C82SAD: Social and Developmental Psychology

What is Social Psychology?

What is Social Psychology?

• Numerous definitions Why? Different strands - based on methods,

assumptions and questions raised Concerned predominantly with:

• Understanding how we interact/communicate• Understanding how our social environment shapes our

cognitions and judgements/choices• Understanding human interaction

Different approaches to posing and answering questions that arise

“The scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others”

Allport (1935)

What is Social Psychology?What is Social Psychology?

Two Strands of Social Psychology

PsychologicalSocial Psychology

SociologicalSocial Psychology

STRAND

CONTINUUM

ORIGIN

PREVAILINGPROCESSES

METHODOLOGICALAPPROACH

KEY AUTHOR(S)

Logical Empiricism Social constructionistHumanisticSocial Cognition Language and Culture

Quantitative/Hypothetico-deductivee.g. Experimental

Inductive/Qualitativee.g. Discourse analysis

c.f. Mr. Spock c.f. Hercules Poirot

Popper (1968) Gergen (1973)Shotter (1975)

Social Psychology

• Social psychologists don’t study animals

Some important considerations and assumptions

• People don’t behave in a social ‘vacuum’• The individual is the unit of analysis• Other people, social contexts, the groups we

belong to all affect our decisions and behaviour in social contexts

• Experimental psychologists use ingenious experiments to look at social phenomena

Social Psychology

• Observable behavior• Non-observable phenomena: thoughts

opinions, attitudes, beliefs, intentions, goals etc.

• What makes social psychology social is that it deals with real or implied presence

• E.g. we think with ‘words’; most of us don’t drop litter

Some important considerations and assumptions

Social Psychology and Questions?

• What are the questions that social psychology intends to answer?– Examples:

• How do we make sense of our decisions and expectations in the social world?

• How do the choices we make influence our behaviour?• What effects do our decisions have on others and how do

others decisions effect us?• How does our membership of a group influence the way we

behave?

Topics of Social Psychology

Conformity DiscriminationPersuasion StereotypingPower Crowd behaviourGroup norms Group identificationSocial influence Social conflict/harmonyObedience Social changePrejudice Decision makingIntergroup relations LeadershipCommunication AttitudesImpression management Self-presentationSocial facilitation Attraction and friendship

Social Psychology

• Scientific methods• Hypotheses formed on the basis of

knowledge, assumptions and causal or systematic observation

• E.g. hypothesise that a dancer performs better before an audience than alone

• Experimental design

Methodological Issues

Social Psychology

• Experimental methods in laboratory• Careful control of independent variables

and its effect on a dependent variable• Example 1: Deci and Ryan’s (1985)

experiments on intrinsic motivation• Aimed to examine effects of rewards on

intrinsic motivation

Methodological Issues

Social Psychology

• Deci and Ryan’s (1985) experiments on intrinsic motivation

• Effects of rewards on puzzle solving• Independent variable: Reward, no-reward conditions

Methodological Issues

• Dependent variables: Amount of time spent on puzzle in free choice paradigm and enjoyment

• Uses one-way mirror room to observe participants

Results of Deci and Ryan’s Experiment

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No reward Reward

TimeEnjoyment

Social Psychology

• Example 2: Bandura et al.’s (1961) Bobo DollExperiment

• Independent variable: Children exposed to two ‘models’ of behaviour =– aggressive ‘model’ (e.g. adults punched, kicked, hit

doll, tossed it in the air, while saying “Hit him down”, “Sock him in the nose” etc.)

– nonaggressive adult model (both verbal and physical)• Dependent variable: Amount of aggressive actions

children performed when freely interacting with the Bobo Doll

Methodological Issues

• Bandura et al. (1961): Children watched an adult playing with ‘Bobo doll’ (5-foot inflated plastic doll).

Bobo Doll ExperimentMethod

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Live Videotape Cartoon Control

Experimental Condition

Num

ber

of A

ggre

ssiv

e Ac

tsBobo Doll Experiment

Results

Social Psychology

• Experimental methods in field• Naturalistic settings outside laboratory• Field experiments have high external

validity• Less control over extraneous variables• More difficult to obtain subjective measures

(usually relies on observed behaviour)

Methodological Issues

Social Psychology

• Dutton & Aron (1974) examined the mis-interpretation of arousal according to environmental feedback

• Method: Male participants crossed either• a wobbly suspension bridge high over a canyon = high anxietyOR• or a solid bridge only 10 feet above a brook =low anxiety

• As each participant crossed the bridge, an attractive female research assistant approached and

• administered questionnaire about some ambiguous pictures of people

• gave him her phone number in case he had questions about the study

Field Experiment

Social PsychologyField Experiment

• Dutton & Aron (1974) Results: Participants on the suspension bridge found more sexual themes in pictures and were also much more likely to call the woman

• Conclusion: The arousal that occurred on the wobbly suspension bridge was fear, but participants misattributed it to sexual arousal because of the presence of the attractive research assistant

Social Psychology

• Nonexperimental methods• Case studies

– In-depth analysis of a single case– Interviews, questionnaires, behavior observation– Rich data but less generalizable to population

• Survey research and field studies– Questionnaire studies and correlations between constructs– Large samples of respondents looks at group responses– Generalizable, but cannot infer causality because data is

CORRELATIONAL– Doesn’t involve CHANGING variables/conditions of people

Methodological Issues

Social Psychology

• Behaviourism• Neo-behaviourists (e.g., Bandura) need to evoke unobservable

constructs to explain behaviour• E.g. Social Modelling imitation of behaviour and shaping by

vicarious learning• Cognitive psychology• Representations and cognitive consistency, E.g. Lewin’s (1951)

Field theory representations of social environment affect motivation

• Aronson (1984), Festinger and Carlsmith – cognitive dissonance (arousal) evoked attitude change

Theories

Social Psychology

• Evolutionary social psychology• Important behavioural tendencies evoked a survival benefit and

therefore became part of human genetic makeup• More recently in the form of sexual selection e.g. fitness indicator

theory, sensory bias theory• Personality• Stable, generalized, heritable traits that influence behaviour in a

number of contexts• Little evidence for true heritable traits• Collectivist theories: people behave according to social context

Theories

Social Psychology

• Social cognition• Information processing is central to the theory• Examines the effects of social information on decision

making and behaviour• Assumes all individuals process information in the same

manner• Assumes a rational, reasoned decision maker

Theories