Introduction to Social Psychology

Social Psychology Introduction

• Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think, influence, and relate to each other.
• Social thinking involves how individuals perceive themselves and others in social situations. (e.g., "I don't fit for this job.")
• Social influence explores how others' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors shape individuals. (e.g., "Everyone is staying late, so I should too.")
• Social relations focus on the connections and bonds people feel toward others (e.g., social environment).
• Social psychology compares to sociology (large groups/institutions) and personality psychology (individual traits).

Social Behaviors

• Social behaviors change based on how situations are interpreted. (e.g., friend not saying hi -> interpreted as anger -> apology).
• Social beliefs affect our perceptions of reality, these beliefs can impact outcomes. (e.g., "I believe I'll do bad, and therefore I will do bad").
• Social intuitions are gut feelings, often powerful but sometimes flawed.
• Social intuitions are often helpful for rapid response (e.g., COVID-19 response).
• Personal attitudes affect behaviors: (e.g., if I think smoking is bad I won't smoke).

Social Psychology's Methods

• Social neuroscience integrates biological and social perspectives to understand social and emotional behaviors.
• Social psychology faces criticism for being trivial/dangerous. (Trivial – stating obvious; Dangerous – possible manipulation)
• Common sense versus social psychology: common sense thinking might occur after the fact, whereas social psychology aims to anticipate and understand social situations and behaviors.
• Theories are integrated explanations of events/predictions.
• Hypotheses are testable propositions about the relationship between events.
• Correlation vs. causation: Correlation doesn't imply causation.
• Elements of research design: overall plan for a study (e.g., correlational, experimental), specific methods (interviews, surveys).
• Correlational study: examines associations between variables (observational); experimental study: manipulates variable.

Research Design and Ethics

• Response bias (participants answering untruthfully).
• Wording biases (bad question wording).
• Experimental designs: manipulate independent variables, and measure dependent variables, random assignment.
• Ethics for social psychology: experiments must operate between harmless and risky.
• Minimizing harm, informed consent from participants.
• Generalizing laboratory findings to real life is sometimes challenging.