Social Psychology
Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Psychology
What is Social Psychology?
• Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours
are influenced by other people
- studies:
- individuals
- individuals in groups
- individuals (in a group) in a situation
- comparisons:
- within people
- between people
- within groups
- between groups
- three aspects:
Scientific? —> description & explanation
- theories connect and organise existing observations
• Four Major Theoretical Perspectives of Social Psychology:
- Social-cultural perspective: the view that a person’s prejudices, preferences, and political
persuasions are affected by factors that work at the level of the group (nationality, social
class, and current historical trends
- E.g.: compare to her working-class Irish grandmother, a modern-day Manhattan
executive probably has different attitudes about premarital sex & women’s role in the
business world
- central importance of social norms: rules about appropriate social behaviour
- culture: broadly defined as a set of beliefs, customs, habits, and language shared by
people living in a particular time and place
- human-engineered features of the environment: subjective feat—> rules of
etiquette, objective feat—> houses and clothes
- technological features can also have a powerful effect on our social behaviour:
iPhone, blackberry, internet etc
—> forces in larger social groups
- Evolutionary perspective: adopting the view that human social behaviours are rooted in
physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors to reproduce and
survive
1
, - Darwin’s natural selection: characteristics that help to survive and reproduce are
passed on
- new characteristics suited to particular environments, replacing unsuited ones—>
adaptations
- in the past assumption: evolution can only produce inflexible “instincts” that are
“wired in” at birth
- nowadays: biological influences on humans and other animals —> flexible &
responsive to the environment —> fight-or-flight
- Social-learning perspective: views social behaviour as driven by each individual’s past
learning experiences with reward and punishment
- similar to the sociocultural perspective —> searches for the causes of social
behaviour in a person’s environment —> differ in breadth of focus over time & place
- social-learning: individual’s unique exp. in a particular family, school, or peer group
- habits learned early in life may be hard to break
- sociocultural: look at larger social aggregates —> Asians, Canadians, Hispanics …
- lean toward the assumption that norms (clothes) can change relatively quickly
—> they all emphasise the objective environment
- Social-cognitive perspective: theoretical viewpoint that focuses on the mental processes
involved in paying attention to, interpreting, and remembering social experiences
- emphasising subjective interpretations
- social information processing is selective —> sometimes mind is on autopilot
- ppl tend to process social information in a way that tends to flatter themselves —>
“from chumps to champs”
—> combining and integrate different approaches to be able to see the full picture
• Basic principles:
- social behaviour is goal-based —> goals are hierarchical
- surface level: day-to-day goals
- broader level: longer-term goals
- broadest level: fundamental motives
2
, - social behaviour is a continuing interaction between person and situation
- (seek social information, strive for status, act aggressive & self-protective —> ultimate end of
reproducing our genes)
- —> Goals in Interaction
• The Person:
- person: features or characteristics that individuals carry into social situations
- Knowledge: beliefs, explanations, memory
- exemplar: knowledge of a specific episode, event, or individual
- schema: represents generalised info
- Feelings: attitudes, emotions, mood, physiology
- —> both have an influence on how a situation is interpreted
- Self-concept: knowledge about oneself
- Self-esteem: how valued the self is
- strongly motivated—> maintain high level
- motivates how we interpret situations and which situations we choose to enter
• social comparison
• reflected appraisal process
• self-perception process
• self-regulation
• self-presentation
- Multiple selves: actual self, ideal self, collective self
- depends on the situation
• The Situation:
- situation: environmental events or circumstances outside the person
- ppl underestimate the influence of the situation on people’s behaviour, and their own
behaviour
- Milgram experiment
- The bystander effect (Darley & Latané):
- Diffusion of responsibility
- Pluralistic ignorance
- Overjustification effect: underestimating the effect of rewards (Lepper et al.,)
- Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error): underestimating the role of the
situation (Leonard Nimoy: I am not Spock —> I am Spock)
• Person-Situation Interaction:
- neither the person nor the situation is a fixed entity
- different social situations trigger different goals (behaviour)
- not everyone react the same way in a situation
- person-situation fit: refers to the extent to which a person and a situation are compatible
- people choose situations ( and vice versa)
- people change the situation ( and vice versa)
- socialisation: process through which a culture teaches its members about its beliefs,
customs, habits & language
- affordances: an opportunity or threat provided by a situation
- descriptive norms: a norm that defines what is commonly done in a situation
- pluralistic ignorance: the phenomenon in which ppl in a group misperceive the beliefs of
others because everyone acts inconsistently with their beliefs
3
, —-> Situation and person mutually shape and choose one another in a continuing cycle
• Positive Psychology:
- study of the factors leading to positive emotions, virtuous behaviours, and optimal performance
in people and groups
• How psychologists study social behaviour:
- hypothesis: a researcher’s prediction about what he or she will find
- descriptive method: measure/ record behaviour, thoughts, feelings in their natural state
- experimental method: used to uncover the causes of behaviour by systematically varying
some aspect of the situation
- counterfactual thinking: what might have been
- olympic games ( Medvec, Madey & Gilovich)
- at the end of an experiment: debriefing
4
Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Psychology
What is Social Psychology?
• Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours
are influenced by other people
- studies:
- individuals
- individuals in groups
- individuals (in a group) in a situation
- comparisons:
- within people
- between people
- within groups
- between groups
- three aspects:
Scientific? —> description & explanation
- theories connect and organise existing observations
• Four Major Theoretical Perspectives of Social Psychology:
- Social-cultural perspective: the view that a person’s prejudices, preferences, and political
persuasions are affected by factors that work at the level of the group (nationality, social
class, and current historical trends
- E.g.: compare to her working-class Irish grandmother, a modern-day Manhattan
executive probably has different attitudes about premarital sex & women’s role in the
business world
- central importance of social norms: rules about appropriate social behaviour
- culture: broadly defined as a set of beliefs, customs, habits, and language shared by
people living in a particular time and place
- human-engineered features of the environment: subjective feat—> rules of
etiquette, objective feat—> houses and clothes
- technological features can also have a powerful effect on our social behaviour:
iPhone, blackberry, internet etc
—> forces in larger social groups
- Evolutionary perspective: adopting the view that human social behaviours are rooted in
physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors to reproduce and
survive
1
, - Darwin’s natural selection: characteristics that help to survive and reproduce are
passed on
- new characteristics suited to particular environments, replacing unsuited ones—>
adaptations
- in the past assumption: evolution can only produce inflexible “instincts” that are
“wired in” at birth
- nowadays: biological influences on humans and other animals —> flexible &
responsive to the environment —> fight-or-flight
- Social-learning perspective: views social behaviour as driven by each individual’s past
learning experiences with reward and punishment
- similar to the sociocultural perspective —> searches for the causes of social
behaviour in a person’s environment —> differ in breadth of focus over time & place
- social-learning: individual’s unique exp. in a particular family, school, or peer group
- habits learned early in life may be hard to break
- sociocultural: look at larger social aggregates —> Asians, Canadians, Hispanics …
- lean toward the assumption that norms (clothes) can change relatively quickly
—> they all emphasise the objective environment
- Social-cognitive perspective: theoretical viewpoint that focuses on the mental processes
involved in paying attention to, interpreting, and remembering social experiences
- emphasising subjective interpretations
- social information processing is selective —> sometimes mind is on autopilot
- ppl tend to process social information in a way that tends to flatter themselves —>
“from chumps to champs”
—> combining and integrate different approaches to be able to see the full picture
• Basic principles:
- social behaviour is goal-based —> goals are hierarchical
- surface level: day-to-day goals
- broader level: longer-term goals
- broadest level: fundamental motives
2
, - social behaviour is a continuing interaction between person and situation
- (seek social information, strive for status, act aggressive & self-protective —> ultimate end of
reproducing our genes)
- —> Goals in Interaction
• The Person:
- person: features or characteristics that individuals carry into social situations
- Knowledge: beliefs, explanations, memory
- exemplar: knowledge of a specific episode, event, or individual
- schema: represents generalised info
- Feelings: attitudes, emotions, mood, physiology
- —> both have an influence on how a situation is interpreted
- Self-concept: knowledge about oneself
- Self-esteem: how valued the self is
- strongly motivated—> maintain high level
- motivates how we interpret situations and which situations we choose to enter
• social comparison
• reflected appraisal process
• self-perception process
• self-regulation
• self-presentation
- Multiple selves: actual self, ideal self, collective self
- depends on the situation
• The Situation:
- situation: environmental events or circumstances outside the person
- ppl underestimate the influence of the situation on people’s behaviour, and their own
behaviour
- Milgram experiment
- The bystander effect (Darley & Latané):
- Diffusion of responsibility
- Pluralistic ignorance
- Overjustification effect: underestimating the effect of rewards (Lepper et al.,)
- Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error): underestimating the role of the
situation (Leonard Nimoy: I am not Spock —> I am Spock)
• Person-Situation Interaction:
- neither the person nor the situation is a fixed entity
- different social situations trigger different goals (behaviour)
- not everyone react the same way in a situation
- person-situation fit: refers to the extent to which a person and a situation are compatible
- people choose situations ( and vice versa)
- people change the situation ( and vice versa)
- socialisation: process through which a culture teaches its members about its beliefs,
customs, habits & language
- affordances: an opportunity or threat provided by a situation
- descriptive norms: a norm that defines what is commonly done in a situation
- pluralistic ignorance: the phenomenon in which ppl in a group misperceive the beliefs of
others because everyone acts inconsistently with their beliefs
3
, —-> Situation and person mutually shape and choose one another in a continuing cycle
• Positive Psychology:
- study of the factors leading to positive emotions, virtuous behaviours, and optimal performance
in people and groups
• How psychologists study social behaviour:
- hypothesis: a researcher’s prediction about what he or she will find
- descriptive method: measure/ record behaviour, thoughts, feelings in their natural state
- experimental method: used to uncover the causes of behaviour by systematically varying
some aspect of the situation
- counterfactual thinking: what might have been
- olympic games ( Medvec, Madey & Gilovich)
- at the end of an experiment: debriefing
4
