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What is Social Psychology?
Chapter 1 What is Social Psychology? Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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What Is Social Psychology?
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Defining Social Psychology
The scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context Each part of this definition needs to be examined closely: Scientific study How individuals think, feel, and behave A social context Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Scientific Study Social psychology applies the scientific method to the study of the human condition The scientific method involves: Systematic observation Description Measurement Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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How Individuals Think, Feel, and Behave
Social psychology concerns a diverse set of topics Private, even nonconscious beliefs and attitudes Emotions Public behaviors The focus is on the psychology of individual Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Context Looks at the social nature of individuals
But, the “socialness” of social psychology varies Relevant when thoughts, feelings, or behaviors either (1) concern other people, or (2) are influenced by other people “Other people” do not have to be real or present Even the implied or imagined presence of others can have important effects on individuals Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychological Questions and Applications
Table 1.1 Examples of Social Psychological Questions Social Perception and Social Influence Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychological Questions and Applications (cont'd.)
Table 1.1 Examples of Social Psychological Questions Social Interaction and Applying Social Psychology Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology and Sociology
How are they different? Sociology tends to focus on the group Social psychology tends to focus on the individual How do the fields intersect? Often share the same training and publish in the same journals Both can help in understanding societal and immediate factors that influence behavior Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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The Power of the Social Context: A Social Psychology Experiment
Figure 1.1. Social Belonging and GPA Some students early in their first semester at an engineering school were given information designed to reduce their doubts about fitting in and belonging at their school, and other students were not given this information. The bars on the left represent the average first-year grades of the men (blue) and women (red) who did not receive the information about belonging. Women’s average first-year grades were far worse than the men’s in this no-treatment condition. The bars on the right illustrate that the women’s underperformance was completely eliminated if they received the information designed to reduce their uncertainty about belonging. Adapted from Walton et al., © Cengage Learning® Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology and Related Fields: Distinctions and Intersections
Table 1.2 Distinctions Between Social Psychology and Related Fields: The Case of Research on Prejudice Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. 11
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Social Psychology and Clinical Psychology
How are they different? Clinical psychologists seek to understand and treat people with psychological difficulties or disorders Social psychologists, instead, focus on the more typical ways in which individuals think, feel, behave, and influence each other Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology and Clinical Psychology (cont'd.)
How do the fields intersect? Numerous ways – for example, both may address how people cope with anxiety or pressure in social situations; how people perceive or act toward others; or how bullying or stereotyping can affect health Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology and Personality Psychology
How are they different? Personality psychologists are interested in differences between individuals Social psychologists are interested in how social factors affect most individuals How do the fields intersect? Closely linked; complementing each other Both may examine how situational factors interact with individual differences Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology and Cognitive Psychology
How are they different? Cognitive psychologists study mental processes such as thinking, learning, remembering, and reasoning Social psychologists are interested in these processes more specifically in a social context How do the fields intersect? Closely connected Social cognition has become an important area within social psychology Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology and Common Sense
The “knew-it-all-along” phenomenon Common sense seems to explain many social psychological findings after the fact But common sense is sometimes wildly inaccurate, and often misleading in its simplicity Unlike common sense, social psychology uses the scientific method to put its theories to the test Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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A Brief History of Social Psychology
Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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The Birth and Infancy of Social Psychology: 1880s – 1920s
Who was the founder of social psychology? First three social psychology textbooks were by William McDougall (1908), Edward Ross (1908), and Floyd Allport (1924) These books helped establish social psychology as the discipline it is today Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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A Call to Action: 1930s – 1950s Who had the most dramatic impact on social psychology? Quite possibly Adolf Hitler! Resulted in search for answers to social psychological questions Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues formed in 1936 Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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A Call to Action: 1930s – 1950s (cont'd.)
Sherif’s (1936) – groundbreaking experimental research on social influence Kurt Lewin, another important contributor to field Behavior is a function of the interaction between person and environment, which became known as the interactionist perspective. Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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A Call to Action: 1930s – 1950s (cont'd.)
Government work in WWII – protect soldiers from the enemy’s propaganda, persuade citizens to support the war effort, and select officers for various positions WWII also led to examining the nature of prejudice, aggression, and conformity Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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A Call to Action: 1930s – 1950s (cont'd.)
Gordon Allport – published The Nature of Prejudice (1953) Solomon Asch – research on conformity Leon Festinger – research on social comparison Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Confidence and Crisis: 1960s - Mid-1970s
Milgram – famous obedience experiments Period of expansion and enthusiasm Also a time of crisis and heated debate Strong reactions to the laboratory experiment as the dominant research method Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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An Era of Pluralism: Mid-1970s – 2000s
“Crisis” led to a stronger discipline More rigorous ethical standards More stringent procedures to guard against bias More attention to possible cross-cultural differences Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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An Era of Pluralism: Mid-1970s – 2000s (cont'd.)
Emergence of pluralism Acceptance of many methods of investigation in addition to the laboratory experiment Increased interest in processes relevant to cognitive psychology, leading to the creation of social cognition as a subfield Development of international and multicultural perspectives Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology Today
What is Trending Now? Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Integration of Emotion, Motivation, and Cognition
“Cold” perspective – the role of cognition in explaining social psychological issues “Hot” perspective – emotion and motivation as determinants of thoughts and actions Interest today in integrating both Growing interest in distinguishing between automatic and controllable processes, and understanding their relationship Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Genetic and Evolutionary Perspectives
Behavioral genetics Examines the effects of genes on behavior Evolutionary psychology Uses the principles of evolution to understand human behavior Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Cultural Perspectives
Defining “culture” System of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions, and practices shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next Cross-cultural research Used to evaluate the universal generality or cultural specificity of theories and findings Multicultural research Examines racial and ethnic groups within cultures Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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Motivated by Mom? A Cultural Difference
Figure 1.2 Japanese or European-Canadian Motivated by Mom? A Cultural Difference Asian-American and European-American high-school students attempted a difficult letter- unscrambling task after having previously done poorly on it. The students worked equally hard on the task if they first were asked to think about themselves (the two bars on the right), but the Asian-American students worked harder than the European-American if they were first asked to think about their mothers (the two bars on the left). Based on Fu & Markus, © Cengage Learning® Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. 30
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Behavioral Economics, Political and Moral Issues, and Other Approaches
How psychology, particularly social and cognitive psychology, relates to economic decision making Politics and moral philosophy Brings together a mix of social psychology, political science, philosophy, and neuroscience Environmental studies, public health, and related areas Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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The Social Brain and Body
Social neuroscience Study of the relationship between neural and social processes Embodied cognition Focuses on the close links between our minds and the positioning, experiences, and actions of our bodies People’s perceptions and judgments reflect and can influence their bodily experiences Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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New Technologies and the Online World
Noninvasive procedures allow researchers to study the interplay of the brain and discrete thoughts, feelings, and behaviors Positron emission tomography (PET) Event-related potential (ERP) Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Virtual reality technology Online communication Copyright © 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.
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