Concepts Methods And Ethics

Question 1

What is social psychology and how is it studied?

Answer 1

Scientific study of everyday life and can be studied by measuring observable and unobservable behaviours

Question 2

Why can’t we use folk wisdom/ intuition to understand human behaviour?

Answer 2

Contradictory research: Bahns et al (2017) opposite attract but actually 86% select partners/ friend similar to themselves.

Question 3

Confirmation bias

Answer 3

Desire to interpret information in a way to fit one’s opinion , seek out reinforcing information and ignore contradictory

Question 4

Availability heuristic

Answer 4

Mental shortcut that retrieves easily recalled examples when encountering a new situation or stimulus - leads to erroneous conclusions

Question 5

Mood effects

Answer 5

Underlying emotions influence way information is interpreted

Question 6

Empirical method

Answer 6

Accuracy, objective and open

Question 7

What is the scientific process in social psychology

Answer 7

Observation, induction, deduction (theory construction), testing, evaluation.

Question 8

Theory construction

Answer 8

Explanation of how/why behaviour occurs , derive testable hypotheses through inductive (derive general theory from observation) and deductive (test theory by collecting observation) reasoning.

Question 9

Experimentation in social psychology

Answer 9

Questionnaire surveys, systematic observation (over and covert), case studies

Question 10

Data analysis in social psychology

Answer 10

Group differences (t-test) , linear relationship (correlation ), category membership (chi-squared), advanced approaches.

Question 11

Ethics in social psychology

Answer 11

BPS/APA, respect for privacy( confidentially/ anonymise data), protect from psychological physical harm , informed consent and debriefing.

Question 12

Behaviourism and cognitive in social psychology

Answer 12

Behaviourism assumes a passive interaction with encipherment cognitive states we actively interpret their experiences and plan actions.

Question 13

Cognitive dissonance

Answer 13

When our cognition differ from others or the environment , may behave in ways to reduce tension

Question 14

Personality theories

Answer 14

Behaviour caused by individual traits,authoritarian and optimism- pessism.

Question 15

Collectivist theories

Answer 15

Behaviour product of social influences - social identity theory

Question 16

Social neuroscience

Answer 16

Behaviour caused by biological processes , brains linked to certain psychological traits.