Week 1

Chapter 1
Introducing Social Psychology
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Learning Objectives
•
1.1 What is social psychology, and how is it different
from other disciplines?
•
1.2 Why does it matter how people explain and interpret
events—and their own and others’ behavior?
•
1.3 What happens people’s need to feel good about
themselves conflicts with their need to be accurate?

What Is Social Psychology?
• At the heart of social psychology is social

influence.
• Social influence:
– The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of
other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes,
or behavior
• It is the scientific study of the way in which
people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are
influenced by the real or imagined presence of
other people.
Social Psychology, Philosophy, Science,
and Common Sense
• Social psychology versus philosophy
– Address many of the same questions
– But social psychology explores them scientifically
• Social psychology versus common sense

– Social psychologists predict behavior by forming
hypotheses and testing them scientifically

How Social Psychology Differs from Its
Closest Cousins
• Personality Psychology
• Other Social Sciences
• Sociology

Social Psychology versus Personality
Psychology
• Personality Psychology
– Focus on individual differences
 Aspects of people’s personalities that make them different

from others
– Ignores the powerful role played by social influence

Social Influence on Behavior
Personality psychologists study qualities of the individual that might make a person shy,
conventional, rebellious, and willing to wear a turquoise wig in public or a yellow shirt in a
sea of blue. Social psychologists study the powerful role of social influence on how all of us
behave.
Source: Glow Images

Social Psychology versus Other
Social Sciences
• Difference in level of analysis
– Other social sciences
 concerned with how broad social, economic, political, and

historical factors influence events in a given society
– Social psychology
 the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social

situation

Social Psychology versus Sociology
• Level of analysis
– Sociology
 Focus on society at large
– Social psychology
 Focus on the individual in the context of a social situation

The Influence of Groups on Individuals
The people in this photo can be studied from a variety of perspectives: as
individuals or as members of a family, a social class, an occupation, a culture, or
a region. Sociologists study the group or institution; social psychologists study
the influence of those groups and institutions on individual behavior.
Source: Paul Chesley/National Geographic Creative

The Goal of Social Psychology (1 of 2)
• Goal of social psychology
– Identify universal properties of human nature that make

everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of
social class or culture

The Goal of Social Psychology (2 of 2)
• Goal of sociology
– Identify why a particular society or group within a

society produces behavior (e.g., aggression) in its
members
– Major difference
 Sociology looks toward society at large rather than the

individual

Table 1.1
Social Psychology Compared to Related Disciplines
Sociology Social Psychology Personality

Psychology
The study of groups, The study of the The study of the
organizations, and psychological processes characteristics that make
societies, rather than people have in common individuals unique and
individuals. that make them different from one
susceptible to social another.
influence.

The Power of the Situation
1.2 Why does it matter how people explain and interpret
events—and their own and others’ behavior?

The Importance of Explanation
• Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
– The tendency to explain our own and other people’s

behavior entirely in terms of personality traits
– Underestimating the power of social influence

Underestimating the Power of Social
Influence (1 of 2)
• When we underestimate the power of social
influence, we gain a feeling of false security.
– Increases personal vulnerability to possibly destructive

social influence

Underestimating the Power of Social
Influence (2 of 2)
• By failing to fully appreciate the power of the
situation, we tend to
– Oversimplify complex situations
– Decrease our understanding of the true causes
– Blame the victim when people are overpowered by

social forces

The Importance of Interpretation (1 of 3)
• We are constantly interpreting things
– How humans will behave in a given situation is not

determined by the objective conditions of a situation
but rather how they perceive it (construal).

• What exactly do we mean by the social situation?
• One strategy
– Identify the objective properties of the situation
– Document the behaviors that follow from these objective properties
Behaviorism:
A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior,
one need consider only reinforcing effects of environment

• Behaviorism: an objective worldview

– Chooses not to deal with cognition, thinking, and
feeling
 Thinks these concepts are too vague
– Behaviorism ignores construals of the situation
 Inadequate for understanding the social world!
– Look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in

it, to see how they construe the world around them

Subjectivity of the Social Situation
• Emphasis on construal, the way people interpret

the social situation, has its roots in Gestalt
psychology
Gestalt Psychology
A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying

the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s
minds (the gestalt or “whole”) rather than the objective,
physical attributes of the object
- One must focus on the phenomenology of the perceivers.

The Construal of “Naive Realism”
Research by social psychologists on construal shows why negotiation
between nations can be so difficult: Each side thinks that it sees the
issues clearly but that the other side is “biased.”
Source: Shawn Thew/EPA/Newscom

Where Construals Come From:
Basic Human Motives
1.3 What happens when people’s need to feel good about
themselves conflicts with their need to be accurate?

Two Central Motives
• Construals shaped by two basic human motives:
1. The need to be accepted
2. The need to feel good about ourselves

Edward Snowden: Traitor or Patriot?
This is Edward Snowden, a former computing contractor for the National Security Agency.
Snowden’s release in 2013 of thousands of classified documents related to the U.S.
government’s surveillance programs led the Department of Justice to charge him with
espionage. Some have argued that Snowden is a spy, a traitor, and a criminal who should
be brought back to the United States from his asylum in Russia to face trial. Others view
him as a whistleblower, a patriot, and a hero fighting to protect privacy rights and inform the
American public of what its government is up to (in fact, here you see him pictured
receiving a German peace prize, a prize he was only able to accept via Skype). Each side
is sure that they are right. Where do differing construals come from, and what are their
consequences?
Source: Thomas Kienzle/EPA/Newscom

The Self-Esteem Motive: The Need to
Feel Good About Ourselves
• Most people have a strong need to maintain reasonably
high self-esteem.
• People will often distort the world in order to feel good
about themselves instead of representing the world
accurately.
Self-Esteem
People’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to

which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent

Suffering and Self-Justification (1 of 2)
• The more unpleasant the procedure the

participants underwent to get into a group, the
better they liked the group
1. Human beings are motivated to maintain a positive

picture of themselves, in part by justifying their past
behavior
2. Under certain conditions, this leads them to do things

that at first glance might seem surprising or
paradoxical

Suffering and Self-Justification (2 of 2)
• The more unpleasant the procedure the

participants underwent to get into a group, the
better they liked the group
– For example, they might prefer people and things for

whom they have suffered to people and things they
associate with ease and pleasure

Hazing: Hazardous but Cohesive
These first-year students are being “welcomed” to their university by seniors who
subject them to hazing. Doing silly or dangerous things as part of a hazing ritual
may be, well, silly or dangerous. At the same time, it does build cohesiveness.
Source: Newscom

The Social Cognition Motive:
The Need to Be Accurate
• Social cognition motive
– Takes into account how people think about the world
 We try to gain accurate understandings so we can make

effective judgments and decisions
 But we typically act on the basis of incompletely and

inaccurately interpreted information

Social Cognition
• The social cognition perspective views people as

“amateur sleuths” doing their best to understand
and predict their social world.
Social Cognition
How people think about themselves and the social world;

how people select, interpret, remember, and use social
information to make judgments and decisions

Cereal Box Short-Cuts
We rely on a series of expectations and other mental short-cuts
in making judgments about the world around us, from
important life decisions to which cereal to buy at the store, a
conclusion with which advertisers and marketers are very well
aware.
Source: Felix Choo/Alamy

Lenscap/Alamy

Expectations About the Social World
• Our expectations can even change the nature of

the social world
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
– Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968/2003) found that a

teacher who expects certain students to do well may
cause those students to do better

Expectations About
the Social World (1 of 2)
• How does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come
about?
– Teachers expecting specific students to perform will
often
 pay more attention to them.
 listen to them with more respect.
 call on them more frequently.
 encourage them.
 try to teach them more challenging material.

Expectations About
the Social World (2 of 2)
• How does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come
about?
– This, in turn, helps these students feel
 happier.
 more respected.
 more motivated.
 smarter.

Social Psychology
and Social Problems (1 of 2)
Why study social influence?
1. We are curious.
2. Some social psychologists contribute to the solution of

social problems.
Today, social psychologists’ interest in how people think,

feel, and act in social environments leads to research
designed to study behavioral tendencies on Facebook,
Twitter, and across other platforms, sites, and apps.

Social Psychology
and Social Problems (2 of 2)
• Social psychological theories about human behavior
have been applied to a range of contemporary
problems, including:
– Prejudice
– Energy shortages
– AIDS
– Unhealthy habits
– Violence in schools

Is TV Violence Tied to Aggression?
Social psychology can help us study social problems and find ways to solve
them. Social psychologists might study whether children who watch violence on
television become more aggressive themselves—and, if so, what kind of
intervention might be beneficial.
Source: Villerot/Age Fotostock

The Importance of Being
Scientifically Grounded
• When recommending interventions, it is
imperative to act on the basis of scientifically
grounded theories

Research Designs
2.2 What are the strengths and weaknesses of various
research designs that social psychologists use?

Table 2.1
A Summary of Research Methods
Method Focus Question Answered

Observational Description What is the nature of the phenomenon?
Correlational Prediction From knowing X, can we predict Y?
Experimental Causality Is variable X a cause variable of Y?

The Observational Method
• Researcher observes people and systematically

records behavior.
– Used to describe behavior
• Examples:
– Ethnography: Description from an “insider’s point of
view”
– Archival analysis: Researcher examines accumulated

documents (archives)

Researching Moods through Twitter
Researchers use archival analyses to test psychological hypotheses.
One study, for example, analyzed millions of Twitter messages to see
how people’s moods varied over the course of a day.
Source: Pixellover RM 8/Alamy

Observational Method Example
• Research Question
– How much aggression do children exhibit during school
recesses?
• Method
– Behaviors concretely defined before observation
– Observer systematically looks for and records behaviors
– Accuracy of observer is assessed
 Interjudge reliability

Interjudge Reliability
• Do you see what I see?
• Important to establish reliability when observation

is used
Interjudge Reliability
The level of agreement between two or more people who

independently observe and code a set of data

Limits of the Observational Method
• Certain behaviors difficult to observe

– Occur rarely
– In private
• Archival analysis
– Original may not have all information researchers need
• Does not allow prediction and explanation

– Limited to description

The Correlational Method
• Two or more variables are systematically

measured and the relation between them is
assessed.
Correlation Coefficient
A statistical technique that assesses how well you can

predict one variable from another

Positive Correlation
• Increases in the value of one variable are

associated with increases in the value of the
other variable
– Aggression and viewing violent media are positively
correlated
 Children who are aggressive tend to watch more violent
television
– Height and weight are positively correlated
 Taller people tend to weigh more (r = .47)

Negative Correlation
• Increases in the value of one variable are

associated with decreases in the value of the
other variable
– Vaccination rate correlates negatively with disease rate
 More vaccinations, less disease

The Correlation Coefficient
• Correlation coefficients range from –1.00 to +1.00
• +1.00 perfectly correlated in a positive direction
• 0 means that two variables are not correlated
• –1.00 perfectly correlated in a negative direction

Figure 2.1
The Correlation Coefficient
The diagrams below show three possible correlations in a hypothetical study of watching
violence on television and aggressive behavior in children. The diagram at the left shows a
strong positive correlation: The more television children watched, the more aggressive they
were. The diagram in the middle shows no correlation: The amount of television children
watched is not related to how aggressive they were. The diagram at the right shows a
strong negative correlation: The more television children watched, the less aggressive they
were.

Surveys
• Surveys
– Representative sample of people asked about attitudes

or behavior
– Correlations computed using responses to questions

Using Surveys
• Random Selection
– A way of ensuring that a sample of people is

representative of a population by giving everyone in the
population an equal chance of being selected for the
sample

The Perils of Surveying a Nonrepresentative Sample
Failure to Use Random Selection = Misleading Results
In the fall of 1936, a magazine called the Literary Digest predicted that the
Republican candidate for present would win by a landslide, based on a poll they
conducted. Instead, Franklin Roosevelt won every state but two, as seen in the
map. What went wrong with the Literary Digest poll?
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum.

Surveys: Advantages and
Disadvantages
• Advantages
– Investigate relations between variables difficult to
observe
 Sexual behavior & knowledge of HIV
– Sample representative segments of population
• Disadvantages
– Accuracy of responses:
 People may not know the answer—but they think they do!

Limits of the Correlational Method
• Correlation does not equal causation!
• Correlational method tells us only that two variables

are related
• Social psychology’s goal
– Identify causes of social behavior
– Be able to say that A causes B, not just that A is

correlated with B

A Birth Control and STD Correlation
A study conducted in the early 1990s found a correlation between the type of birth control
women used and their likelihood of getting a sexually transmitted disease (STD). Those
whose partners used condoms were more likely to have an STD than were women who
used other forms of birth control. Does this mean that the use of condoms caused the
increase in STDs? Not necessarily—see the text for alternative explanations of this
research finding.
Source: Monkey Business/Fotolia

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
• Three possible causal relations when a correlation

is found (e.g., aggressive sexual acts and
pornography)
– Pornography causes viewer to become sexually
aggressive
– People who are sexually aggressive are more

interested in pornography
– Correlation is caused by something else (e.g.,

upbringing or subculture)

The Experimental Method
• Researcher randomly assigns participants to

different conditions
• Conditions are identical except for the

independent variable (the one thought to have a
causal effect on people’s responses).
– Use to answer causal questions

Independent Variable (IV)
• The IV is what researchers manipulate to see if it

has a causal effect
– (e.g., type of TV show children watch)

Dependent Variable (DV)
• The DV is what researchers measure to see if it is

affected
– e.g., measure children’s aggression (DV) after they

watch television (IV) that is either violent on nonviolent

IV and DV Example Using
Latané and Darley (1970)
• IV
– Number of bystanders
• DV
– Helping behavior

Figure 2.2
Independent and Dependent Variables in Experimental Research
Researchers vary the independent variable (e.g., the number of bystanders people think
are present) and observe what effect that has on the dependent variable (e.g., whether
people help).

Internal Validity in Experiments
• Internal Validity
– Making sure that nothing besides the independent

variable can affect the dependent variable

Increasing Internal Validity
• Control extraneous variables
• Randomly assign people to experimental

conditions

Random Assignment
• Ensure all participants have equal chance of being

in any experimental condition
– Ensures that differences in participants’ personalities or

backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions
This powerful technique is the most important part of the

experimental method.

Probability Level (p-value)
• A number calculated with statistical techniques
• Indicates likelihood results of experiment occurred

by chance instead of the IV(s)
• The convention in science is to consider results

significant when
– Probability is less than 5 in 100 that the results might
be due to chance factors and not the IV
 p< .05

Limits of Experimental Method
• Experimental situations can be
– Artificial
– Distant from real life
 Tradeoff with increasing control over the situation to make it

similar for all participants

External Validity in Experiments
• External Validity
– The extent to which the results of a study can be

generalized to other situations and to other people.

Two Kinds of External Validity
• Generalizability across
1. Situations
 the extent to which we can generalize from the experimental

situation to real-life situations
2. People
 the extent to which we can generalize from the people who

participated in the experiment to people in general

Generalizability Across Situations
• Psychological Realism
– Psychological processes triggered by experiments are

similar to psychological processes in real life
• Cover story
– A description of the purpose of a study, given to

participants, that is different from its true purpose, used
to maintain psychological realism

Generalizability Across People
• Random selection of participants from population
– Impractical and expensive for most social psychology

experiments
– Address by studying basic, fundamental psychological

processes that may be universal

Do Findings Apply to All People?
Social psychologists are interested in how generalizable their findings are to different kinds
of people. What are the challenges in doing so? What approaches do social psychologists
take?
Source: Megapress/Alamy

Improving External Validity
• Field Experiments:
– Experiments conducted in natural settings rather than

in the laboratory
• Advantages:
– Participants unaware that they are in an experiment
– Participants more diverse than typical college sample

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Chapter 1

Introducing Social Psychology

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• At the heart of social psychology is social

– But social psychology explores them scientifically

• Social psychology versus common sense

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Other Social Sciences

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Focus on individual differences

 Aspects of people’s personalities that make them different

– Ignores the powerful role played by social influence

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Source: Glow Images

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Other social sciences

 concerned with how broad social, economic, political, and

 the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

 Focus on society at large

 Focus on the individual in the context of a social situation

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Source: Paul Chesley/National Geographic Creative

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Goal of social psychology

– Identify universal properties of human nature that make

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Identify why a particular society or group within a

 Sociology looks toward society at large rather than the

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Sociology Social Psychology Personality

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Fundamental attribution error (FAE)

– The tendency to explain our own and other people’s

– Underestimating the power of social influence

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Increases personal vulnerability to possibly destructive

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Oversimplify complex situations

– Decrease our understanding of the true causes

– Blame the victim when people are overpowered by

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• We are constantly interpreting things

– How humans will behave in a given situation is not

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

– Identify the objective properties of the situation

– Document the behaviors that follow from these objective properties

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Behaviorism: an objective worldview

– Behaviorism ignores construals of the situation

 Inadequate for understanding the social world!

– Look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

• Emphasis on construal, the way people interpret

A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Source: Shawn Thew/EPA/Newscom

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd. All Rights Reserved

1. The need to be accepted

2. The need to feel good about ourselves