Module 1 - Introducing Social Psychology PDF

Module 1 - Introducing Social Psychology Site: New Era University Virtual Learning Environment Printed by: AUGUSTO M. RAMOS Course: PSY315-18 - Social Psychology Date: Thursday, 19 September 2024, 6:23 PM Book: Module...

Module 1 - Introducing Social Psychology Site: New Era University Virtual Learning Environment Printed by: AUGUSTO M. RAMOS Course: PSY315-18 - Social Psychology Date: Thursday, 19 September 2024, 6:23 PM Book: Module 1 - Introducing Social Psychology  Table of contents 1. Introduction/Overview 2. Learning Outcomes 3. Lesson 1: Defining Social Psychology 3.1. How do social psychologists define their discipline? 3.2. The Core Characteristics of Social Psychology 4. Lesson 2: The Unique Perspective of Social Psychology 5. Lesson 3 A Brief History of Social Psychology 6. Lesson 4 Social Psychology Today  1. Introduction/Overview 008 Research Paper Social Psychology Topics Selection Custom Influence Essay Questions Exam And20 ~ Museumlegs “We cannot live for ourselves alone for our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads”, said by the novelist Herman Melville. Social psychologists study those connections by scientifically exploring how we think about, influence, and relate to one another. Social psychology will help us understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, implied presence of other human beings (Gordon Allport, 1954). With “imagined presence” Allport referred to the influence of reference persons (e.g. parents) whose expectations might influence our behavior. With the implied presence, our behavior is shaped by social roles and cultural norms.  2. Learning Outcomes At the end of the module, the students should be able to: understand the discipline of social psychology know the importance of the scientific method to social psychology familiarize some concept about social psychology.  3. Lesson 1: Defining Social Psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people: parents, friends, employers, teachers, strangers— indeed, by the entire social situation (Allport, 1985). When we think of social influence, the kinds of examples that readily come to mind are direct attempts at persuasion, whereby one person deliberately tries to change another person’s behavior or attitude. This is what happens when advertisers use sophisticated techniques to persuade us to buy a particular brand of toothpaste, or when our friends try to get us to do something we don’t really want to do (“Come on, have another beer—everyone is doing it”), or when the schoolyard bully uses force or threats to get smaller kids to part with their lunch money. Gordon Willard Allport (Harvard University Archives, HUP Allport, G. (14), photo by Ricci Bertocci) Reference:https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/social-psychology-then-and-now According to Allport: Imagined presence- the influence of reference persons (e.g., our parents) whose expectations might influence our behavior Implied presence- much of our behavior is shaped by social roles and cultural norms. The task of the psychologist is to try to understand and predict human behavior. Different kinds of psychologists go about this task in different ways, and we want to show you how social psychologists do it. The study of direct attempts at social influence is a major part of social psychology and will be discussed in our chapters on conformity, attitudes, and group processes. To the social psychologist, however, social influence is broader than attempts by one person to change another person’s behavior. It includes our thoughts and feelings as well as our overt acts, and takes many forms other than deliberate attempts at persuasion. We are often influenced merely by the presence of other people, including perfect strangers who are not interacting with us. Other people don’t even have to be present: We are governed by the imaginary approval or disapproval of our parents, friends, and teachers and by how we expect others to react to us. Sometimes these influences conflict with one another, and social psychologists are especially interested in what happens in the mind of an individual when they do.  3.1. How do social psychologists define their discipline? Social psychology is everybody’s business. For centuries, philosophers, novelists, and poets have observed and commented on social behavior. Every day, people observe, interpret, and influence other’s actions. So, does social psychology simply formalize what folks already know? Social psychologist Paul Lazarsfeld (1949) reviewed studies on American World War II soldiers and offered a sample with interpretive comments: 1. Better educated soldiers adjusted less easily than did less educated soldiers. (Intellectuals are less prepared for battle stresses than were street-smart people). 2. Southern soldiers coped better with the hot south Sea Island climate than did Northern soldiers. (Southerners are more accustomed to hot weather). 3. White low-ranking soldiers were more eager for promotion than were Black low-ranking soldiers. (Years of oppression take a toll on achievement motivation). 4. Southern Blacks preferred Southern to Northern White officers. (Southern officers were more experienced and skilled in interacting with blacks). As you read those findings, did you agree that they were basically common sense? If so, you may be surprised to learn that Lazarsfeld went on to say, “Every one of these statements is the direct opposite of what was actually found”. In reality, the studies found that less educated soldiers adapted more poorly. Southerners were not more likely than Northerners to adjust to a tropical climate. Blacks were more eager than Whites for promotion, and so forth. If we had mentioned the actual results of the investigation first, the reader would have labeled those “obvious” also”. One problem with common sense is that we invoke it after we know the facts. Events are far more “obvious” and predictable in hindsight than beforehand. Experiments reveal that when people learn the outcome of an experiment, that outcome suddenly seems unsurprising – much less surprising than it is to people who are simply told about the experimental procedure and the possible outcomes (Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977). After more than 800 investigations of this tendency to retrofit our prior expectations, hindsight bias (also known as I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon) has become one of psychology’s best- established phenomena (Roese & Vohs, 2012). Stockpile of Proverbs We can draw on our stockpile of proverbs to make almost any result seem to make sense. If a social psychologist reports that separation intensifies romantic attraction, “John Q. Public responds, “You get paid for this? Everybody knows that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’”. Should it turn out that separation weakens attraction, John will say, “My grandmother could have told you, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’”. Karl Teigan (1986) must have had a few chuckles when he asked his students from University of Leicester (England) to evaluate actual proverbs and their opposites. When given the proverb “Fear is stronger than love”, most rated it as true. But so did students who were given its reversed form, “Love is stronger than fear”. Likewise, the genuine proverb. The I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon can have unfortunate consequences. It is conducive to arrogance – an overestimation of our own intellectual powers. Moreover, because outcomes seem as if they should have been foreseeable, we are more likely to blame decision makers for what are in retrospect “obvious” bad choices than to praise them for good choices, which also seem “obvious”. What do we conclude – that common sense is usually wrong? Sometimes it is. At other times, conventional wisdom is right – or it falls on both sides of an issue: Does happiness come from knowing the truth, or from preserving illusions? From being with others, or form living in peaceful solitude? Opinions are a dime a dozen. No matter what we find, there will be someone who foresaw it. But which of the many competing ideas best fit reality? Research can specify the circumstances under which common-sense truism is valid. The point is not that common sense is predictably wrong. Rather, common sense usually is right – after the fact. We therefore easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we know and knew more than we do and did. And that is precisely why we need science to help us sift reality from illusion and genuine predictions from easy hindsight.  3.2. The Core Characteristics of Social Psychology The Use of Scientific Methods Experiment- a method in which the researcher deliberately introduces some change into a setting to examine the consequences of that change. Field Experiment- a true randomized experiment conducted in a natural setting. Meaning, an experiment is done in the every day (i.e. real life) environment of the participants. The experimenter still manipulates the independent variable, but in a real-life setting (so cannot really control extraneous variables). Laboratory Experiment- a study, conducted in the laboratory, in which the researcher deliberately introduces some change into a setting, while holding all other factors constant, to examine the consequences of that change. Laboratory not necessarily mean the physical laboratory but a place the researcher decided to conduct the experiment at what time, with which participants, in what circumstances, and using a standardized procedure. The use of scientific methods is not a characteristic that allows one to distinguish social psychology from other social sciences, as by definition all social sciences use methods they consider scientific, and for many of them, experiments are the method of choice. A more distinctive characteristic introduced by Allport is the fact that social psychology is concerned with social influence, and that it studies the impact of others on individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. A final characteristic of social psychology emphasized in Allport’s definition is that social psychologists study the impact that the implied or actual presence of others has on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals. Thus, even when we study social groups, we examine the impact groups have on the individual group members. Social psychology must not be placed in contradistinction to the psychology of the individual; it is a part of the psychology of the individual, whose behavior it studies in relation to that sector of his environment comprised by his fellows’ (F. Allport, 1924, p. 4). The emphasis on the individual does not deny the importance of the social context as a determinant of individual behavior, but it rejects the existence of group consciousness or a collective mind as separate from the minds of the individuals who comprise the group.  4. Lesson 2: The Unique Perspective of Social Psychology A study conducted at a small elite college in the United States and announced as an experiment on perception was a simple experiment in visual discrimination in which the experimenter probably wanted to find out how accurately participants could differentiate between lines of different lengths and where the threshold lay at which people would begin to make mistakes. The experimental sessions were held in a small classroom and eight participants attended each of the sessions. The participants, who were seated in two rows of four, were presented with sets of four lines of different length, a standard line, and three comparison lines. Their task consisted of the comparison of the standard line with the three other lines, one of which was equal to the standard line. The comparison lines were numbered from 1 to 3, and the participants stated their judgments by calling out one of the numbers (see Figure on page 7, Introduction to Social Psychology) From this experiment, one feature does not fit with standard procedures in perception experiments – namely that participants judged these lines in groups. This would not have been a problem if the experimenter ensured that judgments were written down, to exclude the possibility that participants would be aware of each others’ judgments. But in the present experiment, participants were asked to call out their judgments to the experimenter. This appears to be a serious methodological fault. Any determination of a difference threshold based on such data would be flawed because participants might have been influenced by the earlier judgments that they overheard. What differentiates social psychology from related disciplines such as personality psychology and sociology? Personality psychologists - addresses the question of individual differences as determinants of conformity and interested to know how these individual differences came about. - Are mainly interested in studying how particular traits are acquired and how these traits influence the individual’s behavior Social Psychologists - study the impact of the social situation on individual behavior - are typically interested in personality variables as moderators. They look for the extent to which the impact of an independent variable on a dependent variable is qualified by, or depends on, the level of an individual’s score on a personality measure. - emphasize the power of strong social situations to relegate personality influences to the background Three determinants of individual behavior: 1) biological constitution of individuals 2) acquired traits 3) the social and physical context Sociologist - study human behavior, interaction, and organization - they observe the activity of social, religious, political, and economic groups, organizations, and institutions - they examine the effect of social influences, including organizations and institutions, on different individuals and groups - they also trace the origin and growth of these groups and interactions. For example, they may research the impact of a new law or policy on a specific demographic.  5. Lesson 3 A Brief History of Social Psychology YEAR 1908 -the year when the first two textbooks of social psychology were published, one by a sociologist (Ross, 1908), the other by a psychologist (McDougall, 1908) YEAR 1898 - date of (presumably) the first social-psychological experiment, a a study published by Norman Triplett. - One of Triplett’s experiments in which schoolchildren performed a simple task (turning a fishing reel) either alone or in competition with another participant (see Research Close-Up 1.1, page 10), usually cited as demonstrating the effects of what later became social facilitation, the phenomenon whereby the performance of simple tasks is facilitated by the presence of an audience or of others working on the same task - Although the study by Triplett (1898; reprinted in Smith & Haslam, 2012) had the elegance and the clarity that became the hallmark of experimentation in social psychology, its historical significance has been challenged by scholars who doubted whether it really was the first social psychological experiment. LEADER IN THE FIELD Floyd Henry Allport (1890-1978) - The elder brother of Gordon Allport who made several major contributions towards defining the field of social psychology - According to him, social behavior as the subject of social psychology is defined as ‘behavior in which the responses either serve as social stimuli or evoked by social stimuli’ - Postulated that social psychology ‘is part of the psychology of the individual, whose behavior it studies in relation to that sector of the environment comprised by his fellows’ SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY DURING THE FIRST HALF OF 20TH CENTURY Handbook of Social Psychology by Carl Murchison (1935) - one of the doubtful milestone in the field of Social Psychology before WWII because this handbook covers many topics which nobody would consider social-psychological today, such as ‘Population behavior of bacteria’ or the ‘Social history of the yellow man’. - Three other significant events during this early period were: o the publication by Thurstone (1928) of a paper with the provocative title ‘Attitudes can be measured’ o The Psychology of Social Norms by Sherif in 1936, and Newcomb’s (1943) o Personality and Social Change, a study of attitude formation in the student community of Bennington College. LEADER IN THE FIELD Theodore Newcomb (1903-1984) - his Bennington study of the change in attitudes that these young women underwent during their studies became a classic - this study captured the interplay between individual and group processes and thus supported one of the central assumptions of social psychology - his study became a classic because it illustrates how individual beliefs and attitudes can be shaped by the group context, and thus supports one of the basic assumptions of social psychology. DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE HITLER REGIME Adolf Hitler - one person who most furthered the development of social psychology according to Catwright (1979) - his actions had an important impact on the development of social psychology in the US through the impact of army propaganda films on the morale of their soldiers base on the surveys and experiments of the Information and Education Branch of the US Army LEADER IN THE FIELD 1. Carl Iver Hovland (1912-1961) - Originally a learning theorist who became fascinated by the experimental study of the determinants of attitude change. - The work he directed during his army years on experiments in mass communication was eventually published as one of the volumes of the American Soldier series under the editorship of the sociologist Stouffer (Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949). - Even when he became fascinated by persuasion and attitude change during his wartime leave from Yale in the period from 1942 to 1945, he used learning theory principles as a theoretical perspective. - The research conducted there by Hovland and 30 students and co-workers over a 15-year period established the field of attitude change research as we know it today (Shepard, 1998). 2. Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) - considered by many to be the most charismatic psychologist of his generation (Marrow, 1969). - From the three factors that describe the impact of researchers those days, Lewin did not score all that well on a great number of publications and the development of a theory that stimulated a great deal of research. - He published only a few empirical studies in social psychology, wherein the most well known are the study of autocratic and democratic leadership, which initiated interest in the impact of leadership styles on group atmosphere and performance. - He adopted the field theory which provided a framework for looking at the forces that influence the individual in a social situation; the individual as an element in a larger system of social forces. - he became influential for his belief that psychological events must be explained in psychological terms and that central processes in the 'life space' or psychological field of the individual such as cognition, motivation, and goals are the proper focus of the investigation - Two characteristics of Lewin's approach to Social Psychology: a. problem was only worth studying if addressing it would make a difference with regard to actual problems in the world b. he insisted on studying such problems experimentally and on creating in the laboratory powerful situations that made a big difference 3. Leon Festinger (1919-1990) -he published his first theoretical paper in social psychology on informal social communication and the process, via social comparison, of establishing the correctness of one’s beliefs (1950) - he then published the work for which he is best known, his theory of cognitive dissonance (1957) which marked the end of his interest in social psychology and shifted, first to the visual system and perception, then to archaeology and the history of religion. - his theory of cognitive dissonance dictated the research agenda in social psychology during the 1960s and 1970s 4. Fritz Heider - he stimulated two of the theoretical traditions which dominated social psychology during the second half of the last century: a. consistency theories - a group of theories (see balance theory, cognitive dissonance theory) proposing that people prefer congruence or consistency among their various cognitions, especially among their beliefs, values, and attitudes. b. attribution theories - a group of theories about how individuals manage to infer the ‘causes’ underlying the behavior of others, or even their own behavior. - his paper on balance theory in 1946, Heider developed the notion central to consistency theories that inconsistency between our attitudes and beliefs creates tension in our cognitive system and a tendency to establish consistency.  6. Lesson 4 Social Psychology Today The field has grown at an exponential rate. There are now chairs in social psychology at practically all major universities in the United States, in Europe, and in Australasia, and social psychologists number in the thousands rather than a few hundreds. Social psychology has also become an essential part of the psychology curriculum in these countries. Not surprisingly, social psychology has also changed over these decades. Major scientific perspectives, such as consistency theory or attribution theory, have faded and new perspectives, such as social cognition, evolutionary social psychology and social neuroscience, have emerged. Jones (1998) colourfully described these changing trends in research as ‘band wagons and sinking ships’. Social Cognition- an application of principles of cognitive psychology to the area of social psychology Evolutionary social psychology- is an application of evolutionary theory to social psychology. Evolutionary theory explains human behaviors, including differences in partner preference according to gender, from their reproductive value, that is, their value in producing offspring in our evolutionary past. Evolutionary psychology makes the basic assumption that if a given behavior is (1) at least partly genetically determined and (2) increases the probability that an individual will produce offspring, the gene that determines this behavior will become more prevalent in the gene pool of future generations. Social neuroscience- is the study of the neural correlates of social psychological phenomena. Two major approaches used by social neuroscience: a. brain mapping - studies (e.g. by functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI; see Figure 1.6a) attempt to identify the neural substrates of specific psychological processes. b. psychological hypothesis testing- uses the results of brain mapping to test hypotheses about psychological variables. Example: A social psychologist, who studies intergroup prejudice might hypothesize that implicit racial bias is rooted in mechanisms of basic classical fear conditioning. To test this hypothesis, one might measure brain activity in the amygdala – a structure implicated in fear conditioning in many studies – while a participant completes a behavioral measure of implicit racial bias. In this case, the construct validity of the neural measure of fear conditioning... is already reasonably established... and the question concerns not the meaning of brain activation, but experimental effects among psychological variables’ (Amodio, 2010, pp. 699–700).