WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?

Social psychology is a science that studies the influences of our situations, with special attention to how
we view and affect one another. More precisely, it is the scientific study of how people think about,
influence, and relate to one another.

Social psychology lies at psychology’s boundary with sociology.

Compared with sociology (the study of people in groups and societies), social psychology focuses more
on individuals and uses more experimentation.
Compared with personality psychology, social psychology focuses less on individuals’ differences and
more on how individuals, in general, view and affect one another.

The Power of Situations

The tragic case of kitty Genovese is an example of the topics that are of interest to social psychology.
In 1964, Kitty returned to her home at 3 AM and has been assaulted by a guy who followed her. It was
reported that 38 of her neighbors watched the assault from their windows. No one has stepped down to
help her and nor did they call the police. Everyone thought that the other guy had already called the
police. This has become known as the bystander effect.

The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in
an emergency situation, against a bully, or during an assault or other crime. The greater the number of
bystanders, the less likely it is for any one of them to provide help to a person in distress.
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY’S BIG IDEAS

1. We Construct Our Social Reality

▪ Does our social behavior depend more on the objective situations we face or how we construe
them?
▪ We humans have an irresistible urge to explain behavior, to attribute it to some cause, and
therefore to make it seem orderly, predictable, and controllable. You and I may react differently
to similar situations because we think differently.
▪ Social cognition matters. Our behavior is influenced not just by the objective situation but also
by how we construe it.

2. Our social Intuitions are often powerful but sometimes perilous

▪ Dual processing - thinking, memory, and attitudes all operate on two levels—one conscious and
deliberate, the other unconscious and automatic.
▪ Even our intuitions about ourselves often err. We intuitively trust our memories more than we
should. We misread our own minds; in ex - periments, we deny being affected by things that do
influence us. We mispredict our own feelings.
▪ Our social intuitions, then, are noteworthy for both their powers and their perils. By reminding
us of intuition’s gifts and alerting us to its pitfalls, social psychologists aim to fortify our thinking.
In most situations
3. Social Influences Shape Our Behavior

▪ We are, as Aristotle long ago observed, social animals. We speak and think in words we learned
from others. We long to connect, to belong, and to be well thought of.
▪ As social creatures, we respond to our immediate contexts. Sometimes the power of a social
situation leads us to act contrary to our expressed attitudes. Indeed, powerfully evil situations
sometimes overwhelm good intentions, induc ing people to agree with falsehoods or comply
with cruelty.
▪ Our cultures help define our situations. For example, our standards regarding promptness,
frankness, and clothing vary with our culture.
▪ Social psychologist Hazel Markus (2005) sums it up: “People are, above all, malleable.” Said
differently, we adapt to our social context. Our attitudes and behavior are shaped by external
social forces.

4. Personal Attitudes and Dispositions Also Shape Behavior

▪ Internal forces - Inner attitudes about specific situations

▪ Personality dispositions - Different people may react differently while facing the same situation
▪ Attitudes and personality influence behavior.

5. Social Behavior Is Biologically Rooted

▪ Many of our social behaviors reflect biological influences

▪ Evolutionary psychology proposes: Natural selection predisposes our actions and reactions,
Natural selection also endows us with the capacity to learn and adapt to our social environment
Our inherited human nature predisposes us to behave in ways that helped our ancestors survive
and reproduce. We carry the genes of those whose traits enabled them and their children to
survive and reproduce. Thus, evolutionary psychologists ask how natural selection might
predispose our actions and reactions when dating and mating, hating and hurting, caring and
sharing. Nature also endows us with an enormous capacity to learn and to adapt to varied
environments. We are sensitive and responsive to our social context.
▪ Social neuroscience - We are bio-psycho-social organisms
We reflect the interplay of our biological, psychological, and social influences.

Natural Selection - The Darwinian concept of “natural selection” proposes that in the course of our
prehistoric past, those members of the species who possessed characteristics that were adaptive in a
given environment-- that is- useful for survival, were able to live long enough to mate, to produce
offspring, and thus to pass on these adaptive characteristics to their offspring

“Human nature” refers to characteristics and behavioral tendencies that are shared by all of us, across
different cultures, apparently because they were adaptive- useful for survival.

An Example: Anxiety is a Product of Natural selection

  In our pre-history, those members of the species who were readily anxious, for example, saw the
tiger, perceived it as dangerous, and ran away. They lived longer and passed on these anxious
genes to their children.

 Evolutionary psychology reminds us that our inherited human nature predisposes us to behave in
ways that helped our ancestors to survive and reproduce, that is- to have children, who in their
turn also had children, so the tendency that was adaptive had evolved from generation to
generation.

Social Neuroscience - An integration of biological and social perspectives that explores the neural and
psychological bases of social and emotional behaviors

 Every psychological event, e.g. thoughts, feelings etc is also a biological event

 Whatever happens in our mind has its basis in our brain, as we have learned with the advent of
the brain-imaging techniques such as MRI

 Brain, mind, and behavior function together

 Stress hormones (biology) affect how feel (mind) and how we act (behavior)

6. Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable in Everyday Life

Social psychology has the potential to illuminate your life, to make visible the subtle influences that
guide your thinking and acting.

Social psychology is all about life—your life: your beliefs, your attitudes, your relationships.

 How to know ourselves better

 Implications for human health

 Implications for judicial procedures

 Influencing behaviors

Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology

Values differ not only across time but also across cultures. Values also influence the types of people who
are attracted to various disciplines. Finally, values obviously enter the picture as the object of social-
psychological analysis. Social psychologists investigate how values form, why they change, and how they
influence attitudes and actions

Not-So-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology

 Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology

 ▪ Research topics

▪ Types of people

▪ Object of social-psychological analysis

➢ How values form

➢ Why they change

➢ How they influence attitudes and actions

culture - The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and
transmitted from one generation to the next.

social representations - Socially shared beliefs— widely held ideas and values, including our
assumptions and cultural ideologies. Our social representations help us make sense of our world.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS CONTAIN HIDDEN VALUES

Psychological concepts contain hidden values

- psychologists’ own values may play an important part in the theories and judgments they
support.

 Defining the Good Life - values influence our idea of the best way to live our lives.

 Professional Advice - psychological advice also reflects the advice giver’s personal values.

 Forming Concepts - Hidden values even seep into psychology’s research-based concepts. They
permeate popular psychology books that offer guidance on living and loving.

 Labeling - Value judgments, then, are often hidden within our social- psychological language—
but that is also true of everyday language

As these examples indicate, values lie hidden within our cultural definitions of mental health, our
psychological advice for living, our concepts, and our psychological labels

Research Methods: How We Do Social Psychology

In their quest for insight, social psychologists propose theories that organize their observations and
imply testable hypotheses and practical predictions. To test a hypothesis, social psychologists may do
research that predicts behavior using correlational studies, often conducted in natural settings. Or they
may seek to explain behavior by conducting experiments that manipulate one or more factors under
controlled conditions. Once they have conducted a research study, they explore ways to apply their
findings to improve people’s everyday lives.

 Forming and Testing Hypotheses

  Theory - Integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Theories
not only summarize but also imply testable predictions, called hypotheses.

 Hypotheses

➢ Testable proposition that describes a relationship that may exist between

events

➢ It allow us to test a theory by suggesting how we might try to falsify it.

➢ give direction to research and sometimes send investigators looking for things
they might never have thought of.

Characteristics of a good theory:

 Effectively summarizes many observations, and

 Makes clear predictions that we can use to:

➢ confirm or modify the theory,

➢ generate new exploration, and
➢ suggest practical applications.

Social-psychological research varies by location. It can take place in the labora tory (a controlled
situation) or in the field (everyday situations). And it varies by method—whether correlational (asking
whether two or more factors are naturally associated) or experimental (manipulating some factor to see
its effect on another).

field research - Research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory

Correlation Research - the study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables.

Correlations indicate a relationship, but that relationship is not necessarily one of cause and effect.

Survey research – used to obtain information from a certain population.

Random sample - Survey procedure in which every person in the population being studied has
an equal chance of inclusion.

Potential biasing influences in survey research:

▪ Unrepresentative Samples - How closely the sample represents the population under study
greatly matters.
▪ Order of Questions - defines a condition in which the order of your questions and answer
options can affect how respondents give feedback.
▪ Response Options – how choices are worded can affect the respondent’s feedback
▪ Wording of Questions - Survey questioning is a very delicate matter. Even subtle changes in the
tone of a question can have marked effects
Experimental Research - Studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or
more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant).

Control: Manipulating variables

Independent variable - Experimental factor that a researcher manipulates

Dependent variable - Variable being measured; depends on manipulations of the independent variable

Experimental Research: Searching for Cause and Effect

random assignment - The process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that
all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition. (Note the distinction between random
assignment in experiments and random sampling in surveys. Random assignment helps us infer cause
and effect. Random sampling helps us generalize to a population.)

▪ Process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have
the same chance of being in a given condition
▪ Eliminates extraneous factors

The Ethics of Experimentation

▪ Mundane realism - Degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations.

▪ Experimental realism - Degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants. It
should engage the participants. Experimenters do not want their people consciously playacting
or ho- humming it; they want to engage real psychological processes.
▪ Deception - In research, an effect by which participants are misinformed or misled about the
study’s methods and purposes. (Achieving experimental realism sometimes requires deceiving
people with a plausible cover story. If the person in the next room actually is not receiving the
shocks, the experimenter does not want the participants to know that. That would destroy the
experimental realism)

Experiment need not to have mundane realism but should have experimental realism

demand characteristics - Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected.

Ethical principles mandate investigators to do the following:

• Tell potential participants enough about the experiment to enable their informed consent.

• Be truthful. Use deception only if essential and justified by a significant purpose and not “about
aspects that would affect their willingness to participate.”

• Protect participants (and bystanders, if any) from harm and significant discomfort.

informed consent - An ethical principle requiring that research participants be told enough to enable
them to choose whether they wish to participate.
• Treat information about the individual participants confidentially.

• Debrief participants. Fully explain the experiment afterward, including any deception. The only
exception to this rule is when the feedback would be distressing, such as by making participants realize
they have been stupid or cruel.

Debriefing - In social psychology, it is the post-experimental explanation of a study to its participants.

Debriefing usually discloses any deception and often queries participants regarding their understandings
and feelings.

SPOTLIGHTS AND ILLUSIONS

Spotlight effect – The belief that others are paying more attention to one’s appearance and
behavior than they really are.
illusion of transparency – The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily
read by others
Example: Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky (2000) explored the spotlight
effect by having individual Cornell University students don embarrassing Barry Manilow T-shirts
before entering a room with other students. The self- conscious T-shirt wearers guessed that
nearly half their peers would notice the shirt. Actually, only 23 percent did.
The spotlight effect and the related illusion of transparency are but two of many examples of
the interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds. Here are more examples:
▪ Social surroundings affect our self-awareness - When we are the only member of our
race, gender, or nationality in a group, we notice how we differ and how others are
reacting to our difference.
▪ Self-interest colors our social judgment - When problems arise in a close relationship
such as marriage, we usually attribute more responsibility to our partners than to
ourselves.
▪ Self-concern motivates our social behavior - In hopes of making a positive impression,
we agonize about our appearance.
▪ Social relationships help define our self - How we think of ourselves is linked to the
person we’re with at the moment
SELF-CONCEPT: Who Am I?
▪ Self-concept - A person’s answers to the question, “Who am I?”
▪ Self-schema - Beliefs about self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant
information.
▪ Schemas - are mental templates by which we organize our worlds.
▪ Possible selves - Images of what we dream of or dread becoming in the future. They
also include the self we fear becoming.

The self-concept has become a major social-psychological focus because it helps organize our
thinking and guide our social behavior. But what determines our self-concepts?
Influencers of our Self-concept:
▪ the roles we play
▪ the social identities we form
▪ the comparisons we make with others
▪ our successes and failures
▪ how other people judge us
▪ the surrounding culture
THE ROLES WE PLAY - As we enact a new role—college student, parent, salesperson—we initially feel
self-conscious. Gradually, however, what begins as playacting in the theater of life is absorbed into our
sense of self.

SOCIAL COMPARISONS How do we decide if we are rich, smart, or short? One way is through social
com parisons. Others around us help to define the standard by which we define ourselves as rich or
poor, smart or dumb, tall or short: We compare ourselves with them and consider how we differ.

social comparison Evaluating one’s abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.

Social comparisons can also diminish our satisfaction. When we experience an increase in
affluence, status, or achievement, we “compare upward”—we raise the standards by which we
evaluate our attainments.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
Self-concept is fed not only by our roles, our social identity, and our comparisons but also by
our daily experiences. To undertake challenging yet realistic tasks and to succeed is to feel more
competent.
OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS
When people think well of us, it helps us think well of ourselves. Children whom others label as
gifted, hardworking, or helpful tend to incorporate such ideas into their self-concepts and
behavior
The looking-glass self was how sociologist Charles H. Cooley described our use of how we think
others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves.
Fellow sociologist George Herbert Mead refined this concept, noting that what matters for our
self-concepts is not how others actually see us but the way we imagine they see.
SELF AND CULTURE
For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures, individualism prevails.
Individualism – The concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining
one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.
Identity is self-contained. Adolescence is a time of separating from parents, becoming self-
reliant, and defining one’s personal, independent self.
Individualism flourishes when people experience affluence, mobility, urbanism, and mass
media.
SELF AND CULTURE
Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a greater value on
collectivism.
Collectivism – Giving priority to the goals of one’s groups (often one’s extended family or work
group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.
They nurture what Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Markus call the interdependent self
(construing one’s identity in relation to others).
Pigeonholing cultures as solely individualist or collectivist oversimplifies, because within any
culture individualism varies from person to person.
There are individualist Chinese and collectivist Americans, and most of us sometimes behave
communally, sometimes individualistically.
Individualism-collectivism also varies across a country’s regions and political views.
Conservatives tend to be economic individualists (“don’t tax or regulate me”) and moral
collectivists (“legislate against immorality”).
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be economic collectivists (supporting national health care)
and moral individualists (“keep your laws off my body”).
The independent self acknowledges relationships with others.
The interdependent self is more deeply embedded in others

Self-Knowledge
“Know thyself,” admonished an ancient Greek oracle. We certainly try. We readily form beliefs
about ourselves, and we in Western cultures don’t hesitate to explain why we feel and act as
we do. But how well do we actually know ourselves?
PREDICTING OUR BEHAVIOR
People err when predicting their behavior.
Dating couples tend to predict the longevity of their relationships through rose-colored glasses.
Their friends and family often know better, report Tara MacDonald and Michael Ross (1997).
Among University of Waterloo students, their roommates were better predictors of whether
their romances would survive than they were.
One of the most common errors in behavior prediction is underestimating how long it will take to
complete a task (called the planning fallacy)

planning fallacy - The tendency to under estimate how long it will take to complete a task

PREDICTING OUR FEELINGS

Many of life’s big decisions involve predicting our future feelings.
Sometimes we know how we will feel—if we fail that exam, win that big game, or soothe our
tensions with a half-hour jog. We know what exhilarates us and what makes us anxious or
bored. Other times we may mispredict our responses.
Studies of “affective forecasting” reveal that people have greatest difficulty predicting the
intensity and the duration of their future emotions.
individualism The concept of giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s
identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. collectivism Giving priority to
the goals of one’s groups (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity
accordingly. interdependent self Construing one’s identity in relation to others.

Our intuitive theory seems to be: We want. We get. We are happy.

But study after study reveals our vulnerability to impact bias —overestimating the enduring
impact of emotion-causing events.
Moreover, we are especially prone to impact bias after negative events.
People neglect the speed and the power of their psychological immune system, which includes
their strategies for rationalizing, discounting, forgiving, and limiting emotional trauma.

PREDICTING OUR FEELINGS

Being largely ignorant of our psychological immune system is called immune neglect.
- The human tendency to underestimate the speed and the strength of the “psychological
immune system,” which enables emotional recovery and resilience after bad things happen.