perception of this other person.
was an iced coffee. Thus, we can see that metaphors can reflect real
links between the physical and the psychological.
Self-Fulfilling
#3 Prophecies
When Expectations Make Reality
Youre about to interview a woman named Wen- She comes in, you do the interview, and it turns
dy. Youve never met her before, but youre look- out like you expectedeven this Wendy seemed
ing to hire someone at your ice cream parlor. Lets grumpy and impatient. The reality, though, is that
say you knew a Wendy once, and she never said this Wendy is usually friendly, talkative, and would
hello to anyone, had a grumpy disposition, and al- have been a great fit for the job. Just your expecta-
ways seemed like shes rather be somewhere else. tion, though, may have made her act inconsistent
Of course you know this isnt the same Wendy, but with her true personality.
youve got it in your head that shell be just like the
other Wendy. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we believe
3. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (continued)
someone will act in a certain way, our own behav- and humorous, compared to the men who an un-
ior toward him or her changes in a way that virtu- attractive photo.
ally guarantees that person to act in that way. So if
I expect you to be bad for the job, I might conduct Finally, they get to talking, and the researchers co-
a poor interview, not giving you a chance to show vertly recorded their conversations for later anal-
your positive qualities. This isnt intentional, and ysis. In fact, they only recorded the womens side
I probably wont think my own behavior was any of the conversation, and they sent those record-
different, but still, subtly, the cycle of self-fulfilling ings off to another group of people who would rate
prophecy occurs. them. This group had no idea what the study was
about or what the man on the other end of the line
To see how this can play out, consider an early had seen earlier. They just listened to each woman
study by Mark Snyder and colleagues. They want- and rated how animated she was and how much
ed to see how expectations could determine the she seemed to enjoy the conversation.
course of a phone call. In their study, male college
students were paired with female college students, When you put all the pieces together, you see
and they ended up having a conversation with self-fulfilling prophecies in action. The women
each other over the phone. who were talking to men who thought they were
attractive were objectively friendlier on the phone,
The women in this study thought it was as simple compared to women who were talking to men
as that. They arrived, had a chat with a man they who thought they were unattractive.
had never seen before, and that was that.
Of course, the women have no idea that their
The men, however, had a slightly different experi- conversation partners have any ideas about what
ence. Before they started the phone conversation, they look like; theyre just responding to the men
they got some information about the woman they on the other end of the line. Yet, men who think
would be talking to, and they saw a photo of her theyre talking to an attractive woman converse in
as well. In reality, it was not a photo of the person a way that brings out the friendliness in the person
theyd be talking to. Instead, half of the men in this on the other end of the line, but men who think
study got a photo of a relatively attractive woman theyre talking to an unattractive woman do so in
and half of the men got a photo of a relatively unat- a way that keeps the other person from truly shin-
tractive woman. So they thought they were about ing.
to talk to an attractive or an unattractive woman,
but that wasnt necessarily the truth. One take-away point is an unsettling one. Merely
expecting a person to act in a negative way sets
Before the conversation started, the researchers that person up for failure (even when they other-
asked the men what they thought of their partner, wise could have been great). Another, more opti-
based on the information they received. As you mistic lesson, however, is that expecting the best
might expect, the men who saw an attractive pho- out of people gives them every opportunity to be
to thought their partner would be more sociable their best selves.
Counterfactual
#4 Thinking
Dwelling on What Could Have Been
Despite the advice of innumerable life coaches, we wanted to know who was happier: athletes who
cant help but comparing ourselves to others and took 2nd place silver medals or athletes who took
thinking hypothetically. We seem to only under- 3rd place bronze medals.
stand ourselves in context, and one of those con-
texts is the world of what if s and if onlys. Of- Rationally, the silver medalists should be hap-
tentimes, we gauge our happiness and satisfaction pier because they did better! If they based their
by thinking about things could have gone better satisfaction on their objective performance, they
or worse. should be more satisfied.
This style of thinking is counterfactual thinking, However, if the athletes are using counterfactu-
and its all about what didnt happen. al thinking, then the silver medalists may be less
happy than the bronze medalists. To understand
To show the prevalence of such thinking, Thom- why, consider what each of them must have been
as Gilovich and colleagues analyzed the reactions thinking. The silver medalist is thinking, I could
of athletes in the 1992 Summer Olympics. They have gotten the gold! I came so close! This is an
4. Counterfactual Thinking (continued)
upward counterfactual, which is thinking about sound, and simply rated how happy each person
how things could have been better. The bronze in the videos seemed, from agony to ecstasy.
medalist, though, is thinking, I got an Olympic
medal! I was so close to not getting one, but I have When they analyzed all of those ratings, the re-
one! This a downward counterfactual, which is searchers found a clear case of counterfactual
thinking about how things could have been worse. thinking. Across all of these silver and bronze
medalists, the emotions of the 3rd place, bronze
So which of those was true? Gilovich and col- medalists appeared much happier than the emo-
leagues went through all the TV coverage of the tions of the 2nd place, silver medalists.
1992 Summer Olympics and made clips of every
recorded instance of a silver or bronze medalist (a) Counterfactual thinking, of course, isnt just the
at the moment they finished their event (i.e., when stuff of Olympic athletes. We all succumb to such
they first found out how they did) and (b) as they thinking at one point or another. Keep in mind,
were receiving their medals. though, that downward counterfactual thinking
feels a whole lot better than upward counterfac-
They took these clips and gave them to a bunch of tual thinking, so be sure to consider how things
people who didnt know who got silver medals or could be much, much worse than they are right
bronze medals. They watched these clips without now.
Ability vs. Effort
#5 Praise
Abilities Can Be Developed
In 1998, Carol Dweck
and Claudia Mueller pub-
lished their findings from
a study on fifth graders
academic achievement.
One at a time, these fifth
graders were taken out
of their normal class and
came into the test room.
Each student worked on a
set of problems that were
designed to be moderately
difficult.
-Andy
www.socialpsychonline.com
@So_Psych