COURSE NOTES: Social

	Based on the course PSY/SOC 301, taught at The Sage Colleges by Prof. Susan Cloninger. This class uses the following textbook, which provides the chapter organization that you see on the menu on the left side of this page: Myers, D. (2005). Social Psychology (8th ed.) New York: McGraw Hill.

Chapter 1: 

Introducing Social Psychology

CLASS REPORTS: Advice for Social Psychology students for the class assignment

Report: Journal

• professional journal, not magazine
  
• some good journals:
  
  • Journal of Social Psychology
    
  • Social Psychology Quarterly
    
  • Journal of Social and Personality Psychology
    
  • etc...
    
• Some journals are available on-line, through scholarly links such as those in the library (e.g., Proquest). However, many on-line articles are not scholarly journals, and would not be appropriate. (If in doubt, ask.)
  
• Can you understand the journal report?
  
  • focus on introduction, discussion
    
  • understand method
    
  • trust report of what statistics mean
    
  • look at the statistics you do understand
    
  • means
    
  • correlations
    
  • graphs
    
• What to include in journal report
  
  • reference in APA format
    
  • author
    
  • year
    
  • title
    
  • journal, volume, (issue?), pages
    
• subjects
  
  • college students?
    
  • age?
    
  • race or ethnicity or nationality?
    
  • any other factors affecting generalization
    
  • volunteers?
    
• experimental manipulations (if true experiment)
  
  • what E did to Ss
    
• measures
  
  • predictors (if not true experiment)
    
  • dependent or outcome variable
    
  • what tests or observations are reported?
    
  • self-report?
    
  • behavior?
    
  • observation by unbiased observers?
    
• results
  
  • in selected, understandable form!
    
  • what means were larger
    
  • what numbers were correlated
    
  • what was significant (statistically)
    
• theoretical implications (if any)
  
  • look in introduction, discussion
    
  • make your own inferences based on class material
    
• practical implications (if any)
  
  • will this study help improve the world?
    
  • bring peace?
    
  • bring mutual understanding?
    
  • suggest intervention programs?
    
  • etc.
    
• limitations of the study
  
  • Ss
    
  • measures
    
  • situations
    
  • uncontrolled variables
    
  • etc.

Report: News Article

What is news?

• An actual event: something that happened at a particular place, at a particular time, by a particular person or people: who?, what?, when?, where?
  
• Not a report of social trends
  
• Not commentary; not "op-ed"
  
• Not summary of research. (Do not include in this category the kind of newspaper reports that occur after a report in a scientific journal or convention.)
  
• Not magazine-type commentary
  

Chapter 1: 

Introducing Social Psychology

the power of the situation

• Cinderella's prince failed to recognize her (Myers, p. 3)

Some questions asked by social psychology

• How much of our social world is just in our heads?
  • e.g., expecting spouse to be kind (except on a "bad day"),
    
  • or the opposite; expecting a doctor to be wise, etc.
    
• Would you be cruel if ordered?
  
  • Nazi Germany and studies of obedience
    
• To help? Or to help oneself?
  
  • money falling from an armored care is grabbed by people
    

social psychology: the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another

• ex: studying the power of the situation in the laboratory

some big ideas in social psychology [Myers, pp. 6-10]

• We construct social reality.
• Our social intuitions are often powerful but sometimes perilous.
• Social influences shape our behavior.
• Personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behavior.
• Social behavior is also biological behavior.
• Social psychology's principles re applicable in everyday life and in other disciplines.

Social Psychology and Related Disciplines

• sociology
• personality psychology
• "levels of explanation"

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY

• individual/group emphasis
• experimentation/surveys
• principles/problems

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY

• social, external/private, internal emphasis
• common humanity/individual differences
• impact of situations/nature of individuals
• newer/older field

LEVELS OF EXPLANATION

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND VALUES: obvious relationships

• research topic
• researchers
• studying values

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND VALUES: subtle relationships

• subjective aspects of science...
  • interpretations of observations
  • Dalmatian in figure of dots
  • fouls in football game (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954)
• impact of culture (shared social representations)
  • sexism (feminist criticism of interpreting sex differences as biologically caused)
  • competition and individuality (Marxist criticisms)
  • "They Saw a Game" classic study by Hastorf & Cantril
• psychological concepts
  • (e.g., "adjustment"): "ambitious" men, "aggressive" women
  • labeling people

naturalistic fallacy: the error of defining what is good in terms of what is observable (of saying that what is, ought to be)

• ex: What is typical is normal, and good (e.g., males in higher management positions)

Social psychology in three worlds

• North American social psychology (first world)
• European social psychology (second world)
• third world social psychology: Bangladesh, Cuba, Nigeria

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND COMMON SENSE

• "I-knew-it-all-along": hindsight bias
• Hindsight is 20-20. We think experimental results are obvious: but only after we know what they are.
• "Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards." (Kierkegaard)
• It is obvious that...
  • Birds of a feather flock together.
• And also obvious that...
  • Opposites attract.
• overestimation of how much we know (advice for students preparing for exams)
• understanding vs. prediction
• Many things can be understood, but would not have been predicted ahead of time.

Research Methods: HOW WE DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

theory: an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events

• ex: cognitive dissonance theory
• ex: social learning theory

hypothesis: a testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between events

• ex: frustration-aggression hypothesis

Hypotheses:

• 1. permit theories to be tested.
• 2. give direction to research.
• 3. are practical.
• Kurt Lewin: "There is nothing so practical as a good theory."

Good theories:

• 1. summarize many observations.
• 2. make clear predictions (allowing confirmation or disconfirmation).
• 3. generate new explorations.
• 4. suggest practical applications.

kinds of research

• laboratory or field
• correlational or experimental

CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH

• the study of naturally occurring relationships among variables
• ex: the status-longevity correlation (higher status people tend to live longer)
• ex: the correlation between academic achievement and self-esteem

CORRELATION AND CAUSATION

• Correlation does not prove causation.
• Why not? 3 possible explanations for every correlation
  • X causes Y
  • Y causes X
  • Z causes both X and Y
• In the case of self-esteem and academic achievement:
  • Maybe self-esteem causes higher achievement (so we should have programs to boost self-esteem).
  • Or, maybe higher academic achievement boosts self-esteem (so we should teach educational basics).
  • Or, maybe both self-esteem and academic achievement are affected by some other variable (such as socio-economic status).
• Correlation allows prediction.
• But "correlation does not prove causation."

survey research: getting unbiased data

• random sample: each member of the population has an equal (and independent) chance of inclusion.
• If the sample size is large enough, the population is represented accurately.
  • For example, if n = 1200, the sample is within 3% of the population most of the time (95% of the time).
• Sources of error in survey research
  • unrepresentative samples (such as volunteers or those who answer their phones)
  • question order
  • response options
  • question wording
  • sampling errors lead to errors of prediction

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

• studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors while controlling others
  • ex: having an experimental group watch violent TV, a control group watch nonviolent TV, and then observing their aggression on the playground
• Manipulate the variable thought to be a "cause." called the "independent variable" (violent vs. nonviolent TV)
  • Does the "effect" change? level of aggression on the playground
  • If yes, causal inferences (cause-effect relationships) can be made.
• Experimental Control
  • everything constant except the cause
  • random assignment to control 3rd variables
  • random assignment (to groups)
  • random selection is not necessary
• Random Assignment
  • Random assignment makes EVERYTHING equal.

DEPENDENT VARIABLE

• the outcome, the effect
• level of aggression on the playground

Limitation: Cause is demonstrated in the experimental setting only. What about the real world?

• Some experiments engage intense thoughts and emotions.
• mundane realism: laboratory behavior that is like everyday behavior.
• experimental realism: laboratory behavior that is absorbing and involving (though often unlike everyday situations)

ETHICS OF RESEARCH

• risk to subjects
• informed consent
• protection from harm and discomfort
• confidentiality
• deception
• debriefing
• ethics committee review

Generalizing from laboratory to life

• Differences among groups (e.g., greater loneliness in Puerto Rican college students than in U.S.)
• Similarities in principles, in factors that predict achievement, delinquency, and so on

Social psychology is based on science, but it is a far cry from our usual image of the isolated, objective scientist of popular myth.

http://www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html
(APA code of ethics)

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