PSY220H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Stationary Point, Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, Confabulation
LECTURE 2:
Psychology vs Sociology: Social Psychological is focused on the individual while sociology is
focused on large groups of people. Macro vs Micro levels of processing.Two conflicting
criticisms of social psychology:
. 1) Useless and trivial and tells us what we already know
. 2) Dangerous because you can learn to manipulate and control other people.
Response:1) (Go to Paul Lazarsfeld slide)So basically the truth is the opposite of what is on
this slide but when people heard it they were like oh this is obvious and heres the thing when we
first saw the false facts (on the slides) we thought these were obvious but its hindsight bias. We
see the fact and then create a story which explains this.Okay so we have opposite sayings in
society:Ie: Birds of a feather flock together vs opposites attractOut of sight out of mind vs
absence makes the heart grow fonder
(All the sayings on the slides).
Social psychology really analyzes things like these sayings and explains human action.
Experimental vs Non experimental Methods:
. 1) Naturalistic and participant observation (You aren’t interacting the natural
environment you are trying to remain unnoticed and just observing people in their
natural habitat, participant is you have people who volunteered (& are aware) they are
being observed)
. 2) Field Studies (outside a laboratory context, usually manipulating something (ie: you
are in a hotel and you have a reuse your towel message (Ie: environmental, cost, or how
many other people (IE 75%) have done so before) this type of experiment is a field study)
. 3) Archival research (using information which already exists in the world, i.e.: getting
records from fortune 500 companies)
. 4) Correlational studies (does A correlate with B)
. 5) Quasi-experiments (something which looks like an experiment on the surface, but
people aren’t randomly assignment to conditions but instead the quasi-experiment takes
advantage of a pre-existing condition (Always a confound) but this is really helpful when
we cant do a real experiment)
. 6) Experiments (like quasi-experiment but features random assignment (everyone has the
same chance of being assigned to condition A and condition B) —ALLOW US TO
MAKE CLAIMS ABOUT CAUSE & EFFECT. THEY HAVE HIGH INTERNAL
VALIDITY.
Directionality Problem: We don’t know the direct of the correlation does A lead to B or does B
lead to AThird Variable Problem: There is a third variable which explains the correlation
between those two things.
Tradeoff usually occurs between internal and external validity.
Internal Validity: Ability to make claims about the causality of somethingExternal Validity:
How well this research generalizes
Is it ethical to use mass manipulation on a government level to change societal behaviour?
Useless class discussion —No opinion she particularly wants to hear.
Research Ethics: Observational Study
Article 2.3: REB review is not required for research involving the observation of people in
public places where:It does not involve any intervention staged by the researcher or direct
interaction
(MISSED NOTES—Refer to slides)
Social Norms: Generally accepted ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that most people in a
group agree on and endorse as right and proper.
Descriptive social norms: what people actually think, feel, or do
Injunctive (or perspective), social norms: what people should think, feel, or do.
Many norms have both of these qualities.
People tend to conform to norms for two reasons:
Informational influence: A group has informational influence if we adopt the group consensus
because it seems correct - we believe the groups’ norm reflects reality. (Similar to the mastery
motivational principle which we talked about last class)
Normative influence: A group has normative influence if we adopt the group consensus to show
identification wit the group - wanting to win respect and acceptance from the other group
members. (It is evey bit as powerful as informational influence)
Groupthink: Refers to a faulty decision making process which happens when a group is so
focused on reaching some consensus that this over powers everything and shit decisions happen.
Ie: Challenger explosion where a lot of money, and reputation at stake and they really wanted
this launch to be a go. Engineers were very concerned about the launch because it was a very
cold day and this machine hadn't been tested under these temperatures but everyone was so
pressured to make it a go that their concerns weren't really heard.
Formation & Adherence:How do these social norms form? Where do they come
from?(Missed notes — Refer to slides)Sherif (1936)Autokinetic effect: in a dark room, a
stationary point of light will appear to moveParticipants’ task was to simply estimate how far
the light had moved.When participants were alone in the room the guesses were very
varied“one foot” “half an inch”Etc.The participants returned a few days later and did the
same task but now as a 3 person group. They guessed like every 2 minutes.The small groups
converged (more & more each time) REFER TO SLIDES (GRAPH)These effects lasted.
These participants were brought back by themselves a year later and they stuck with the group
norm that developed when the experiment was run the first time.
They later recreated the study with a confederate who always stuck with higher/lower number no
matter how everyone else would converge and then that group would settle on a higher norm.
Then the confederate would be removed but those people would go into other groups with their
higher norm and they found that this inflated group norm will persist for 5 generations!
Document Summary
Psychology vs sociology: social psychological is focused on the individual while sociology is focused on large groups of people. 1) useless and trivial and tells us what we already know. 2) dangerous because you can learn to manipulate and control other people. We see the fact and then create a story which explains this. Okay so we have opposite sayings in society: ie: birds of a feather flock together vs opposites attract out of sight out of mind vs absence makes the heart grow fonder (all the sayings on the slides). Social psychology really analyzes things like these sayings and explains human action. 1) naturalistic and participant observation (you aren"t interacting the natural environment you are trying to remain unnoticed and just observing people in their natural habitat, participant is you have people who volunteered (& are aware) they are being observed)
