Social Psychology

Social Psychology The scientific study of the individual's interactions with others in terms of behavior, thoughts, and feelings

Social Psychology and Common Sense • Common sense is contradictory • Common sense is incomplete in a complex world • Common sense is subject to biases in social cognitions: hindsight bias, illusory correlations, illusion of unanimity, availability and representativeness heuristic

The Social Psychological Perspective • The power of the situation • The importance of cognitive processes as they interact with emotions (affect) • Basic and applied science using a variety of methods including experiments and field studies • Mid-range theories

The social situation • The social situation includes the physical environment, the presence and actions of others, and the social norms inherent in the behavior setting • People interact with their situation including choosing and changing situations • Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about situations affect our responses to them.

Social Cognition • Schemas, attributions, and perceptions of ourselves, other people, and situations affect our responses to the world. • The cognitive processes of memory, attention, and perception are important • We engage in heuristic and systematic processing.

Cognitions and Emotions • Cognitions influence emotions and emotions influence cognitions. They interact with one another and, in turn, influence behavior. • Much processing of social information is implicit, non conscious, effortless, and automatic. Non conscious processes and associations affect perceptions of the world.

Some Trends • Increasing importance of social cognition in responses to perception of selves, others, and the social situation • NEW areas of application • Multi cultural understanding of diversity • Emphasis on neuroscience and sociobiological functions.

Increasing emphasis on emotion (affect) along with cognition in explaining behavior • Return to concern with the interaction of personality and situation in explaining behavior • Use of correlational as well as experimental studies • Emphasis on implicit non conscious process

Why Study Research Methods • Empirical evidence from research findings is the basis of knowledge in social psychology. • We are all consumers of science in our lives as citizens and as part of our careers. • We are all informal scientists, and we need to know the limitations of our findings.

Study Design • Case Study and Qualitative Designs • Non experimental Quantitative or Correlational (observational, quantitative non experimental studies) • Experimental in laboratory or field

Case Study and Qualitative • Involves intensive interviews and testing of small number of cases. Qualitative methods often involve participant observation and interviewing. Sometimes qualitative. • Can study rare cases and get feel for variables to generate hypotheses • Cannot determine what is generalized

Correlational • Able to study issues where practical and/or ethical factors limit experiments. • Study how many variables interrelate • Can use for unobtrusive studies • Correlation implies prediction not cause. Third variable problem. Modern multivariate techniques help with causal puzzle.

Experiments • Manipulate independent variables, randomly assign participants, control situation. Can look at causal package. • Short term, low impact experience • Novel environment subject to experimenter effect and demand characteristics. • Volunteers not representative

The Social Psychology of the Experiment • Experimenter effects and reactivity • Experimenter expectancy effects and the Clever Hans experiments • Evaluation apprehension • Demand characteristics • Participant reactance

Internal-External Validity Trade-off • Internal validity deals with whether observed differences result from manipulation of the independent variable • External validity deals with generalizability • Usually studies high in one attribute are low in the other requiring trade-offs in study designs.

Data Collection • Self Reports including attitude questionnaires, surveys, knowledge tests, psychological tests, mood and symptom reports, health histories, behavioral reports • Observational measures • Physiological measures for emotional arousal, brain function, and bodily states • Archival information

Self Report Advantages • Can collect data on behavior when practical or ethical factors limit observation • Can determine opinions, knowledge, mood, physical symptoms, personality, and cognitive ability factors that hypothetically affect important behaviors.

Self Report Problems • Conscious faking, defensiveness, poor memory, and wording problems may limit accuracy of behavioral reports. • Self reports may not relate to important behaviors. Problems of sample adequacy, wording and order of questions, and issues affecting the attitude, knowledge relationship with behaviors.

Factors Affecting Attitude-Behavior Relationship • Specific attitudes and knowledge predict specific behaviors • Salience • Sense of efficacy • Attitudes of others • Situational constraints

Systematic Observation • Can be used in the lab or in naturalistic settings. It is the real thing. • Problems in time and event sampling. • Problems in sampling settings • Problems with inter-observer reliability • Requires careful construction of categories and training of observers

Problems With Using Deception • Ethical and moral problems of lying • Potential harm especially if person is hurt by the discovery of a potential behavior or the fact of being duped. • Anger of participants and potential contamination of other studies once deception is known. • Assessing the efficacy of deception

Dealing With Deception • Institutional Review Board (IRB) looks at cost benefit balance, minimal deception, alternatives to deception. • Debriefing and informed consent especially of right to withdraw. Do NOT use deception to lure person into study. • Studies show duped participants do not feel harmed.

Science as a Body of Evidence • We have more confidence in our understanding of some phenomena compared to others. • We rely on a body of evidence rather than one study. • Replications and confirmatory results using different methods and populations provide more confidence. Look for more data.

Perception Is: • Immediate • Selective • Structured • Stable • Meaningful

Human Cognitions • Humans are good at making remote associations and seeing patterns, even if sometimes they are not there. • People have limited capacity in their short term or working memory. • They must use cognitive short cuts and allocate their focused attention.

Working Memory • Short term memory, focus of attention, task allocation and multi tasking • Limited capacity although new work not as specific on number of chunks • Individual differences in capacity of working memory or executive function.

Automatic versus Controlled Processing • We tend to use as little effort and cognitive capacity as possible in processing social information. Controlled, conscious, and focused processing is used only when needed in order to mulit task. . • We need to make evaluations of strangers and novel situations as quickly as possible.

Automatic processing involves seemingly effortless, automatic, and non conscious processes. It is usually done quickly. • Often evaluation of the social situation is done automatically and this evaluation may involve different parts of the brain. Response to negative emotions is associated with the amygdala in the limbic system.

Emotions and Social Cognition • Emotions help people identify the resources and avoid dangers in the environment. • Negative emotions cause people to stop ongoing activity to attend to dangers, identify dangers in the environment and be motivated to reduce the danger. • Negative emotions operate more quickly in different brain centers.

Schemas • Mental frameworks centering around a specific theme that help us organize information. • Schemas help us identify important information, predict situations, interact smoothly, and work within our cognitive capacity. They provide packages of information for a complex world.

Examples of Schemas • Self schema • Gender role schema • Schemas about social groups (may be stereotypes) • Role schemas: occupation, family relations • Person schemas • Relationship schemas (e. g., friendship, romance) • Schemas as behavioral scripts

Schema Inconsistent Information • People remember and process more quickly schema consistent information. • Who;e schemas are self confirming, we do remember schema inconsistent information and we can notice inconsistent information particularly if it is relatively extreme. It is seen as the exception to the rule.

Cognitive Shortcuts • Representativeness Heuristic • Availability Heuristic • Framing and anchoring • Order Effects • Logical errors such as honoring sunk costs, using the source of the communication to verify arguments, and ignoring base rates.

Priming • Stimuli may act as a prime causing the person to attend to certain aspects of the environment. • Priming represents the tendency of recent thoughts to influence subsequent interpretations. • Important in activating schemas.

Negativity Bias • People attend to and remember negative information more than positive facts. • There may be evolutionary significance in this bias and negative information is more distinctive and may have more diagnostic significance.

Optimistic Bias • People see the world optimistically and tend to see themselves as less likely to have bad things happen. They see the future as rosy even with a rocky past. They are subject to the planning fallacy. • There is a pessimistic bias when people expect bad news or feedback.

Positive Illusions • Optimistic attributional style • Sense of control • Sense of above average competence • Some “fooling yourself” may be good. • Depressed people may be more realistic about some aspects of life.

Counterfactual Thinking • Such thinking is automatic and can cause regret and blame for self and others as in the just world hypothesis. • If the person believes that a negative outcome is inevitable it helps with regret. • Inaction inertia occurs when a person fails to act and then another positive outcome becomes available.

Thought Suppression • People try to suppress unwanted thoughts through active modes or self distraction. • Sometimes there is a rebound effect when people try too hard to suppress thoughts. • People high in reactance experience more rebound effect.

Other Cognitive Biases • Ignoring base rates when using the representativeness and availability heuristics • Ignoring moderator variables that might not be observed. The person may be subject to the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. • Falling prey to the false consensus (pluralistic ignorance) effect

Kelley’s Attribution Theory • Consensus: Everybody does it • Consistency over time by the individual • Distinctiveness of response to situation by the individual. • Dispositional: consensus and distinctiveness are low and consistency is high. • Situational: consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are high

Jones and Davis: Theory of Correspondent Inferences • Internal disposition if the behavior is freely chosen, has a non common effect (clear cause), and is low in social desirability. • Discounting: Tendency to attach less weight to causes when there are multiple causes. • Augmentation: Greater weight to causes in the presence of inhibitory causes.

Attribution Biases • Fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias) or actor-observer effect. Tendency to attribute own behavior to situations and others’ behavior to dispositions. • Defensive attribution or self serving bias. For good things internal. Bad things external

Dimensions of Attribution Applied to Self and Others • Internal-External • Stable-Unstable • Global-Specific • Controllable-uncontrollable • Application to depression, marriage, achievement motive, self handicapping, leadership, aggression, self efficacy, etc.

Schachter’s Two Factor Theory • Physiological arousal is similar for emotions. In ambiguous situations, environmental cues help us label emotions. • Participants given epinephrine in some cases without explanation. Assistants acted either happy or angry. Emotions labeled in terms or environment. Experiment questioned but applications still important.

Mood Dependent and Mood Congruent Memory • Mood Dependent Memory: We recall information more readily when in the same mood as when we remembered it. • Mood congruent memory: We notice and recall positive or negative information if we are in a positive or negative mood. • Depressed people remember negative events

Impression Formation and Person Perception • We have an immediate, structured, selective, and emotional response to people when we first meet them. We have a strong need to determine if they are likely to be good or bad to us. This is an automatic, seemingly effortless, non conscious process • These impressions often lead to self fulfilling prophecies.

Combining Information • Early research emphasized the importance of central traits such as warm or cold; good or bad. • People use a weighted averaging model to combine relevant central traits. • The Rosenhan pseudopatient study illustrates the importance of central traits in a specific setting

Cognition and Impression Formation • Modern approaches emphasize motivation and cognition. We seek information about traits and values and then about performance. Negative information carries greater diagnostic values. • We from impressions with This is often automatic because we are mulit tasking.

Politicians and Impression Formation • Modern media with short advertisements emphasizes image over issues. • People vote for those who seem similar in personality. There is an emphasis on emotional response to candidates. • People do not like negative advertisements but they respond to them.

Social Psychology