PSY 331 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Hindsight Bias, Institutional Review Board, Informed Consent
Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Psychology!
Characterizing Social Psychology !
•Social Psychology - The scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of
individuals in social situations!
1. Explaining Behavior!
" • What social psychologists study:!
" " - how people are influenced by others!
" " - how people make decisions!
" " - inferences we make about others’ attitudes and personalities!
" " - influence of situational variables on behavior!
" " - how we make sense of our world !
2. Comparing Social Psychology to Related Disciplines!
"a. Personality psychology - stresses individual differences in behavior!
"b. Cognitive psychology - study of how people think about, perceive, and remember
aspects of the world!
"c. Sociology - study of behavior of people in the aggregate (population level issues)!
3. Proximal and Distal Influences in Social!
"Psychology " !
"Proximal - factors that exist in the here-and-now or that immediately precede what the
individual does!
"Distal - factors that are more removed in time from a given context or episode" !
In recent years, two distal factors have greatly influenced the field of social psychology:
a. Evolution - explaining commonalities in human behavior as due to adaptation /
natural selection!
b. Culture - attempt to understand the deep cultural differences that exist between
societies, and how those differences influence behavior !
Themes in Social Psychology!
•The Power of The Situation - Classic issue in social psychology: is behavior due to
individual differences (personality) or situational influences? !
"1. Early Research and Theory: !
" " a. Lewin’s Field Theory!
•The Role of Construal - A truism in psychology, based on much research, is that people
often think about, perceive, or ‘construe’ the same stimulus in different ways. If we are to
predict behavior in a given situation, we need to understand how an individual construes
the situation. !
1. Interpreting Reality !
•Gestalt Psychology - based on the German word, Gestalt, meaning “form”, this
approach stresses the fact that objects are perceived not by means of some
automatic registering device but by active, usually unconscious, interpretation of
what the object represents as a whole!
•Automatic and Controlled Processing - The mind processes information in two
ways in a social situation. One is an automatic, unconscious, often emotional
reaction. The other is conscious, systematic, and likely to be governed by
careful thought !
•e.g. Devine’s (1989a, 1989b) research on prejudice. !
1. Types of Unconscious Processing!
a. James’ - “skill acquisition”!
b. Freud - formation of beliefs & behaviors without conscious awareness!
2. Functions of Unconscious Processing!
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Document Summary
Characterizing social psychology: social psychology - the scienti c study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations, explaining behavior, what social psychologists study: Inferences we make about others" attitudes and personalities. Proximal - factors that exist in the here-and-now or that immediately precede what the. Distal - factors that are more removed in time from a given context or episode. One is an automatic, unconscious, often emotional reaction. We are predisposed for plenty of various behaviors, but those may often never arise: independent (individualistic) vs. interdependent (collectivist) cultures. Culture and human behavior: how we are different: cultural di erences in self-de nition, quali cations to these distinctions, culture and evolution as tools for understanding situations, regionalism, subcultures, nature proposes culture disposes. Condition or event that is manipulated by experimenter. Variable that is a ected (hopefully) by manipulating independent variable. Any variable other than independent variable that may in uence dependent variable.
