Chapter 1

Question 1

social psychology

Answer 1

the scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context

Question 2

How do scientists often approach the study of social psychology?

Answer 2

• through empirical and experimental research - manipulate aspects of the environment which will influence us

Question 3

What are some examples of social psych topics where social psych is the only explanation for a phenomenon?

Answer 3

• science denialism, especially climate change
• GMO food
• police brutality of black people

Question 4

Is our intuition usually right or wrong, based on social psychology? What is an example to defend this?

Answer 4

• often wrong
• ex: people will like things more if you give them a large reward for it, attractive people are less intelligent

Question 5

Are we good or bad at effective forecasting? What is an example to defend this?

Answer 5

Bad! We don’t often know what we’d do in a certain situation - ex: handing phone over to random person/police?, dealing with grief

Question 6

What was the pantyhose example?

Answer 6

4 pairs of exact same pantyhose, researches found that most people picked Pantyhose D and asked people why they chose that one instead of the others, they said it was because of XYZ (some stupid reason) and that just couldn’t be true because obviously they were all the same

Question 7

What was George Walton’s case study & what was discovered (women in stem)?

Answer 7

• women in STEM were given info about social belonging concerns at the start of first year and assessed on how they performed academically in comparison to those who were not given this at the end of the year
• giving just a small amount of social info can make a huge difference, similar info given to other minority groups to improve academic performances

Question 8

What did George Walton’s case study discover/study, broadly speaking?

Answer 8

• discovered that concerns relating to confidence and security in social settings can interfere with academic performance

Question 9

Norman Triplett (3)

Answer 9

• credited with having published first research article in social psych at end of 19th century
• marked “birth” of social psych
• studied how bicyclists raced faster in the presence of others than when racing against a clock – how does context shape our behavior without our knowledge

Question 10

Max Ringelmann (1)

Answer 10

• studied effects of presence of others on performance of individuals (like Triplett), but noted that individuals often performed worse on simple tasks such as pulling rope when performing it with other people

Question 11

Floyd Allport

Answer 11

• wrote one of first social psych textbooks, emphasis experimentation and scientific method, focused on individuals and social context
• studied intergroup bias

Question 12

Gordon Allport (2)

1. established
2. illustrated psychologists’ concern for making…

Answer 12

• 1936, (brother of Floyd) established Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues
• illustrated psychologists’ concern for making important, practical contributions to society

Question 13

Muzafer Sherif (2)

1. researched what
2. demonstrated that it’s possible to study what?

Answer 13

• 1936, researched powerful influences that groups can exert on individual members after personal experience w/Greek soldiers in Turkey
• demonstrated that it’s possible to study complex social issues in a scientific manner

Question 14

Kurt Lewin

1. what perspective?
2. advocated for what?

Answer 14

• helped establish interactionist perspective
• advocated for social psychology theories to be applied to important, practical issues, applied social psych

Question 15

interactionist perspective

Answer 15

• principle that behavior is a function of the interaction between person and environment

Question 16

Solomon Asch

Answer 16

• 1951 – demonstration of how willing people are to conform to an obviously wrong majority amazes students even today

Question 17

Leon Festinger

2 theories + one extra thing he studied

Answer 17

1950s – introduced two theories) one
- concerning how people try to learn about themselves by comparing themselves to other people
and one
- about how people’s attitudes can be changed by their own behavior
- studied cognitive dissonance

Question 18

Stanley Miligram

Answer 18

• 1960s, research linked post-World War II era w/coming era of social revolution, studies individuals’ vulnerability to destructive commands of authority
• studied obedience/conformity - do we really have people that are just terrible human beings or is there something more happening that’s somehow convincing?

Question 19

pluralism

Answer 19

a condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority, etc., coexist

Question 20

social cognition

Answer 20

study of how we perceive, remember, and interpret info about ourselves and others, source of pluralism

Question 21

behavioral genetics

Answer 21

subfield of psychology that examines role of genetic factors in behavior

Question 22

evolutionary psychology

Answer 22

subfield of psychology that uses the principles of evolution to understand human social behavior

Question 23

culture

Answer 23

a system of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions, and practices shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

Question 24

cross-cultural research

1. designed to do what…
2. reveals important distinctions between…

Answer 24

• research designed to compare similarities and differences across a variety of cultures
• revealed important distinctions between collectivist cultures and individualist cultures

Question 25

multicultural research | 1. what 2. people are treated differently as a function of what?

Answer 25

- research designed to examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures - even within a particular society, people are often treated differently as a function of social categories

Question 26

behavioral economics | 1. what is it 2. revealed traditional econ. models were inedequate why?

Answer 26

- subfield of social psych focusing on how psychology relates to economic decision making, revealed that traditional economic models were inadequate because they failed to account for powerful and irrational role that psychological factors have on people’s economic behavior

Question 27

social neuroscience

Answer 27

- study of the relationship between neural and social processes

Question 28

open science

Answer 28

a movement that calls for greater accountability and accessibility of researchers’ data and materials

Question 29

What is the Ship of Theseus? What does the theory represent?

Answer 29

- ship is sailing and each day the water kind of rots the wood so a new wooden board is changed on the ship all the time, and the idea is that by the time you get to the other side of the ocean, the whole boat is new - We think of groups in society as static, even though many of these groups change over time (how we thought of women and the role of women in the early 1900s is dramatically different than today)

Question 30

Is it ever possible to prove a theory?

Answer 30

no, the evidence in support of it just becomes overwhelming

Question 31

Do we try to support theories?

Answer 31

- no, we try to falsify theories bc we could run 99 studies that support a theory, but if 1 study falsifies it, that is far more effective at telling us the theory is wrong

Question 32

How do we consider evidence, evidence?

Answer 32

we have to average out differences seen between different people and groups by running the same studies and observing it across multiple labs

Question 33

Darryl Bem - What did he study? How did he execute this?

Answer 33

- having an emotional reaction to future stimuli so that we can somewhat anticipate the future - 9 experiments finding evidence for “psi” - predicting future - 100 participants were shown erotic and non-erotic photos - 36 trials: they guess where the erotica is going to be - Randomized the picture behind the door, when the button was clicked (so it was not decided before the person pressed a button)

Question 34

What was the issue with Darryl Bem's experiment?

Answer 34

- work was generally considered well done, but no one believed psi was a thing - goes in the face of physics, bio, everything we know about the world - he followed all the rules to be able to publish experiment - everyone still thinks that its garbage considering it goes against everything we know (obviously we can’t see in the future), so people started to question these “rules” that had been in place for the replication of studies

Question 35

What were the different things that researchers were doing that contributed to this idea of "less replicable" science? | 3 things

Answer 35

1 - institutional pressures - “Publish or perish” – fear of loss of tenure, getting fired 2 - flashy and significant effects needed to publish - ay everyone in the room ran a study on psi – 99% of us didn’t find effects wouldn't write about it, 1% would write a paper because they found something, so what about all the 99% 3 - lots of ways to analyze data ie Garden of Forking paths, P-hacking - intentional and unintentional

Question 36

What is p-hacking?

Answer 36

- P-hacking (data dredging) is the unethical practice of manipulating, re-analyzing, or selectively reporting data until non-significant results become statistically significant (p < 0.05). It involves running multiple tests without correcting for errors, searching for patterns, or stopping data collection once a desired result is achieved, which creates false positives

Question 37

What is often seen in those who p hack?

Answer 37

- most do not p hack below .04, once they get just below .05 it's good enough for them, they don't want to spend any more time - ego-depletion of line

Question 38

What are the estimates surrounding how much of published literature is real?

Answer 38

50-60%

Question 39

What are ways that scientists have been solving the replication crisis? | 6 things ## Footnote 1. established best... 2. revisting established... 3. psychology science... 4. "ManyLabs" 5. regist... 6. pre-...

Answer 39

- Established best (statistical and methodological) practices to avoid p-hacking - Revisiting established effects and support for replicating what we thought of as real things - Psychology science accelerator - identify candidate studies, labs across the world agree to participate, all run the same study, look at how it differs - “ManyLabs,” “ManyBabies,” “ManyDogs,” replication projects, CREP - Registrated reports - Pre-registration of hypotheses

Question 40

Who is Amy Cuddy? What was her idea?

Answer 40

- "invented power posing" - idea is that power posing increases/activates circulating testosterone and that will increase confidence - numerous failures to replicate and skepticism around this, problems with original studies, original first author says it was p-hacked - got a lot of attention because of TED talk and wrote a book - 2nd author still defends it

Question 41

Why, scientifically, was Amy Cuddy's theory wrong?

Answer 41

- testosterone takes a while to get through the blood brain barrier, even if it circulates better through the body after standing like this for three minutes, it’s just not consistent with the fact that it would take effect that quickly on behavior

Question 42

What is the ego-depletion experiment?

Answer 42

- Self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up (possibly replenished by glucose) - In 2016, a major study carried out at two dozen labs across the world using a single protocol failed to find any evidence for ego depletion. Some (but now a very small minority of field) still believe a real thing, research ongoing.

Question 43

What is mental fatigue & how is it related to ego depletion?

Answer 43

Mental fatigue IS a thing - not specific theory of ego depletion, idea is more so like when we’re tired we make more mistakes

Question 44

What is stereotype threat?

Answer 44

- The concern about confirming a stereotype leads to confirmation of that stereotype - Satirical example but say you remind a woman before a math or science test “hey, you’re a woman,” just that reminder in and of itself can be enough of a threat to stress her out and cause anxiety that leads her to do badly on the test - Evidence is mixed, but it’s hard to test. But at least it is a smaller effect than the field initially thought