Chapter 2 – Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do

Research

 Hindsight bias: the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something
occurred, how much they could have predicted before it occurred.
 The trick is to predict what will happen in an experiment before you know how it turned
out.
 Social psychologists often want to do more than describe behavior; they want to predict
behavior.

Formulating hypotheses and theories

 Social psychologists engage a continuous process of theory refinement.
 Theory refinement process:
o A theory is developed
o Specific hypotheses derived from that theory are tested
o The theory is revised
o New hypotheses are formulated
 Hypotheses are often based on personal observations.

Types of research methods

- Observational: description | what is the nature of the phenomenon?
- Correlational: prediction | from knowing X, can we predict Y?
- Experimental: causality | is variable X a cause of variable Y?

Observational method
 Technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records
measurements or impressions of their behavior
 Ethnography:
o The method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by
observing it from the inside
  Archival analysis: a form of the observational method in which the researcher examines
the accumulated documents or archives of a culture (diaries, novels, magazines,
newspaper, etc.)
 Limits:
o Can’t answer the answer the “why” behind the behavior
o Certain kinds of behavior are difficult to observe because they happen rarely or
in private.

Correlation method
 Technique whereby two or more variables are systemically measured and the
relationship between them is assessed.
 Correlation coefficient:
o A statistical technique that asses how well you can predict one variable from
another
o The size and direction of the relationship can be judged by attaining this number
o Ranges from -1 to +1
o Example: +0.7 (too high that the same variable might have been measured) |
more examples required
o MORE INFO on p value or level of significance (p<.10 = 90% confident that this
finding did not occur by chance)

Types of correlations
• Positive correlation
o The points lie chose to a straight line, which has a positive gradient.
o This shows that as one variable increases the other increases.
• Negative correlation
o The points lie chose to a straight line, which has a positive gradient.
o This shows that as one variable increases, the other decreases.
• No correlation
o There is no pattern to the points.
o This shows that there is no connection between the two variables.
o Spurious relationship means no correlation between variables.

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Correlation method:
- Surveys:
 research in which a representative sample of people are asked questions about their
attitudes or behavior. (Population is entire community that is interested in the study
where sample is just the representative group that is participating in the study).
 Provides ability to sample representative segments of the population, random
selection
o Equal chance of being selected form the population and into the sample
o Non-representative sample
 Psychologists often use surveys to help understand social behavior and attitudes
o Cross-selection: collected at one time point
o Longitudinal (also called, panel): collected at different time points
- Limits

Experimental method
- Method in which researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and
ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable.
- Independent variable:
o The variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some
other variable
o Hypothesized to influence the dependent variable
o Participants are treated identically except for this variable
- Dependent variable:
o The variable a researcher measures to see if it is influenced by the independent
variable
o All participants are measured on this variable

REVISITED: HYPOTHESES BASED ON PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS

- The story of kitty Genovese
- When do bystanders help during emergencies?
- Bibb Latane’ and John Darley (1968): diffusion of responsibility

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 The number of bystanders strongly influence the rate of helping, but it does not mean
that the size of the group is the only cause of the people’s decision to help.

Other factors influencing helping behaviors can be: bystander personality, prior
experiences with emergencies, etc.

Internal Validity
- Making sure that nothing besides the IV variables can affect the DV
- High internal validity is accomplished by:
o Controlling all extraneous variable
o Randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions

Random Assignment to Condition

- A process ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any
condition of an experiment.
- Through this process, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the
participants’ personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions
- There is still a very small possibility that different characteristic of people did not
distribute themselves evenly across conditions

Probability Level (p-value)

- Tells how confident researchers can be that the difference was due to chance rather
than the IV
- A number calculated with statistical technique that tells researchers how likely it would
be that the results of their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the IV

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Internal validity of Latane & Darley’s Seizure Study
- Made sure that everyone witnessed the same emergency
o The pre-recorded the supposed other participants and the victim and played
their voices over the intercom system so that everyone heard exactly the same
thing.
- Participants were randomly assigned to conditions

External Validity
- The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to
other people
- High external validity can be accomplished through
o Maximizing the study’s psychological realism
 The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an
experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday
life
o Conduct field experiments
 Experiments conducted in natural settings rather than in laboratory;
takes places in the real world beyond a college student sample

 It is a researcher’s basic dilemma to whether prioritize internal or external validity.

There is hardly a study which is high in both.

Centering Ethics in Social Psychology

- Informed Consent:
- Deception:
- Debriefing: