Introduction to Social Psych

Introduction to Social Psych

1. 2 axioms of psych

   • social influence is pervasive
   • people construct their own reality

2. 3 MOTIVATIONAL PRINCIPLES

   • 1. People strive for MASTERY
   • 2. People seek connectedness
   • 3. People value ME and MINE

3. 3 OPERATING PRINCIPLES

   • 1) SUPERFICIALITY VS DEPTH
   • 2. CONSERVATISM
   • 3. ACCESSIBILITY

4. TYPES OF RESEARCH

   • CORRELATIONAL
     • a. observational
       • FESTINGER ET AL - THE CULT: SEEKERS
         • Cult believed aliens would eventually come and destroy world
         • leader of cult could communicate w/ aliens
         • when date came for supposed alien invasion nothing happened
           • belief REMAINED - leader successfully "convinced" aliens to stop invasion
     • b. archival
       • looking at past research to try and come up with hypothsis
         • Nisbett & co found felony-related murders vs argument-related murders
           • smaller cities and more south had more arguments - culture of honour
     • c. survey
       • self-reported data
         • HOW TO AVOID THESE PBS?
           • Tell them its important to be honest
           • 1970s Bogus Pipeline Technique? :P
           • Covert measures eg IAT
       • PROBLEMS WITH SURVEY
         • wording pbs
         • order effects
         • context effects
           • "institute of SOCIAL research" vs. "institute of PERSONALITY research"
         • response options
         • social desirability bias
     • PROBLEMS
       • not causation - only correlation!
       • directionality problem - which one is affecting which?
       • 3rd variable problem
     • FIELD STUDY
       • horn honking and temperature
       • people honk more when its hot!
   • EXPERIMENTAL
     • IV and DV
     • random assignment
     • control group for comparison
     • manipulation of IV

5. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY :)

6. HUFFINGTON POST: SEXUAL ACTIVITY BY SMARTPHONE BRAND

   • between iPhone, Android & Blackberry
   • found iPhone users to have most sexual partners
   • does this mean iPhone users are more sexual?
     • NO! other factors eg diff in income, personality diffs etc

7. HEAT & AGGRESSION

   • baseball players more aggressive on hotter days
     • more likely to hit batter with their pitch!

8. RESEARCH PROCESS

   • 1. Form a question
   • 2. Search literature
   • 3. Form a hypothesis
   • 4. Create operational definition
   • 5. Collect and analyse data
   • 6. Propose/revise theory

9. WEB-BASED EXPERIMENTS

   • GOOD: collect lots of data and from wide range of ppl
   • BAD: likely to repeat p/s, ppl may not take seriously, read items carelessly, skip q.s

10. OBSERVATIONAL/NATURAL METHODS

    • GOOD: eco validity, easy to conduct, good for longitudinal studies
    • BAD: presence of observer influence behaviour, observer biases
    • good to have inter-rater reliability

11. SELF-REPORT/SURVEY METHODS

    • GOOD: collect data from many, ask q.s for range of topics
    • BAD: question wording. response options, inaccurate responses

12. EXPERIMENTAL METHODS

    • RANDOM ASSIGNMENT
    • CONTROL

13. INTERNAL VALIDITY

    • Degree to which IV is only variable that affects DV
    • reduce demand characteristics to increase this
    • use deception
    • provide good cover story
    • high quality control condition
    • minimize experimenter expectancy effects
    • design studies with high sense of realism!

14. EXTERNAL VALIDITY

    • degree to which SAME RESULTS can be obtained if study were to be replicated & generalizability
    • design studies high in mundane realism
    • use random/representative sample
    • make participation convenient
    • conduct replications in diff settings

15. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

    • descriptive
      • using diagram/flow chart
    • thematic
      • look for themes in data (IPA)
    • discursive
      • consider why ppl phrase things the way they do

16. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

    • review of research by research ethics board
    • provide informed consent
    • protect confidentiality
    • provide debriefing

17. CULTURAL IMPACT ON RESEARCH

    • impact of language
      • Americans - monkey + banana
      • Chiense - money + panda
      • lang may affect accessibility of diff types of thought