Social psychology methods

Question 1

What are the two types of methods?

Answer 1

Experimental and non-experimental

Question 2

What is the experimental method?

Answer 2

Manipulating an independent variable and observe the effect on a dependent variable. (Lab, field, survey, RCTs)W

Question 3

What is the non-experimental method?

Answer 3

Correlation between variables (no manipulation of an IV). (Case studies, variables, field studies)

Question 4

What does the choice of method depend on?

Answer 4

The nature of the hypothesis, resources available, and ethics

Question 5

What are the strengths of a lab experiment?

Answer 5

High control, high internal validity, can establish cause and effect, objectively assess behaviour

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of a lab experiment?

Answer 6

Low ecological validity, demand characteristics, low external validity, hard to assess long term behaviour

Question 7

What are the strengths of a field experiment?

Answer 7

High external validity

Question 8

What are the weakness of a field experiment?

Answer 8

Less control over extraneous variables, difficulty obtaining accurate measures.

Question 9

How are thoughts, feelings, and behaviours measured in social psychology?

Answer 9

Self report - ask people to tell us how they are feeling, thinking, and behaving.

Question 10

How is self-report achieved, ie what does it make use of?

Answer 10

Open responses, numeric scale, questionnaires

Question 11

What are some problems that arise by explicitly asking people about their feelings, thoughts, and behaviour?

Answer 11

Social desirability, unconscious processes (responses are within conscious control and provided deliberately)

Question 12

What are explicit methods?

Answer 12

Where the participant is aware, using conscious control

Question 13

What are implicit methods?

Answer 13

Where the participant is unaware, automatic processes.

Question 14

What do implicit measures assess?

Answer 14

Participants responses outside conscious control

Question 15

What do implicit measures tap into?

Answer 15

Cognitive representations or schemas

Question 16

What is a schema?

Answer 16

A mental structure that organises and collects information about something. We have schemas for specific people, groups of people, events, roles, objects, and places

Question 17

What do implicit tasks assess?

Answer 17

The accessibility of schemas

Question 18

Explain accessibility of a schema?

Answer 18

Refers to the ease of retrieving or accessing schema

Question 19

What are highly accessible schemas more likely to do?

Answer 19

Influence cognitive processes and behaviour

Question 20

Explain the concept of congruence and incongruence in relation to implicit attitudes?

Answer 20

It is faster to group together items that have been paired together before (congruent) than items not paired together (incongruent)

Question 21

Describe implicit association tests

Answer 21

Participants categorize two types of stimuli using two buttons
The categories will be congruent or incongruent
The speed of the categorisation responses are measured
Reaction times will be faster when the category is congruent with attitude or preference

Question 22

What is priming?

Answer 22

Presentations of a stimulus unconsciously increases accessibility of schemas and influences cognitive processes and behaviour

Question 23

Describe lexical decisions tasks

Answer 23

• Assess accessibility of cognitions
• Participants judge whether letters form a word or not
• On critical trials target words are presented that reflect the cognitions of interest
• Reaction times to correctly identify target words are used to infer the accessibility of that cognition