Chapter 1: Research Methods

Social Psychology: An empirical science

- Social psychology is an empirical science with a well-developed set of methods to answers questions
about social behaviour.
- Because many of the issues studied are familiar, some research findings may seem obvious.
- This is caused by hindsight bias, where we overestimate how well we could have predicted an
outcome, after it has already occurred.
Basic vs. Applied Research
- Research studies can serve different goals
- Basic research
o Is designed to find out why people behave the way they do – it is conducted purely for reasons
of intellectual curiosity.
- Applied research
o Involves studies designed to solve a particular social problem; building a theory of behaviour is
usually secondary to solving a problem.
Research Design
- There are three types of methods used to study social problems:
o Observational method
 A technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records
measurements of their behaviour.
 Observations can be analyzed qualitatively or quantitatively
 Examples
 Case studies
o Detailed investigation of a single event, situation, or an individual in order
to explore and unearth complex issues
 Ethnographies
o Detailed and systematic study of people and cultures.
 Archival analyses
o An examination of the accumulated documents or archives of a culture,
such as diaries, novels, magazines, and newspapers.
o Powerful methods because it provides a unique look at the values of a
culture
 Comparing magazine images across time or sub-groups.
 Non(sub)-conscious research
o An examination of subconscious patterns of thoughts that are
involuntary, such as when studying prejudicial attitudes people may be
unaware of or embarrassed by.
o Correlational method
 A technique whereby researchers systematically measure two or more variables and
assess the associative relation between them
 The relation between variables is expressed as a correlation coefficient
 A calculated statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable based
on their associative relationship with the other
o Ex: Average income and level of education
 Ranges from +1 to -1; the closer to absolute 1, the stronger the relation between
variables
 Limitation:
  A major limitation of correlations is that they do not tell the casual direction of
the relationship; they only indicate if two variables are related
o Ex: Correlation between violent television shows and aggressive
behaviour
 Correlation does not equal causation
o Experimental method
 The only way to determine causation is through experimentation
 The researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that
these conditions are identical except for the independent variable
 The independent variable is the variable the researcher changes or varies to see
if it has an effect on some other variable
 The dependent variable is the variable a researcher measures to see if it is
influenced by the independent variable
 When conducting experiments in psychology, there is almost always a trade-off
between internal and external validity
 Having enough control over the situation to ensure that no confounding
variables are influences the results
 Ensuring the results can be generalized to everyday life
Ethical issues in social psychology
- Researchers are required to take actions to ensure the health, welfare, and comfort of the research
participants
- Researchers must also obtain informed consent, in which the nature of the experiment is explained to
participants before it begins.
- Some studies require deception, in which participants are misled about the true purpose of a study or
the events that will transpire
- The use of confederates is particularly useful in social psychology
- When deception is used, researchers must arrange a debriefing session, in which the purpose of the
study and exactly what transpired is explained to the participants at the end of the experiment.