PSY 2401 Study Guide - Final Guide: Solitary Confinement, Social Psychology, Psych
9 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Foundations of Social Psychology
Exam 1 Study Guide
Social psychology-study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context
" Science because of how we study people, science is how you study things not what you
study
" Scientific study of social influence
" overt direct but also when people are meaning to influence us they do
" Can be influenced by strangers
" We are social creatures through evolutionarily designed to be that way, that's what it
means to human
o Everything about you is shaped by other people
o Isolation- hard on us mentally and physically
o Why it's a punishment- damaging to people
o Some places solitary confinement is illegal in some places because it is considered the
low of the worst- takes away what it means to be human
o Real or imagined- imagining is enough
Social Psychology vs. Personality Psychology- Two types that get pitted together
" Social psych- How you act in a social context despite what type of person you are,
o everybody acts the same way
o social contexts are so impactful that they can override our personality
o Focusing on how and why people are all the same
" Personality psych- Regardless of environment the type of person you are determines how
you act
o Focusing on how and why people are different
Social Psychology vs. Cognitive Psychology
" Social Psych takes some stuff from cog. Psych and applies it to social context, how do
other peoples' thoughts affect your thoughts etc.
Social Psychology vs. Sociology
" Their main difference :What they are trying to do with their research and theories
" Social psychologist: Trying to explain individuals
" Sociologist- group level factors, interested in socioeconomic status, cultural
attitudes/norms
o Why does someone develop memory issues later in life
o Individual vs. group
History of Social Psychology
" 1880s-1920s: Birth of Social Psychology
" 1930s-1970s: Surge in social psychological research
" Interactionist perspective- psychological perspective that makes the assumption that one's
environment and social context affects them
o Kurt Lewin
" Most single handedly responsible for this and for making social psychology what it is -
Hitler and the Holocaust
o Was very European based psychology so people didn't care
o All these people fleeing Europe- social psychologist
o Critical mass of people who are teaching this and creates surge
o Milgram wanted to study how something like that could happen, seemingly normal
people do these awful things- shock experiment
" 1970s-1990s/2000s: Cognitive Revolution
o Social cognition became very important in psychology at this time
History of Social Psychology: Today
" Automatic vs. controlled processes
o Things you cannot control vs. what you can control
o Automatic= unconscious
" Unconscious vs. conscious processes
" Mind and body influence
o Bidirectional relationship between our mind (not the same as brain) increase in interest in
this
o Why health psych is important and on the rise
" Neural and social processes
" Culture- used to be harder to access people from other cultures but now it's easy
" Social media- how does it harm, make them easy, how does it affect you and how you
think about things and yourself
" Interdisciplinary- everyone used to exist in their own bubble but now everyone is using
information from each other with communication for a larger scientific community instead of
being isolated
Introduction
" Need to feel good about ourselves
" Need for self-esteem
" Not a want or desire to like ourselves
" Need to be accurate
" Why is social psychology important?
o Because social psychologist study social problems
o Started and remains as the scientific study of social issues
o Understand them in an effort to change them
o Social Psychological Research
Introduction to Research Methods
" Hindsight bias- once you know the answer you feel like you knew it all along
" Scientific Method
o Question- theory- hypotheses- research
o Question- hypotheses-research-theory-hypotheses-research
" Theories cannot be tested like hypotheses can
" Basic Research - to answer general questions such as "why do people behave as they do"
o Conducted purely for intellectual curiosity
o Ex:The big 5 theory- human personality is made up of 5 supers traits that are the umbrella
terms for all sub traits, this is basic research
" Applied Research- research conducted to solve a particular problem
" Operational definition- When you have a really detailed definition of things you are using
or doing within your research
o Ex: "How am I going to make these people think about their own deaths?', depression
scale.. If you score this you're depressed, how am I defining people if they are happy in a
romantic relationship: operational definition would be how long they've been together, deff: how
many fights you had over the last month
" Construct validity- when we're measuring what we want to measure
Data Collection
" Self-reports/Surveys
o Advantages: pretty obvious
o Disadvantages
" Wording effects - simply that your question is set up in a confusing Way With surveys
there's not really clarifications if it's online or on paper
" We have different reactions to different types of Words. There are some Words that are
more emotionally laid in us, some Words can make one feel a certain Way leading to different
conclusions on the researchers side
" Social desirability - people answer With the "correct" answer, people lie- are more likely
to happen With sensitive topics Lie sometimes because they don't Want the researcher to know
something about them, people are very suspicious of psychologists
" Retroactive - reflect back on something and report it to us
" Memory is bad and We have a need to feel good about ourselves so We look back on
Document Summary
Science because of how we study people, science is how you study things not what you. Scientific study of social influence overt direct but also when people are meaning to influence us they do. We are social creatures through evolutionarily designed to be that way, that"s what it. Everything about you is shaped by other people. Some places solitary confinement is illegal in some places because it is considered the. Focusing on how and why people are different. Social psychology-study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context study means to human o o o o low of the worst- takes away what it means to be human o. Personality psychology- two types that get pitted together o o o you act o. Social psychology vs. cognitive psychology other peoples" thoughts affect your thoughts etc. Why does someone develop memory issues later in life.
