Psy10 Chapter 1 Outline
Psy10 Chapter 1 Outline
Psy10 Chapter 1 Outline
Social psychology - is a science that studies the influences of our situations, with special
attention to how we view and affect one another.
Social psychology studies our thinking, influences, and relationships by asking questions
that have intrigued us all. Here are some examples:
Does our social behavior depend more on the objective situations we face or how
we construe them?
Would people be cruel if ordered?
To help? Or to help oneself?
These questions focus on how people view and affect one another. And that is what
social psychology is all about. Social psychologists study attitudes and beliefs, conformity
and independence, love and hate.
One problem with common sense is that we invoke it after we know the facts.
Experiments reveal that when people learn the outcome of an experiment, that
outcome suddenly seems unsurprising.
Hindsight bias has become one of psychology’s best-established phenomena.
Hindsight bias - the tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one’s ability to
have foreseen how something turned out. Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along
phenomenon.
Danish philosopher–theologian Sǿren Kierkegaard put it, “Life is lived forwards, but
understood backwards.”
The I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon can have unfortunate consequences.
What seems clear in hindsight is seldom clear on the front side of history.
The point is not that common sense is predictably wrong. Rather, common sense
usually is right—after the fact.
Hypothesis - testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between
events.
Hypotheses serve several purposes.
- First, they allow us to test a theory by suggesting how we might try to falsify it.
- Second, predictions give direction to research and sometimes send
investigators looking for things they might never have thought of.
- Third, the predictive feature of good theories can also make them practical.
As pioneering social psychologist Kurt Lewin declared, “There is nothing so
practical as a good theory.”
But how do we conclude that one theory is better than another? A good theory
effectively summarizes many observations, and
makes clear predictions that we can use to
- confirm or modify the theory,
- generate new exploration, and
- suggest practical applications
When we discard theories, usually it is not because they have been proved false.
Rather, like old cars, they are replaced by newer, better models.
CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH: DETECTING NATURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Social psychological research can be laboratory research (a controlled situation) or
field research (everyday situations).
It varies by method—whether correlational (asking whether two or more factors are
naturally associated) or experimental (manipulating some factor to see its effect on
another).
Field research - research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory.
Correlational research - the study of the naturally occurring relationships among
variables.
Experimental research - studies that seek clues to cause–effect relationships by
manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others
(holding them constant).
Advantages of correlational research
- often involving important variables in natural settings
Its major disadvantage
- ambiguous interpretation of cause and effect
SURVEY RESEARCH
Random sampling - survey procedure in which every person in the population being
studied has an equal chance of inclusion.
Bear in mind that polls do not literally predict voting; they only describe public
opinion at the moment they are taken.
To evaluate surveys, we must also bear in mind four (4) potentially biasing
influences:
- unrepresentative samples
- question order
- response options
- question wording
Framing - he way a question or an issue is posed; framing can influence people’s
decisions and expressed opinions.
Framing research also has applications in the definition of everyday default
options.
Although our behaviors may differ, we are influenced by the same social forces.
Beneath our surface diversity, we are more alike than different.