Social Psychology – Lecture 1

Desks: Form impressions… how they go wrong and result in discriminatory

Think like social psychologists: observe behaviour and connect it to theories

P.7 What is social psychology?

Psychology = scientific study of mind and behaviour

Allport: 1.science

2. how thoughts feelings and behaviours

3. Real or imagined
4.presence of other people

P.8 ABC. Affect Behaviour Cognition

p.9 sociologists focus on groups rathe than individuals1 `

Cognitive: how these play Out in a social context
Clinical Psychology: focus on disorder
Personality Psychology: interested in stable differences in different people and how they play
out… social psychologists look at the reverse, how these play out in social situations

P.10 What do social psychologists care about

-how to stop being negatively influenced by others
-combatting stereotypes*** how to avoid using stereotypes and what happens if someone uses
a stereotype on you?
-good relationship
-what happens if we fail to achieve our goals
-what causes people to reject science? Ex) vaccines are not good for you
People no longer trust science

P. 11… social psychology

Example
Laptops Negatively affects class performance
Reasons: 1. Easily distracted (affects those around you)
2. Affects the way we take notes… taking everything quickly without processing the
information… written notes is better (research)

P. 13 Best way to do well in class is to go to class

Researchers did a meta-study… going to class is the number one predictor
Study effectively
-dynamic testing such as quizzing yourself, relate content to your own life, reviewing notes
frequently, more effective ways: teaching others

P.14 isn’t this common sense?

Hindsight bias (after you know something its difficult to perceive yourself as not knowing them)
ex) birds of a feather flock together vs. Opposites attract

Seem like opposites… we will learn how our biases lead us astray and its not just common sense

P.15 Intuition can be powerful but can also be careless

-we are unaware of the many things that influence our behaviour

Book: telling more than we can know

In front of a store and stood in front of the pantyhose rack
This one felt like it was the best quality
Choose the pantyhose that is furthest on the right and we prefer on the right side since its our
DOMINANT HAND
Left. Right
12%. 17% 31% 40%

Set out candy bowls to recreate experiment

p.16 History
Triplett (first experiment of social psychology)
You ride your bike faster with other people than with alone… we are therefore shaped by
context

Floyd Allport (brother of Gord Allport) stressed interactions with an emphasis on the scientific
method

P.17 Hitler is the most influential person to social psychology

1. Shifted the focus of social psych from Europe to North America to flee
2. Gave rise to most influential social psychologists
Milgram (electro shock test)
Festinger (cognitive dissonance)
Allport (intergroup bias) what situations will people get along with one another
3. People asked how someone could do something so terrible

Next 60 years there is a boom

P.18
Bem – put out a paper and said we have psi powers and can predict the future

QRP – unethical things to make results true when they are not
Open Science Collaboration: replicated 100 major studies from the past and only 37% were
recreated… most likely these are not true

Amgen: failed to replicate 47 of 53 landmark cancer papers… only 6 showed to be true

YOUTUBE VIDEO***

Reputable
Saw 3 kinds of videos: neutral and

5 of every 100 results are false…

They falsified the research of chocolate eating…

p-hacking***

Legitimate decisions are made to collect data… dark skin players more likely to get a red card?
Some results showed no, but some results showed they were 3x more likely

More large scale replication studies

Online repositories to print unpublished reports

Desks on video: 1. can explain the difficulties of doing this research

2. Cautionary tale: the importance of critical thinking, avoiding biases and avoiding taking things
at face value
3. Replication crisis: just cuz it fails to replicate doesn’t mean we shouldn’t throw it out, its not
all bs. there can be a billion reasons why an experiment doesn’t work
Ex) recreating pantyhose experiment using candy…. Maybe more people on the left side of the
room took candy

P.19
Maybe we can’t trust all that we’ve been reading BUT it is an exciting time to be studying social
psychology. Social psychologists are taking the lead on looking at the short comings of past
research

Importance of being a critical consumer

Helps us to become a greater critical thinker in an age of lake news, facebook false stories

P.20

4 major steps to experiment

1. Theory (an organized set of principles that explain and predict) Explanation of how and why and
variables. Not just the state of the world, but WHY it is like that
2. Create hypothesis (explicit testable prediction)
P.21 Kurt Lewinsky – person and the environment (interactionist perspective)
-shift away from behaviourism and psychoanalysis which were popular at the time 1930’s

P.22 What is a good theory? Fiske

1. Should go beyond WHY a causes b (explains observations)
2. Coherent (tells a story that makes sense) well-organized
3. Simpler is better (its better to have a theory that uses less steps)
4. Testable and falsifiable (can’t test that martians put implants in our head and can’t prove it
wrong… pseudoscience!)
5. Generates new questions… leads to the next topic
6. Solves problems (has practical value)

Ego Depletion: the idea that exhorting your will power is flexing a muscle and we get tired
Baumeister: will power is a resource… not eating that candy costs us energy

How do we test it? P.24

If you’re dieting, you are probably thinking a lot about food.

2 ways we do research:
1. Correlational: measure natural associations between 2 or more variables
2. Experimental (manipulate one or more variables and how it affects another). ***This is how we
deduce cause and effect relationships

P.26 Correlational Research (Relationship… cannot determine cause and effect)

Variable A diet or not? (Restraint eating scale)
Variable B- Cognitive resources (strop Task)

P.27 Restraint eating scale Herman and Mack

P.28 Stroop test… Say the colour
You have to control yourself not to read the word you are eating***
Sometimes it matches the word, sometimes it doesn’t
The more errors you make can mean you have fewer cognitive resources

People on a diet have fewer cognitive resources than people not on a diet
Correlation does not = causation. Just making a relationship.

To have a causal relationship we need experimental

P.32 Experimental Research

We need to manipulate the independent variable and see what happens to the DEPENDENT
variable

Basic Principles: ***

 1. Experimental control: we want to set up a design where as many things as possible are the same
except the manipulated independent variable
2. Random assignment (laws of probability… inferences between people should equally be
represented in both groups. With enough participants, it should wash out the difference…
example: some people might be better at taking tests… randomization should help distribute
those equally

P.34 Tried to control emotional reaction

1/3 subjects were told not to show emotions during a sad movie
1/3 given no instruction during a sad movie
1/3 shown no movie and no instruction

Dependent variable All subjects hold hand in cold water for as long as possible
People who were told to control their emotions held their hand in for less than other
participants

Controlling emotion group = hold hand in water less

P.36 Do the effects replicate?

P.37 going back and refining our theories
We don’t ever PROVE anything (do not use this word in your essay)
With more and more evidence we have more information to know how the world works.
People are COMPLEX. Very different, so many factors.

Readings
Understanding research methods makes you better at discerning information

BASIC RESEARCH:: increase our understanding of human behavior: test a specific hypothesis
APPLIED RESEARCH: enlarge our understanding of naturally occurring events and contribute to
solution of social problems

Conceptual variables (Abstract): prejudice, conformity, attraction, love group pressure, social
anxiety
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION (Specific) : manipulate a conceptual variable

Construct Validity: 1. Ability to manipulate conceptual variables 2. Ability to measure

conceptual variables

Bogus pipeline: the belief that taking a lie detector test makes people reply more
truthfully…otherwise generally people will reply in ways that are more socially acceptable

Climate change vs. Global warming

95% success vs 5% fail rate
Class 2

Review from last week

1. Scientific study (method)
2. Social psychologists conduct both correlational and experimental research
3. SCIENCE IS A CUMULATIVE PROCESS, CONTINUALLY EVOLVING TOWARDS A more useful and
hopeful understanding of reality

SELF-CONCEPT: sum total of beliefs people have about themselves

The “me (known aspect)

Self-concept is made up of self-schemes (beliefs that guide processing of self-relevant

information)

Information can be a schematic (not something you care about)

***If it was important self-schema, it would be relevant

SELF-AWARENESS (the knower aspect of thinking about ourselves)

Having knowledge that you exist as a person

Self-awareness is uniquely human (hard to assess)

-Mirror test
-if you recognize yourself, it is the first foundational thing towards self-concept

-some cats attack the mirror

-some birds attempt to mate with the mirror