Topic 1: Introduction to Social Psychology

1.1 What is Social Psychology?

Social Psychology

Definition: The scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are
influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people. (Allport, 1985)

Meaning: Influenced by friends, family (people around us) to our thoughts, feelings and behaviours

Psychology: Scientific study of human mind and individual behaviour

Social: Derived from Latin word “friends”

Social influence

Definition: The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence (right in front of you; physically or in
mind) of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behaviour.

- To understand social influence, we need to understand how people perceive and interpret
the social world than understand the world objectively.

Construal

Definition: The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world.

Meaning: How you analyze, processing your social world (everything around us)

Example: First impression through observation

Where does construal come from: JUDGING

- The need to feel good about ourselves

- The need to be accurate (make sure behave accordingly)

These motives pull us in opposite directions - where to perceive the world accurately requires us to
face up to the fact that we have behaved foolishly or immorally.

Example: As society undergoing pandemic, people are compulsory to wear face mask in public
(construal)

Individual will tend to wear face mask to protect ourselves and others, to boost self-esteem by
protecting others so I wear face mask. (feel good)

Individual will wear face mask because other people are wearing it as well (accurate)

Individual sometimes will forget to wear face mask and realised everyone is wearing face mask so
individual have to pull up their shirt to cover their face. (foolishly and immorally)
The need to feel good about ourselves: The self-esteem approach. (it’s more to protecting our own
feeling; blame others instead of ownself because if it’s wrong, own self will feel bad)

Meaning: Even though you try to control the situation as good as you want, but sometimes it can
backfire you and make you behave immorally, where you distort the reality.

- What is actually happening?

- What is the factual information?
- But people try to ignore the fact because they want to protect themselves self esteem

People have strong need to maintain high self-esteem – that is the extent to which they view
themselves as good, competent and decent (people’s evaluation of their own self-worth)

The fact that people distort their interpretation of reality so that they feel better about themselves is
not surprising.

The need to be accurate: The social cognition approach. (relate to our brain function that going to
process things to be accurate), how they think about themselves and social world.

All people try to view the world as accurately as possible – social cognition (how people think about
themselves and the social world)

Social world: individual/group around you

Our expectations can even change the nature of the social world.

1.1.3 Social Interpretation

A variety of motives influence what we think, feel, and do:

- Biological and Physiological drives

Example: Hunger and thirst

- Fear
- Desire for rewards

Example: Love, favors

- Need for control

1. Control yourself
2. Control others

Example: scold person who never wear mask (trying to control their behavior) – construing situation

1.1.4 Social Psychology compared to Philosophy

Philosophy has been a major source of insight about human nature.

- Observe human nature like human behavior and start to ask question
The creativity and analytical thinking of philosophers are a major part of the foundation of present-
day psychology.

- Philosophers usually ask questions

- Social psychologists answer scientifically

Social psychologists address many of the same questions that philosophers address, but we attempt
to answer them scientifically.

Sociologists are more concerned with why a particular society or group within a society produces
behavior in its members.

Example: aggression

Sociology is concerned with topics such as social class, social structure, and social institutions.

1.2 Methods of Social Psychology

Why method is important?

Psychology/ Social psychology is a scientific study

- To make sense of vast amounts of data and communicate their conclusions to other
investigators

Method must be similar when doing same type of study

- Achieve consistency in the investigation and reporting of events

- History demonstrates the dangers of making judgments and decision on the basis of
authority, emotion, personal experience or common sense alone.

Social psychology: An empirical science

Scientific method of answering questions:

- The observational method

- The correlational method
- The experimental method

Observational method

- Focus on description
- Describe phenomenon by asking why is this happening
- What is the nature of the phenomenon? (question answered)

*Sometimes the things we observed might not accurate

Naturalistic observations
 - Observer objectively records the behavior of a participants in their natural environment
- It can be humans and also animals

Natural: spontaneous behavior is recorded in a natural setting.

- People not expecting to behave in certain ways and they behave naturally

Controlled: Behaviour is observed under controlled laboratory conditions.

- Have requirement depending on situation

Participant: The observer has direct contact with the group of people they are observing

- Interact with students in classroom

Non- participant: The researcher does not have direct contact with the people being observed.

- Sit at the back of the classroom and observe

Correlational method

- Relationship
- Predict whether there is a relationship or not
- From knowing X, can we predict Y?

It can be positive correlation, negative correlation and no correlation

Experimental method

- Causation
- Try to find the cause
- Is variable X a cause of variable Y

Correlation – relationship

Experimental – finding the cause

Observational – describing

1.2.2 An empirical Science

Problems – question

Hypothesis

Method – observe
Outcome

Theory

1.3 Ethical issues

Don’t want their researchers going haywire, going chaotic. Hence, they want to be in control but not
control the result and participants, but more likely to let research going smoothly and not going
offtopic.

- Avoid causing our pariticipants unnecessary stress, discomfort, or unpleasantness

Informed consent

Agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full awareness of the nature of the

experiment, which has been explained in advance.

Deception

Misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire.

*Not all research in social psychology involves deception

1.3.2 Guidelines for Ethical Research

- Having an Institutional Review Board approve their studies in advance. The American Psychological
Association has published a list of ethical principles that govern all research in psychology.

- Asking participants to sign informed consent forms.

- Treat information about the individual participants confidentially (e.g. personal questions)

- Debriefing participants afterwards about the purpose of study and what transpired, especially if
there was any deception involved.

- Protect research participants from physical/ emotional harm.

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

Impact on participants in deception studies find:

- People do not object to the kinds of mild discomfort and deceptions typically used in social
psychological research.
- Most who participated in deception experiments said they had learned more and enjoyed
the experiments more than those who participated in no deception experiments did.