SOCPSY 1Z03 MIDTERM NOTES

Week 2: What is Social Psychology?

Definition of Social Psychology
- “The systematic study of the nature and causes of human social behaviour”
- Bridges the interests of Psychology (emphasis on the individual) and Sociology (emphasis on social structure)
- Interested in WHAT people do and WHY they do it
Core Concerns of Social Psychology
- The impact ONE individual has on ANOTHER
→ people make a great impact on each other
→ direct and explicit
→ indirect and implicit
- The impact that a GROUP has on its INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS
→ establishment of rules and norms - norms are the informal rules that govern our behaviour
→ made aware of norms after someone violates them
- The impact that INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS have on the GROUP they belong to
→ impact goes both ways
→ commonly seen in leadership
- The impact that ONE GROUP has on ANOTHER GROUP
→ groups impact groups
→ area of research: intergroup conflict
- The impact of SOCIAL CONTEXT and SOCIAL STRUCTURE on GROUPS and INDIVIDUALS
→ the individual shapes society
Key Social Psychological Theoretical Perspectives
Symbolic Interactionism
→ The predominant perspective to the sociological approach to social psychology
→ Developed by Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead in the early 20th century
→ “Symbolic Interactionism” was coined by Herbert Blumer (student of Mead’s)
→ SI theorists understand the world as the product of the everyday interactions of people
SI - Blumer’s SI Premises
- People act towards things based on the meaning those things have for them
- These meanings are derived through social interaction and are NOT inherent
- Meanings can be modified and changed through social interaction
SI - Concepts
- Situated Identity - how we see ourselves in relation to others in a given social situation
- Role Taking - when we imagine ourselves in the role of the person we are interacting with
- Looking Glass Self - how we perceive how others perceive us
→ Three elements:
→ Imagine how we appear to others
→ Imagine the other person’s reaction to our appearance
→ Respond with some sort of feeling; shame, pride, guilt, happiness
 Group Processes
→ The ‘group’ as a social psychological entity
What is a group?
→ Two or more people
→ Become an ‘us’
→ Dependence on one another
→ Rules, roles, norms, power structures
GP - Concepts
- Social Exchange
→ Cost-benefit ideology; the benefits outweigh the cost
→ Subjective
- Status
→ The position that one holds in a society or a group
→ Situationally dependent
Social Structure and Personality
→ Focuses on the bigger picture
→ Looking at individual feelings, attitudes, and behaviours in relation to social structures
What are Social Structures?
→ Relationships between groups of individuals
→ Ex. social class, religion, family, school, mass media, etc…
→ These forms of social structures influence our personalities (values, feelings, thoughts, etc)
Cognitive Perspective
→ Psychologists in the field focus on cognitive perspective/theory
→ Emphasis placed on mental activities as determinants of social behaviour
→ Cognitive processes are an intervening factor between external stimuli and behavioral responses
Concepts Relating to Cognitive Perspectives
→ Cognitions - ‘mental processes of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience,
and the senses’
→ Cognitive Structure - Cognitions as interrelated
- Emphasis on how they are structured and the effect on behaviour and judgment
→ Schemas - A blueprint of people and things
Social Identity Theory
→ Developed by Tajfel and Turner in the late 1970s-1980s
→ This theory argues our identification with social structures guides our cognitive processes
→ The individual must identify with the group for there to be an effect
Evolutionary Theory
→ The psychological and social aspects are linked to the biological (our behaviour is genetic)
 → This approach is linked to Darwin’s theory of evolution
→ Ex. parenting (why men are less invested in parenting is because they are less involved in producing; they
don’t carry the child)
Week 3: How Do We Study Social Phenomena?/Socialization
Definition of Empirical Research
- “The systematic investigation of observable phenomena (behaviour, events) in the world”
- Relies on observable and measurable phenomena
Research Methods
- Surveys
- Field studies
- Content analysis
- experiments
1. Surveys
- Popular source of data
- Set of questions geared toward collecting informatio about a person or a group
- Relies on self reporting
Strengths:
→ Generally expensive
→ Potential clear picture of the phenomena under study
→ Glimpse into infrequent or private behaviours
Weaknesses:
→ Problems with self reporting (dishonest, inaccurate information)
2. Field Studies
- Observation of everyday life
- Unobtrusive measures
- Participant observation
Strengths:
→ Real world behaviour
→ Study private and sensitive matters (unobtrusive)
→ In-depth understandings
Weaknesses:
→ Significsant effect of data recording method chosen
→ The issue of consent
→ Time consuming
3. Archival Research
- The analysis of data that has already been collected by others
 - Sources of archival data
→ Government
→ Universities
→ Formal organizations
- Content Analysis: The systematic study of documents to identify themes and make inferences based on these
themes.
- Example: Criminalization of HIV non-disclosure
→ Speakman (2017) “Constructing an ‘HIV Killer: HIV non-disclosure and the techniques of vilification”
→ Content analysis of:
→ Legal documents
→ Newspaper articles
→ Online discussions
Strengths:
→ Inexpensive
→ Less time consuming
→ Socio-historical analysis
Weaknesses:
→ Level of control over quality of information
→ Difficulty creating reliable and valid study
→ Inconsistent or missing information in archives
4. Experiments
- High level of control
- They are composed of 2 characteristics
→ Independent variables must be manipulated
→ Participants must be assigned randomly
- Lab Experiment:
→ Researchers have more control (can control the physical environment)
- Field Experiment:
→ Less control
→ More generalizable
→ Mitigation of reactivity
Strengths:
- High level of internal validity
- More Researcher control
Weaknesses:
- Limits to what can be studied
- Ethical concerns
 - Costly
- Subject effects and experimenter effects
- Low external validity
Research Ethics
Ethics
- Protecting and respecting research participants
- Ethics approach is required for any research involving human subjects
- The Nurmberg Trials and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
Protecting Our Participants
- Volunteering
- Informed consent
- Avoiding harm
- Ensuring confidentiality
Sources of Harm
- Physical
- Psychological
- Breach of confidentiality
Definition of Socialization
- “The ways in which individuals learn and re-create skills, knowledge, values, motives and roles appropriate to
their positions in a group or society” (Delamater et al)
- The process by which we are “taught” society’s norms and values
The Developmental Perspective
- Emphasis on nature
- Development of social behaviours, physical and neurological
Social Learning Perspective
→ Emphasis on nurture
→ Process of learning the shared meanings of those in the child’s respective group
→ Adaptive nature of socialization
Interpretive Perspective
→ Socialization occurs primarily through social interaction
→ Cultural routines
→ Child as active agents
Impact of Social Structure on Socialization
- Socialization influenced and shaped by social structure
- Socialization a product of group life
- We learn what to expect of others and what others can expect of us
Four Components of Socialization
 - An agent
- A learning process
- A target
- An outcome
Agents of Socialization
- People and groups that influence our self concepts and our understanding of society as a whole
Family
→ Most important agent
→ first introduction to a system of values, norms, and roles
→ attachment can impact development
Peers
→ Form relationships on their own terms (‘choose’ their friends)
→ Interactions without direct adult supervision
→ Less of a power dynamic then family
School
→ Function of school is to socialize
→ Exposure to a different set of skills and expectations
→ Public evaluation and social comparison (Learning to improve, learning about fairness, and impacts the
sense of self)
Mass Media
→ Become more influential in recent years
→ Shapes our perceptions and our ‘scripts’
- What is a Script?
→ A sequence of behaviours, actions, and consequences that are expected in a particular situation
→ Scripts rely on our prior knowledge to help us navigate our social situations and include
behaviours, roles, and props
Processes of Socialization
Instrumental Conditioning
→ Aka Operant conditioning
→ “a process where in a persona learns what response to make in a situation in order to obtain a positive
reinforcement or avoid a negative reinforcement” (Delamater et al)
→ Entrinsic and Intrinsic motivation
→ Self-efficacy
Observational Learning
→ Aka, modelling
→ Children learn rituals, roles, and bahviours from watching adults
Internalization
 → The individual has accepted the values, norms, ideologies, and no longer requires external rewards
→ Leads to self-control
Outcomes of Socialization
Gender Roles
- The gender assigned to the infant (boy or girl) has a major influence in the socialization and life experiences
of that child
- Every society has differential expectations regarding the characteristics and behaviour of men and women
- In the U.S, men traditionally have been expected to be competent–competitive, logical, able to make decisions
easily, ambitious.
- Women have been expected to be high in warmth and expressiveness—gentle, sensitive, tactful
- Parents employ these or other expectations as guidelines in socializing their children
- Infants labeled male are handled more vigorously and roughly
- Infants labeled female are given more cuddling
- Mothers and fathers differ in the way they interact with infants
→ mothers engage in behaviour oriented toward fulfilling the child’s physical and emotional needs
→ fathers engage the child in rough-and-tumble, physically stimulating activity
→ fathers mostly do this with their sons rather than daughters
Linguistic Competence
Language:
- Using language to communicate with others is a prerequisite for full participation in social groups
- Three main components
→ the sound system (phonology)
→ the words and their associated meanings (lexicon)
→ the rules for combining words into meaningful utterances (grammar)
→ Young children seem to acquire these in sequence
→ mastering meaningful sounds
→ learning words
→learning sentences
- Language acquisition in the first 3 years passes through four stages:
→ The pre-speech stage: lasts 10 months, involves speech perception, speech production, and early intentional
communication
→ The second or first word stage: occurs at 10-14 months and involves the infant’s recognition that things
have names
→ The first sentence stage: occurs at 18-22 months, “See truck, mommy”.
→ The grammaticization stage: occurs at 24-30 months. The child’s use of language now reflects the
fundamentals of grammar. They will apply rules indiscriminately. (ex. “He runned”)
Cognitive Competence
 - Children must develop the ability to represent in their own minds the features of the world around them
- The child’s basic tasks are to learn the regularities of the physical and social environment and to store past
experience in a form that can be used in current situations
- At 12-14 months, children use a few very general schemas (dog, cat, bird)
- Young children at 6-8 years old rely on visual features (colour or word length)
- Older children (aged 10-12) increasingly use functional categories (foods, and sort objects into fewer groups)
Moral Development
- “The process through which children become capable of making moral judgments”
Knowledge of Social Rules
- To interact effectively with others, people must learn the social rules that govern interaction and in general to
adhere to them.
- Without norms, coordinated activity would be very difficult, and it would be hard/impossible to achieve our
goals
- What influences which norms children will learn?
→ the general culture
→ the position of the family within society
→ parents adjust their expectations to the particular child
Socializing Agents
- The Role of Parents
- Parents ‘Breaking the Rules’
- Peers
- Teachers
Moral Judgement
- Piaget concluded there are 3 bases for moral judgments:
→ amount of harm/benefit
→ actor’s intentions
→ the application of agreed-upon rules or norms
- Kohlberg extended Piaget’s work by analyzing the reasoning by which people reach moral judgments
- Kohlberg proposed a developmental model with 3 levels of moral reasoning, each level involving 2 stages.
- He argued that the progression from stage 1 to stage 6 is a standard or universal one.
The Life Course and The Three Main Components
The Life Course
- “The individuals progression through a series of age-linked social roles imbedded in social situations, and the
important influences that shape the life course that one experiences”
- The examination of the life course is organized around three broad questions:
→ What are the major components of the life course?
 → What are the major influences on progression through the life course? That is, what causes people’s careers
to follow the oaths they do?
→ in what ways do historical trends and events modify the typical life course pattern?
3 Main Components of the Life Course
Careers: “a sequence of roles–each with it’s own set of activities– that a person enacts during their life time.
- Our most important careers are in three major social domains:
→ family and friends
→ education
→ work
- The careers of one person differ from those of another in three ways:
→ in the roles that make up the careers
→ the order in which the roles are performed
→ the timing and duration of role-related activities
Identities and Self-Esteem
- Role Identities: “conceptions of the self in specific roles”
- Identities are negotiated
- Self-esteem: “one’s sense of how goof and worthy one is”
- Self-esteem is influenced by one’s achievements
Stress and Satisfaction
- Performing career activities often produces positive feelings, such as satisfaction, and negative feelings,
including stress
- These feelings reflect how we experience the quality of our lives
- Stress: “the demands made on a person exceed the individuals ability to cope with them”
Week 4: Self, Identity, and Impression Management
Definition of Self
- Our sense of who we are as individuals
- The source and object of reflexive behaviour
→ ‘the actions of one individual and the individual toward whom the actions are intended are the same’
- The self as both Active and Passive
Self-Differentiation
- We must distinguish our own faces and bodies from those of others.
- Infants are not born with this ability
- Cognitive growth and continuing tactile exploration of their bodies contribute to infants’ discovery of their
physical uniquness
- Studies of when children can recognize themselves in the mirror suggest that most children are able to
discriminate their own image from other’s by 18 months
 - A mature sense of self entails recognizing that our thoughts and feelings are our private possessions
- The distinction between self and nonself sharpens as social experience and cognitive growth bring children to
realize that their own private awareness of self is not directly accessible to others
- Changes in the way children talk also reveal their dawning realization that the self has access to private
information
- Descriptions of the self focus on what one does–on physical action and on cognitive and affective reactions to
others
Role-Taking
- “The process of imaginatively occupying the position of another person and viewing the self and the situation
from the one’s perspective”
- Another important step in the development of self
- Recognizng that one is physically and mentally differentiated from others is only one step in the genesis of
self
- They can then act toward themselves to praise, to reprimand, and to control or regulate their own behaviour
- Studies indicate that children develop the ability to infer the thoughts and expectations of others between 4
and 6.
Cooley’s Looking Glass Self
- “The person imagines how they apprear to someone, how the other judges that appearance, and experiences
pride or shame as a result”
- Self as social object
- Perception of self is based on the perception of others’ perspective
- The image of our self is acquired through social relationships
→ Significant others: “the people whose reflected views have greatest influence on the child’s self”
Mead’s Play and Game
- 2 stages to the emergence of self
- Play:
→ Imitating roles they see enacted by adults through play
→ they do not recognize that each role is intertwined with others nor do they understand that the same person
simultaneously holds several roles
- Game:
→ More complex; taking on the roles of those around them
→ role taking at the game stage requires children to imagine the viewpoints of several others at the same time
The Generalized Other
- ‘A conception of the attitudes and expectations held in common by the members of the organized groups with
whom they interact’
- When we imagine what the group expects of us, we are taking on the role of the generalized other
 - Repeated involvement in organized activities lets children see that their own actions are part of a pattern of
interdependent group activity
Role Identities
- Role identities: the role that we play in relation to the social group that we are in
- Our identities are constructed by observing our own behaviour and the response we received based on our
enactment of those roles.
- Societal expectations kind of dictate the performances.
- Role identities highlight the impact on self of social structure via reciprocal relationships with occupants of
complementary roles
- Several influences affect the way we make the roles we enact. Conventional role expectations in society set a
general framework.
- Within the boundaries set by these expectations, we can fashion our actual role performances to reflect our
personal characteristics and competencies
Social Identities
- Social identities: based on our social categories or groups (race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, class,
gender, sexuality, etc.)
→ these groups/social categories often have defining characteristics associated with them.
→ When you identify with the group, their characteristics also become a part of your identity.
Reflected Appraisals
- “The idea that the person bases the self-schema on the reactions they perceive from others during social
interaction
- The concept of reflected appraisals refers to the content of one’s self-schema; Cooley’s looking glass self
describes the process by which these appraisals become a part of the self.
- Felson has studied the relative influence of parents and peers on the self-perceptions of 4th-8th graders about
the academic ability, athletic ability, and physical attractiveness.
- Typically, a persons self-ratings are related more closely to their perceived ratings by others than to the actual
ratings by others
- Others rarely provide full, honest feedback about their reactions to us
- The feedback we do receive is often inconsistent and even contradictory
- The feedback is frequently ambiguous and difficult to interpret
- It may be in the form of gestures, facial expressions, or remarks
Situated Self
- “Subset of self-concepts chosen from our identities, qualities, and self-evaluation that constitutes the self we
know in a particular situation”
- The self in particular situations
→ this is who we are in particular situations
- Multiple identities make up the self
 → because the self is made up of multiple identities and each identity suggested its own line of actions that
may not always be compatible
→ sometimes the current situation can lead to some conflict with these identities
Identity Salience and Salience Hierarchy
Identity Salience
- Our commitment to particular identities
- Which identity is more prominent
Salience Hierarchy
- “Their relative importance to the self-schema. This hierarchy exerts a major influence on our decision to enact
one or another identity”
- More salient identities will be enacted with more frequency
- More salient identities will be enacted in more situations
- More salient identities are less situational
- Conform more with role expectations of salient identities
- The importance we attach to a role identity is affected by:
→ the resources we have invested in constructing the identity
→ the extrinsic rewards that enacting the identity has brought
→ the intrinsic gratifications derived from performing the identity
→ the amount of self-esteem staked on enacting the identity well
Self-Esteem
- “The evaluative component of self-concept”
- Our overall self-esteem depends on:
→ which characteristics of self are contingencies of self-esteem
→ how we evaluate each of them. Some of our specific role and social identities and personal qualities are
important to us;
- Contingencies of self-esteem: characteristics of self or categories of outcomes on which s person stakes
self-esteem
Self-presentation
- “The processes by which individuals attempt to control the impressions that others form of them in social
situations”
- Inherent in all social situations
- Authentic, ideal, and tactical
- Successful self-presentation involves efforts:
→ to establish a workable definition of the situation
→ to disclose information about the self that is consistent with the claimed identity.
Authentic Self-presentation
- Internalized sense of self
- Being who you think you are
Ideal Self-presentation
- Who you want to be or who you aspire to be
Tactical Self-presentation
- The self you present that is consistent with the expectations of others
Shared Definitions of a Situation
- For social interactions to run smoothly we need:
→ shared understanding of the situation
→ sense of situated identity
→ shared sense of interaction goals, appropriate actions and behaviours
Tactical Impression Management
- Conscious decision to control information in an interaction to influence impressions
- Why do we do this?
→ to get people to like us
→ to get people to respect us
→ to get people to fear us
→ to get people to feel sorry for us
Ingratiation
- “Attempts to increase a target person’s liking for us”
- The original theory included the assumption that these attempts are conscious, but subsequent work has
broadened the definition to include attempts that occur automatically due to social learning
Ingratiation Tactics:
- Opinion conformity - “faced with a target person who has discretionary power, an ingratiator may try to curry
favour by expressing insincere agreement on important issues”
- Other enhancement - “using flattery on the target person”
- Supplication - “convincing a target person that you are needy and deserving”
- Selective self-presentation - “involved the explicit presentation or description of one’s own attributes to
increase the likelihood of being judged attractive by the target
Aligning Actions
- “Attempts to define their apparently questionable conduct as actually in line with cultural or group norms”
- Results from an impression management ‘fail’
- How we neutralize the situation
- Disclaimers:
→ “a verbal assertion intended to ward off any negative implications of impending actions by defining these
actions as irrelevant to one’s established identity”
 - Accounts:
→ “the explanations people offer to mitigate responsibility after they have performed acts that threaten their
identities”
There are two main types of accounts:
→ excuses: reduce or deny one’s responsibility for the unsuitable behaviour by citing uncontrollable events
→ justifications: admit responsibility for the unsuitable behaviour but also try to define the behaviour as
appropriate under the circumstances
Altercasting
- “The use of tactics to impose roles and identities on others”
- Through altercasting, we place others in situated identities and roles that are to our advantage
- “I know you can do better than that”
- People use altercasting to pit someone of the defensive
Embarrassment and Saving Face
Embarrassment
- “The feeling we experience when the public identity we claim in an encounter is discredited”
- Sources of embarrassment:
→ people feel embarrassed if it becomes publicly apparent they lack the skills to perform in a manner
consistent with the identity they claim
→ violation of privacy norms
→ awkwardness or lack of poise
→ disruption of social interaction, fear of negative evaluation by others, inconsistency with self-image, and
loss of self-esteem
Restoring Face
- The embarrassed person will often apologize, provide an account, or otherwise realign their actions with the
normative order
- We can sometimes restore face through an exaggerated reassertion of that identity
Cooling Out
- “Refers to gently persuading a person whose performance is unsuitable to accept a less desirable, though still
reasonable, alternative identity”
- Cooling out actions usually protect the privacy of offenders, console them, and try to reduce their stress
→ Eased out of the role
→ Alternative identity options
→ Close relationships
Identity Degradation
- “The process of destroying the offender’s identity and transforming them into a lower social type”
→ Forced out of role
→ No adequate alternative identities
 → Dramatic degradation ceremony
Self-Disclosure
- Process of revealing, feelings/behaviours to others
- The more comfortable we get, the more we reveal - more authentic self
- Reciprocal process
Stigma
- “A characteristic widely viewed as an insurmountable handicap that prevented competent or morally
trustworthy behaviour”
- Can be based on something apparent or concealed
- Discredited stigma: tend to be stigmas that are apparent (having red hair, race, physical disability)
- Discreditable stigma: tend to be stigmas that are concealed (HIV, mental illness)
- A number of coping strategies:
→ Concealment
→ Remedy the Stigma
→ Overly pleasant
Week 5: Emotions
Definition of Emotions
- Emotions: short-lived reactions to some type of stimulus
Origins of Emotions - Classical Ideas
- Believes it is cognitive and internal (non-social)
- Charles Darwin believed some emotions/expressions were genetically encoded (if humans and animals had
the same ancestors, they would have similarities of emotional expression)
→ Survival of the fittest
- Sigmund Freud believed emotions can develop unconsciously (our emotions could develop without our
awareness)
- They provide the building blocks for future studies of emotions and how they’re expressed
The Universality of Emotions
- Facial expressions
- Argues that emotions may be universal if:
→ Similar facial expressions are produced by the same emotional state across individuals (involuntary)
→ Facial expressions are identified by many observers as meaning the same thing
Ekman Identified Six Universal Emotions:
→ Happiness
→ Sadness
→ Surprise
→ Fear
 → Anger
→ Disgust
Ekman’s Action Units
- Set of movements among a particular configuration of facial muscles
- In the late ’70s Ekman argued certain combination of action some type of emotion that is universal
across cultures
Facial Expression:
- Research has been done about looking at facial expressions (mostly in the elderly)
- People have a difficult time interpreting the neutral faces of the elderly
- Often they are interpreted as sad or angry due to wrinkles or drooping skin (sadness)
Cultural Differences and Emotions
- Not all emotions are universal (Germans vs. Americans)
- Emotional socialization - when it’s not okay to express joy, anger, sadness (we learn this through socialization)
- Cultural-emotional socialization (based on culture, this influences how we are socialized to experience and
express emotion) (some cultures, it’s okay to be really expressive. Others are socialized to be more reserved)
Emotional Display and Display Rules
- “Cultural norms that direct us to modify our facial expressions to ensure they are appropriate for the social
situation”
- Display rules are typically learned in childhood and sometimes becomes habits that automatically control
facial muscles
- Display rules may modify facial expressions of emotion in one of several ways, they may require:
→ greater intensity in expression of emotion
→ less intensity in expression of emotion
→ complete neutralization
→ masking one emotion with another one
Two-Factor Theory of Emotion
- “This theory proposes that emotional experience is the result of the following two-step sequence”
→ an event in the environment produces a physiological reaction
→ we notice the physiological reaction and search for an appropriate explanation
Peggy Thoit’s Four Factor Model
● (1) a situational stimulus (triggers the feeling)
● (2) physiological changes (crying, laughing)
● (3) expressive gesturing of some kind (big smile, stomping)
● (4) a label to identify a cluster of the first three (mad, jealous, happy)
- Sentiment: the social aspect of emotions that tends to be longer-term (love, grief)
- Moods: describe some type of emotional orientation that can last for hours or days (long-lasting)
Emotion Work and Feeling Rules
- Emotion Work: “An attempt to change the intensity or quality of feelings to bring them into line with the
requirements of the occasion”
- Feeling Rules: these rules dictate how one ought to feel in a given situation (there are rules for how we
express our feelings, ex: funeral)
- Surface Acting: changing the expression of our emotion (we are not feeling the emotion we are expressing)
- Deep Acting: transforms our emotional state (we pretend to be happy, then we actually start to feel happy)
- Emotion Labour: done for pay (they put on a certain emotional state for work in order to do a good job)