Introduction to Social Psychology

Professor Ravi Thiruchselvam

Part 1: Why do we need social psychology?
Stanislav Petrov
Nuremberg Trials
 What is social psychology?

Person Social Situation/Context

Social psychology is the scientific attempt to understand and explain how

the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the
actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

--Gordon Allport (1954)

“Hell is other people.”

Jean-Paul Sartre
“When we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, . . . we use the
knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the
means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever
I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel
within myself someone else’s judgment enters.”
Do We Need Social Psychology?
 Do We Need Social Psychology?

We are all intuitive social psychologists…

…but psychological truths are often counter-intuitive

A Counter-Intuitive Truth:
Affective Forecasting
 A Counter-Intuitive Truth:
Affective Forecasting
“The houses vary a great deal in perceived quality, and most students anticipate that housing
assignment will strongly influence their happiness; 1st-year students often stay up all night
awaiting their housing assignment and can be seen jumping up and down or accepting consolation
from an upper-class student after receiving news that they have been assigned to a desirable or
undesirable house.”
A Counter-Intuitive Truth:
Affective Forecasting
 A Counter-Intuitive Truth:
Affective Forecasting
7
Predicted
6
Actual

5
Happiness Rating

1
Desirable House Undesirable House

Adapted from: Dunn et al. (2003)

& Gilbert et al. (1998).
 A Counter-Intuitive Truth:
Affective Forecasting
Tenure Decisions For University Professors

6
Predicted
5 Actual
Happiness Rating

1
Tenure Accepted Tenure Denied

Adapted from: Dunn et al. (2003)

& Gilbert et al. (1998).
The Ultimatum Game
The Ultimatum Game

Proposer Responder
Me: $5
You: $5

Me: $7
You: $3

Me: $8
You: $2

Me: $9
You: $1
Propose Offer Accept or Reject?

Sanfey et al., 2003

Sanfey et al. (2003)

 The Ultimatum Game

100
Percentage of Offers Accepted

Human Computer
80

60

40

20

0
$5:$5 $7:$3 $8:$2 $9:$1

Offer Type

Sanfey et al., 2003

 The Ultimatum Game

100
Percentage of Offers Accepted

Human Computer
80

60

40

20

0
$5:$5 $7:$3 $8:$2 $9:$1

Offer Type

Sanfey et al., 2003

Do We Need Social Psychology?

Social processes can be very subtle

Can emotional states be spread through
online social networks?
 Methods
Participants and Setting:

• 689, 003 randomly selected Facebook users

• Occurred between January 11-18, 2012

Independent Variable:
• the content of a user’s newsfeed

Experiment 1
Positive Content Reduced VS Positive Content NOT Reduced
Experiment 2
Negative Content Reduced VS Negative Content NOT Reduced
Kramer et al., 2014
 Methods
Dependent Variable: Emotional state of user

• User’s emotional state operationalized as percentage of words in his/her status updates

that were positive or negative

• In total, over 3 million status updates were analyzed

Kramer et al., 2014

 Adapted From Kramer et al., 2014

Positive Emotion
Updates (percentage of total words)
Positive Words Used in Status

5.35
5.3
5.25
5.2
5.15
5.1
5.05
5
4.95
Positive Positive Negative Negative
Content Content NOT Content Content NOT
Reduced Reduced Reduced Reduced

Experiment 1 Experiment 2
 Adapted From Kramer et al., 2014

Updates (percentage of total words)

Negative Emotion
Negative Words Used in Status

1.8

1.78

1.76

1.74

1.72

1.7

1.68

1.66
Positive Content Positive Content Negative ContentNegative Content
Reduced NOT Reduced Reduced NOT Reduced
Experiment 1 Experiment 2
 Do We Need Social Psychology?

Important social behavior may have hidden causes

How Do We Vote?
 How disgusting would you find these?

It bothers me to see someone in a restaurant eating messy food with his fingers.

It would bother me to see a rat run across my path in a park.

You accidentally touch the ashes of a person who has been cremated.

I never let any part of my body touch the toilet seat in public restrooms

A friend offers you a piece of chocolate shaped like dog-doo.

Haidt et al. (1994)

Inbar et al. (2011)I
Inbar et al. (2011)I
Are we truly reasoning our way to our political beliefs?
A Bit About Me
Caillou
University of
Toronto
Stanford University
Hamilton College
Part 2: Evolutionary Origins of the Social Mind
Levels of Analysis: Why?

Why do we have Culture/ Neuro-

Genes Thoughts
this sort of brain? Society Physiology
Basics of Evolution

Three Facts of Life

1) Variation

2) Competition

3) Heredity
 1. Variation

Individuals differ in their traits

Roseate Spoonbill

Source: Jo Crebbin
 2. Competition

Individuals must compete for survival and reproduction

2. Competition
 3. Heredity

Genes are passed on from parents to offspring through reproduction

 Basics of Evolution

Three Facts of Life

1) Variation
2) Competition
3) Heredity

Darwin’s Big Insight:

Given these three facts of life, changes in a species

WILL occur over time.
 Evolution By Natural Selection
• In the competition to survive and reproduce, individuals
with certain heritable traits will have an advantage.

• These individuals will be more likely to pass on these

heritable traits to future generations.

• Thus, the frequency of the these traits increases in the

next generation.
 An Adaptation
A trait produced by natural selection to increase a creature’s ability
to survive and reproduce in its environment

Bush Cricket
 Natural Selection and Psychology=
Natural selection works not only on the body,
but also on the mind

The brain (like the body) has evolved adaptations to solve specific
problems that our species has faced over long stretches of time.

à Survival problems (e.g., how to know whether a food item is

toxic)

à Social problems (e.g., how to choose mates, maintain

relationships, and navigate the social hierarchy)
 Imagine This…

A stranger approaches you, and says: “Hi, I’ve been noticing you
on campus, and find you very attractive.”

And then the stranger asks you one of three questions:

1) Would you go out on a date with me?

2) Would you go back to my dorm with me?
3) Would you have sex with me?

Clarke and Hatfield (1989)

 Men Women
Would you go out
on a date with me? 56% 50%

Would you go back

to my dorm with 69% 6%
me?

Would you have sex 75% 0%

with me?

Clarke and Hatfield (1989)

Gender Differences in Sexual Selectivity

Tyson et al. (2016)

 Which is the Choosier Sex?
Parental Investment Theory

The sex making more parental investment will be more sexually selective. In
humans, women will be more picky about their sexual partners than men.
 Sexual Selectivity in Other Species

Mormon Cricket Pipefish Seahorse

 Altruism

Interpersonal Attraction

Aggression

Social Conformity
Prejudice
“Our modern skulls house a stone-age mind”
-- John Tooby and Leda Cosmides
Part 3: Research Methods In Social Psychology
 You have a hypothesis:

Facebook use increases loneliness

 Operationalization

An objective measure of the phenomenon of interest

Involves defining a (fuzzy) concept in a way that allows objective, precise measurement
 Major Research Approaches

1) Descriptive

2) Correlational

3) Experimental
 Descriptive Approach
What is the state of the thing you are trying to understand?

• What type of people use Facebook?

• What do they use Facebook for?
• How many hours per day are they on Facebook?
• Do they use Facebook even when surrounded by friends?
 Major Research Approaches

1) Descriptive

2) Correlational
 Correlational
Test the association between two variables

Measure X Measure Y

X Y

Facebook Loneliness
Use
 Correlational
Positive Correlation Negative Correlation
1.2 1.2

1 1

Loneliness
Loneliness

0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Facebook Use Facebook Use

Correlation coefficient (r): A measure of the strength of the

linear relationship between two variables.
 Correlational Approach

Correlation = Causation
 David Hume’s
Principle of Association

It is a habit of mind
that a constantly
conjoined pair of
events is seen as
causally related.
“Why Ice Cream Should Be Blamed For Murder”

Positive correlation between ice cream and murder

 Why Correlations Do Not Establish
Causality

1) Problem of Facebook Loneliness

directionality Use Level

2) The third-variable Facebook Loneliness

problem Use Level

Shyness
Spurious Correlations
Spurious Correlations
 Major Research Approaches

1) Descriptive

2) Correlational

3) Experimental
 Experimental
Manipulate one variable (X) to determine its effect on another variable (Y)

Manipulate X Measure Y

X Y

Independent Dependent
Variable Variable

Facebook Loneliness
Use Level
 Experimental

Yes
Condition 1
Facebook
Loneliness
VERSUS
Level

Condition 2
No
Facebook

Independent Dependent
Variable Variable
 Experimental
Why is it important to randomly assign participants to
conditions?

Randomization helps ensure that the only thing that is being

manipulated in the experiment is the independent variable
The Primacy of Social Information
Consciousness
Binocular Rivalry

Tong et al. (1998)

Does gossip influence what we are conscious of?
 Anderson et al. Page 7

Fig. 1.
NIH-PA Author Manuscript

Example of gossip stimuli. Examples of structurally neutral faces paired with: (A) negative
gossip; (B) positive gossip; (C) neutral gossip; (D) negative non-social information; (E)
positive non-social information; (F) neutral non-social information. See Supporting Online
Materials for a complete list of sentences.
NIH-PA Author

Fig. 2.
Anderson et al. (2011)
 Does gossip influence what we are conscious of?

2600 2600
Face Dominance (ms)

Face Dominance (ms)

2400 2400
2200 2200
2000 2000
1800 1800
1600 1600
1400 1400
1200 1200
1000 1000
Negative Positive Neutral Negative Positive Neutral

Social Judgment Type Non-social Judgment Type

Adapted from Anderson et al. (2011)

Part 4: Course Policies and Expectations
Syllabus and Textbook
Optional Live Zoom Meetings
Tuesdays 10am – 11am
Media Analysis Report
Due July 4th
 Midterm and Final Exams

1) Is this an easy or hard course?

 Midterm and Final Exams

1) Is this an easy or hard course?

2) How do you create exam questions?

A fair and meaningful exam needs to do at least two things:

A) Test students’ basic understanding of the course material

B) Distinguish between different levels of understanding that students have of course material

Questions that can be answered Questions that can be answered Questions that can be answered
with a minimal understanding of with a fairly strong understanding with a very strong understanding
the material of the material of the material
 Midterm and Final Exams

1) Is this an easy or hard course?

2) How do you create exam questions?

A fair and meaningful exam needs to do at least two things:

A) Test students’ basic understanding of the course material

B) Distinguish between different levels of understanding that students have of course material

3) How will exams be structured?

A) Open-book and online on Quercus
B) 1.5 minutes per point on the exam
C) Backtracking not enabled
 The Good News

1) Policy on curving grades

If the final course average is below 66%, I will increase everyone’s final grade to reach that level.

2) Interaction points
You can earn up to six Interaction Points that can be used to reduce the weight of your lower-scoring midterm exam.

3) Putting grades into a broader perspective