PL3105 Lecture 1 PDF

Lecture 1 Social psychology is an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others Use discussion chat for lectures to ask questions → at least 5 times throughout the semester (lecture + t...

Lecture 1 Social psychology is an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others Use discussion chat for lectures to ask questions → at least 5 times throughout the semester (lecture + tutorial) → ⅕ point already Group presentation: create movies, documentary, variety shows to present it in a fun way, convey the paper in the most engaging way Participant Artifacts Demand characteristics: know what the researcher wants and change their behaviour → spoils the experiment Evaluation apprehension: participants afraid of people viewing them negatively WEIRD = Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic → tend to generalise, but this is only a small population, choose represented participants Limited Generalizability: Many psychological studies use samples from WEIRD populations, which can limit the generalizability of findings to other cultural or socioeconomic groups. This means that research conclusions based on WEIRD samples may not apply to people from non-WEIRD backgrounds. Cultural Bias: The focus on WEIRD populations can lead to cultural biases in psychological theories and models, which might not account for diverse ways of thinking, behaving, and perceiving the world found in other cultures. Syllabus Lecture 1 The core challenge of social psychology is to balance internal and external validity Internal validity the degree to which an experiment accurately measures what it claims to measure within the controlled setting. High internal validity means that the experiment is well-constructed, with clear cause-and-effect relationships, and confounding variables are minimised - often requires tightly controlled conditions, which can make the experiment less realistic and reduce external validity External validity refers to the extent to which the findings of an experiment can be generalised to real-world settings, different populations, and other situations. Evaluation apprehension A human tendency to try to look better/fear being evaluated - The anxiety that they feel - More about participants’ internal emotional state - Altering their behaviour due to anxiety about how they will be judged or evaluated Demand characteristics cues or clues in an experimental setting that might influence participants to behave in ways they believe are expected or desired by the experimenter. - These characteristics can skew the results of an experiment - Provide socially acceptable answers, or predict what the experimenter is looking - Stem from participants’ understanding of the aims or goals of the study Milgram experiment - Administering electric shocks Chapter 1 Folk wisdom the collective knowledge, beliefs, and practices that are passed down through generations within a culture or community. This wisdom is often rooted in everyday experiences, observations, and oral traditions rather than formal scientific inquiry. But social psychologists want to know which of the many possible explanations is the most likely Gestalt psychology we should study the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds (the gestalt, or whole) rather than the way in which the objective, physical attributes of the object combine - Holistic perception of a group in social setting - We don't just analyse individual actions; we consider the context and the bigger picture when understanding social situations. Construal The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world 2 basic human motives: 1. Self esteem motive: the need to feel good about ourselves → might distort perception to protect self esteem 2. Social cognition: the need to be accurate. The goal of social psychology is to identify psychological properties that make almost everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture. - Importance of cross-cultural research Fundamental attribution error The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors FAE: Focuses on the general mistake of not considering situational factors enough, leading to over-attribution to the person’s character. Correspondent Bias: View behaviour due to the disposition (characteristics), discount situational factors Naive realism The conviction that we perceive things “as they really are,” underestimating how much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see - E.g. letting their beliefs colour their opinion → if other ppl see an opinion different from us, THEY are biased - the need to feel good about our decisions can fly in the face of the need to be accurate, and can have catastrophic consequences Self-esteem people’s evaluation of their own self worth, the extent to which they view themselves as decent, good and competent - human beings are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by justifying their behaviour, and that under certain specifiable conditions, this leads them to do things that at first glance might seem surprising or paradoxical. (to fit in) - Self esteem does have negatives → in-group favouritism (prejudice, discrimination) Social Cognition How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions Chapter 2 - Research Hindsight Bias The tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it ­before it occurred - Look for reasons why that event has occurred, even if we were unsure at the start Researchers base off previous research, older theories can still be refined Ethnography The method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have Note: cognitive dissonance, e.g. of the world ending but didn't and she believe that god is sparing earth Field Experiments Experiments conducted in natural settings rather than in the laboratory → increase external validity Meta-Analysis A statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable → very reliable Social psychologists have the dilemma of ensuring internal validity but making it generalisable to other situations and people Basic research to find the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do, purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity Applied research is geared toward solving a particular social problem. Lecture 2 - The Self Mirror recognition test Somatoparaphrenia a delusional belief whereby a patient feels that a paralyzed limb does not belong to his body → cannot recognise only the left side of the body Try to insert a thought into people’s minds Self-Awareness Theory The idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behaviour to their internal standards and values - If they doing something bad, then they feel bad - How to change? → change behaviour, or flee Subjective self awareness Interacting with the world as the subject, not thinking about yourself much - Attention is directed outward Objective self awareness You are an object in your social perception, you are aware of yourself → how others see me, and i see myself - Highly aware of themselves and their thoughts Egocentric self Self enhancement: people overestimate themselves and their abilities → the tendency to maintain self esteem - People generally want to view themselves in a positive light → maintaining and boosting their self esteem Self-reference effect: People remember things better when it is related to the self Self-serving bias: seeing one's self with an overly positive view in order to enhance or maintain self-confidence and esteem Spotlight effect: people don’t really notice you as much as you think Chapter 5 - The Self Self-Concept The overall set of beliefs that people have about their personal attributes - Children’s self concept is concrete - As we get older → become psychological states Independent view of the self - Defining yourself based on your own thoughts , feelings and actions AND NOT OTHERS Interdependent view of the self - r/s to other people, behaviour is determined by the thoughts, actions and feelings of others Self perception theory - When feelings are ambiguous, look at behaviour and situation to determine  - Schachter-Singer two factor theory of emotion - people first experience physiological arousal and then seek an appropriate explanation for it → heart palpitations, then ask yourself whether you like the person or not - Bridge example - Emotions are made by the self-perception process Overjustification effect - an external incentive, like a reward, reduces a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task they already enjoy → intrinsic decreases overtime Not all rewards are bad How the agent perceive the reward to be → what is the reward signalling - ‘Person’ is trying to control me Task-Contingent Rewards - Rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well the task is done Performance-Contingent Rewards - Rewards that are based on how well we perform a task Social Comparison Theory - The idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people Social Tuning - The process whereby people adopt another person’s attitudes - Can happen unconsciously Looking glass self - How we believe others perceive us Implementation Intentions - People’s specific plans about where, when, and how they will fulfil a goal and avoid temptations Ego depletion - impairs the ability to control oneself later on Impression Management - People try to get others to see them as they want to be seen IM strategies Ingratiation - Bootlicking, often to a higher status but can have good connotations Self-handicapping - The strategy whereby people create obstacles and excuses for themselves so that if they do poorly on a task, they can avoid blaming themselves - E.g. Procrastination → link to lack of prep (behavioural self-handicapping) - Reported self-handicapping → devise ready-made excuses in case they fail → but may believe these excuses Chapter 4 - Social Perception The study of how we form impressions and draw inferences of people and WHY they behave the way they do - Use observable behaviour, subtle cues and quick impressions Encode - express Decode - interpret The six universal emotions, which are widely recognized across different cultures. (Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Anger, Fear, Disgust) Affect blends Facial expressions in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion - Makes decoding difficult - Same expression can have different meanings in different contexts Display Rules Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviours are appropriate to display - E.g. men cannot cry, but woman can Emblems Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture, usually having direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign - But each culture has their own, and others might not understand In some instances, as with the expression of major emotions, the conclusions people draw from these bits of social data are fairly consistent across cultures. In other instances, as with eye contact, personal distance, and gestures, the same nonverbal information is interpreted differently by people in different parts of the world. First impressions First impressions are formed in less in 100 milliseconds Thin slicing Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person’s personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behaviour → actually useful → based on first impressions When people are unsure about the nature of the social world, they use schemas to fill the gaps in. Schema Mental shortcut; providing additional info Primacy Effect When it comes to forming impressions, the first traits we perceive in others influence how we view information that we learn about them later → bad traits being told first, impression is bad Belief Perseverance The tendency to stick with an initial judgement even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider - First impressions are hard to remove Attribution Attribution theory: we try to determine why people do what they do in order to uncover the feelings and traits that are behind their actions Internal/Dispositional The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality External/Situational The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in, with the assumption that most people would respond the same way in that situation Covariation Model note the pattern between when the behaviour occurs and the presence or absence of possible causal factors - To decide whether a behaviour was caused by internal (dispositional) factors or by external (situational) factors - consistency, distinctiveness and consensus - People usually use highlighted ones - Usually don't have complete information Fundamental Attribution Error The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s behaviour results from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors Perceptual Salience what we notice seems like the reasonable and logical cause of the observed behaviour, as we cannot see the situation Two-Step Attribution Process Analysing another person’s behaviour first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behaviour - WHY? > first step occurs quickly, second step requires time and effort Self-Serving Attributions Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors Just-World Belief (self–serving) A defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people - reassure ourselves that we will remain immune from such tragedy  - E.g. victim blaming Bias Blind Spot The tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are Cultural differences - North American and some other Western cultures stress individual autonomy - East Asian cultures tend to stress group autonomy → more holistic thinking Cross-cultural differences in social perception do not appear to be inborn; rather, we arrive in this world with a flexibility of thinking style that is moulded over time by cultural (and other) influences. Lecture 3 Counter-attitudinal behaviour → internal justification Chapter 6 - Cognitive Dissonance The discomfort that people feel when they behave in ways that threaten their self-esteem Reducing dissonance 1. By changing our behaviour to bring it in line with the dissonant cognition. 2. By attempting to justify our behaviour through changing one of the dissonant cognitions. → buying plastic is not a big deal 3. By attempting to justify our behaviour by adding new cognitions Understanding dissonance: human thinking are not rational, but rationalising - Rationalising their actions to fit their beliefs Consequences 1. Distorting likes and dislikes - Convincing oneself that the decision they picked is better than the other one Post-decision Dissonance Dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives 2. Permanence of the decision - The tougher the decision, the more dissonance one experience - The more permanent and irrevocable the decision, the stronger is the need to reduce dissonance  3. Creating the illusion of irrevocability - Increases dissonance, increases the motivation to reduce it Lowballing An unscrupulous strategy whereby a salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a low cost, subsequently claims it was an error, and then raises the price; frequently, the customer will agree to make the purchase at the inflated price Why it works 1. Commitment 2. Anticipation 3. Already here (effort) → other places will only be slightly higher Justification of Effort The tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain - Rather, if a person chooses to go through a demanding or an unpleasant experience to attain some goal or object, that goal or object becomes more attractive External justification A reason or an explanation for dissonant personal behaviour that resides outside the individual (e.g., to receive a large reward or avoid a severe punishment) - E.g. Dress is ugly, but already altered it and cannot refund Internal justification The reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself (e.g., one’s attitude or behaviour) - E.g. reasons for lying about the dress is minimal, look harder for positive things to reduce dissonance - Has a much more powerful effect on long-term values and behaviours Counterattitudinal Behavior Acting in a way that runs counter to one’s private belief or attitude Counterattitudinal Behaviour - Prejudice attitudes and more - Thinking that they are bad people can justify cruelty (in war) - PTSD: caused by veterans not able to reduce their dissonance of killing children - Justifying immoral acts → if everyone had a chance, they would also cheat in the test Insufficient punishment The child is refraining from doing something he wants to do, and although he does have some justification for not doing it, that doesn’t seem strong enough to explain his compliance - Avoiding temptations Toy experiment - One group harsh punishment, other small punishment - The group with the harsh punishment increased desire to play with the forbidden toy  - However, the group with small punishment had to CHANGE THEIR INTERNAL JUSTIFICATION → decided that the toy was not attractive anymore, and didn’t play with it over time too → because external justification is small, internal justification is higher - If want child to not do something/do something only ONCE → use external - If want child to change their attitudes → small reward/punishment will lead to more permanent effect Hypocrisy Hypocrites judge others more harshly than do people who have not committed the same unethical acts, and they present themselves as being more virtuous and ethical than everyone else - See more evil in others, more righteousness in themselves Hypocrisy Induction Making people aware of the dissonance between what they are doing and what they are preaching to others - Those who made the video experienced the highest dissonance Dissonance across cultures - Children want to be like their peers, elders want children to be like them - This conflict often creates enormous dissonance in the children because they love their parents but do not embrace all of their values. Mills’ experiment In Mills' (1958) experiment, children were given a situation where they had the opportunity to cheat in order to win a prize. The study found that those who cheated were more likely to change their attitudes to become more lenient toward cheating as a way to reduce cognitive dissonance between their actions and their previous beliefs. Conversely, those who resisted the temptation to cheat became more stringent in their attitudes against cheating, reinforcing their decision to not cheat. With a small external justification, participants will do internal justification Self-Affirmation Theory - Not easy to quit smoking/convince oneself The idea that people can reduce threats to their self-esteem by affirming themselves in areas unrelated to the source of the threat - E.g: even though i smoke, I am a great cook - Affirming competence in other aspects UNRELATED to the threat Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory Want strangers or friends to do well? The idea that people experience dissonance when someone close to us outperforms us in an area that is central to our self-esteem. This dissonance can be reduced by becoming less close to the person, changing our behaviour so that we now outperform them, or deciding that the area is not that important to us after all Only when these 3 conditions are met 1. We feel close to another person (strong ties?) 2. He or she is outperforming us in a particular area (domain relevant?) 3. That area is central to our self-esteem Reducing this dissonance 1. Distance ourselves from the person who outperforms us, deciding that he or she is not such a close friend after all  2. Change how relevant the task is to our self-esteem (e.g. guitar not important to us anymore) 3. Change their performance relative to the other person’s - Try to be better - If cannot, try to undermine your friend’s performance so that it is not as good as yours, (e.g. purposely leaving out key details to sabo them) Narcissism The combination of excessive self-love and a lack of empathy toward others Terror Management Theory The theory that holds that self-esteem serves as a buffer, protecting people from terrifying thoughts about their own mortality - People with high self esteem are less troubled about their own mortality → place value of achievements, success → feeling valued → feel more secure about existence - But too much self-esteem → narcissist → not good To recap, having high self-esteem is generally a good thing to the extent that it makes people optimistic about their futures and work harder for what they want in life. There is a form of high self-esteem, however, that is quite problematic—namely, narcissism—which, as we have seen, is extreme high self-regard combined with a lack of empathy toward others. The best combination is to feel good about ourselves but also to be able to learn from our mistakes and to look out for and care about others Overcoming dissonance - Can be counter-productive if it solidifies negative values and behaviours - Be aware of it, consciously pause self-justification to reflect on actions Quiz When does “saying become believing”? a. When you claim to have an opinion that differs from your true beliefs for no strong reason. b. When what you say is what you believe. c. When someone forces you to say something you don’t believe. d. When you’re paid a lot of money to lie. Lecture 4 How do emotions arise 1. Common expressions 2. Biological function 3. Social function  - We feel sad that's why we are crying - Feeling physiological arousal then feel emotions - That’s the essence of emotions - James lange theory James Lange Theory 1. You see a bear. 2. Your heart starts racing, and you begin to tremble. 3. You interpret those bodily reactions and feel the emotion of fear. Cannon-bard We process the stimulus, which then leads to emotion One does not cause the other 1. You experience the emotion (fear). 2. Your body reacts physically (increased heart rate, sweating, etc.). Goal attribution refers to the process of assigning or inferring the goals and intentions behind an individual's behaviour or actions - Babies getting surprised when the ball still jump over even when there is no wall anymore Tutorial 2 HARKing → Hypothesising after the results are known Tutorial no.2 covers HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known), which is an author's behavior to 'present a post hoc hypothesis as if it were made a priori (before knowing the results)'. If you haven't heard of this then wait until your 2nd tutorial and revisit this post. Why is it a bad behavior in scientific research, other than for being a 'lie'? There are several reasons: Inflating Type I errors: When researchers create hypotheses based on data patterns they’ve already seen, there is a higher chance of capitalizing on random noise rather than discovering genuine effects. This increases the likelihood of Type I errors (false positives). ○ Example: A researcher conducting a large-scale personality study looks at 100 different behaviors to find correlations with extroversion. After reviewing the data, they find that people who wear red shirts on Fridays score higher in extroversion. Without pre-planning this hypothesis, they include it in their paper as if they predicted it. In reality, this result could just be a statistical fluke from looking at so many variables and falsely inflating the likelihood of finding a significant effect. Hinders theory development: HARKing can mislead others into thinking that a theory is more predictive and accurate than it is, making it harder for the field to correct itself and refine theories over time. ○ Example: A researcher examining social media’s effect on self-esteem doesn’t find a direct relationship. After analysing the data, they find that people who use social media for over 3 hours per day have lower self-esteem, so they change their hypothesis to reflect this subgroup. Presenting this as a pre-existing hypothesis could prevent others from seeing the result as exploratory, leading future research down the wrong path, or basing conclusions on incomplete theory development. Replicability crisis: By presenting data-driven hypotheses as a priori, because of two reasons listed above, findings are often less robust in actuality and less likely to replicate in future studies, contributing to the broader problem of non-reproducibility in science. ○ Example: A researcher studies the relationship between diet and cognitive performance. Initially, they don’t find significant results. However, after some data mining, they  discover that people who eat blueberries have improved memory. The researcher rewrites the paper as if they predicted the blueberry effect, when in fact, it was data-driven. When other researchers try to replicate the study focusing on blueberries, they fail to reproduce the effect because the original result was based on chance rather than theory, contributing to the replicability crisis down the line. To summarise, HARKing is not just problematic because it's dishonest, but because it can severely undermine the integrity of scientific research. By distorting the scientific process, it introduces noise into the literature, making it harder for real effects to be identified and replicated. Over time, this poisons the well of knowledge, so to speak, slowing down progress in fields that rely on accurate, transparent, and reproducible findings. Thus, maintaining the distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research is critical for the credibility and advancement of science. The hypothesis might not be very solid File drawer problem - Blaming the publishers - Results are not succinct enough - Selective reporting of findings - Alot of unpublished manuscripts - People only see the good sides, effect might be very small as people don’t see the other ‘failed’ studies Solution: publish all work Scientific transparency Lecture 5 Quiz recap Quiz 1 - Demand characteristic  - Subjects are likely to detect what the manipulation is about - There may be a third factor Quiz 2 - It exposed unethical practices (syphilis) - Objective self awareness  - Thought preceding the action Quiz 3 What is not true about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? Quiz 4 - High consensus - High distinctiveness also correct → he always enjoys action movies but this time he didn't - Basic emotion theory → emotion has evolutionary purpose