Social Psychology: Key Concepts & Theories
Social Psychology
Key Concepts and Theories
Research Methods
Hypothesis: An educated guess or prediction specific to your research study.
Principle of Falsifiability: Your informed hypothesis could be proven wrong/falsified.
Population: The large group that we target our research for.
Sample: A representative portion of our population.
Reliability: Producing the same results when you repeat your test.
Validity: Making sure what you are measuring is relevant to your research question (measuring what it was designed to measure).
Statistical Significance: The determinant of whether a correlation between two factors is true or simply due to chance.
System 1 & 2 Thinking:
- System 1: An automatic/quick system that interprets information without careful thought processing.
- System 2: A slower/more accurate pathway of thinking that usually requires more effort as conclusions are not instant and need to be well thought through.
Hindsight Bias: A cognitive bias that causes people to convince themselves that they predicted the outcome before the event occurred.
Representative Sample: Randomly selected and representative of the larger population.
Volunteer Bias: When choosing participants, you might choose specific volunteers that are most relevant to your topic (e.g., choosing AUC students). However, this small sample is not representative of the whole Egyptian population. So we tend to choose participants who are closely related to our research if we want to yield specific answers. However, the answers/results cannot represent the whole population.
Types of Studies:
- Descriptive (e.g., reviews, case studies)
- Correlational (e.g., surveys)
- Experimental (e.g., controlled trials)
Research Limitations: Factors that prevent us from being able to generalize conclusions to be applicable to everyone, things we could not have total control over. Example: Weaknesses of a study include that conclusions can be subjected to ethnocentrism and thus not generalized to all populations.
Correlations
Types and How to Interpret Them:
- Positive Correlation: As one variable increases, the other increases. The relationship is directly proportional (+).
- Negative Correlation: As one variable increases, the other decreases. They are inversely proportional (-).
- No Correlation: Represented on a graph as scattered points.
Correlation Strength:
- No Correlation = 0.0
- Weak Correlation < 0.5
- Moderate Correlation = 0.5
- Strong Correlation > 0.5
Dependent and Independent Variables:
- Dependent Variable: The variable we measure that depends on what factors we changed (Independent Variable).
- Independent Variable: The variable we control to measure its specific outcome.
Fidelity: How accurate and relevant is your research to a real-life situation?
The Self
Traits: A distinguishing characteristic.
- External Traits: Traits that manifest as behaviors (things we see as behaviors in people).
- Internal Traits: A trait that manifests itself internally and cannot be seen (e.g., pessimism, which affects someone’s outlook on life).
Construal: The process of how we interpret our own experiences.
Self-Schema: A cognitive structure built from past experiences that influences how we look at ourselves and others.
Direct and Indirect Socialization:
- Direct: Clear instruction on how to behave and interact with others in certain social situations.
- Indirect: Observing others and modeling our behavior in situations based on others’ experiences.
Self-Esteem: How people feel about themselves.
Self-Serving Construals: Always viewing yourself as better than others but not doing the same with others and viewing them based on the average.
Self-Regulation: A process in which we regulate our emotions or our behaviors to reach a certain goal.
Socialization Agents: People who teach us how we should act socially.
Reflected Self-Appraisals: Our beliefs about how others see us.
Malleability vs. Stability:
- Malleability: Behaviors changing from situation to situation.
- Stability: Our core traits that persist and control our behaviors across different situations.
Social Identity Theory: People have an internal sense of individuality, yet they categorize themselves according to groups, which helps develop a sense of self and influences self-esteem.
Self-Esteem and Culture: Each culture has its own standards of beauty, success, etc. These cultural norms affect one’s self-esteem.
Self-Evaluation: How we evaluate ourselves according to what we value most in life.
Cultures (Individualistic vs. Collectivistic):
- Individualistic Culture: Focuses on personal achievements.
- Collectivistic Culture: Focuses on our role in society. Example: An individualist working towards a job promotion and a collectivist working towards helping family and friends with what they need.
Social Comparison Theory (Upward, Downward): Observing ourselves in objective measures like weight or non-objective ones where we compare ourselves to others, like morality.
- Upward: We compare ourselves with someone better so we can observe them and focus on learning (e.g., comparing ourselves with a straight-A student).
- Downward: Comparing ourselves to someone we think we are better than, which makes us look better and boosts self-esteem (e.g., comparing ourselves to a person who is academically challenged).
Self-Presentation: We tend to show our best traits and hide bad ones (tends to happen during job interviews).
Impression Management: Trying to influence the impressions and judgments that people may have of us (e.g., common in PR work for organizations).
Self-Monitoring: Observing our behavior and adjusting it accordingly to fit a situation. (Example: Showing more responsible behavior at university.)
Self-Handicapping: Harmful behavior that gives us an excuse when doing badly in a certain goal that we don’t have much confidence in (e.g., hurting the chances of getting a good grade on a test that is hard by purposefully not sleeping the day prior).
Social Cognition
Social Cognition: How people think about people and situations and make judgments that help explain the past, understand the present, and predict the future.
Concept: Being able to identify similar patterns and ideas in different objects to help make sense of the world.
Prototype: An idealized version of a concept, representing the most typical features or characteristics.
Schema: A mental representation created from prior knowledge or experience that helps with organizing information.
Construals: A person’s interpretation of a situation and the inferences made about it.
Heuristic: Mental shortcuts that quickly provide efficient answers to common problems of judgment. This is performed quickly and automatically.
Algorithm: Designed to analyze, interpret, or predict behavior in social contexts.
Dialectical Reasoning: Reasoning resulting from comparing and contrasting solutions to determine the truth. Example: Eating healthy food is good for you (thesis), junk food is nice for enjoyment and relaxation (antithesis), which leads to the truth: A balanced diet of healthy and junk food is good for overall well-being.
Cognitive Bias: An automatic process that makes decision-making quicker and easier that often causes a person to think irrationally or lean one way or another.
Schema Activation: Refers to the process of bringing relevant cognitive structures into focus when encountering new information.
Types of Schema Activation:
- Recent Activation: Occurs when schemas are triggered by recent experiences, affecting immediate judgments.
- Expectations: Guide expectations about future events and how individuals should respond based on past experiences.
- Chronic Activation: Refers to schemas that are consistently activated due to repeated exposure, shaping long-term beliefs and attitudes.
Illusory Causation: When we believe one thing causes another because they happen together/in sequence. Example: Wearing a lucky shirt and your team winning. It’s a coincidence, but you can think the shirt caused the win.
Concepts Related to Illusory Causation:
- Misinterpretation of correlation (confusing correlation with causation)
- Cognitive bias (tendency to remember instances that support our beliefs)
Framing Effects: The way information is presented can affect the way it is processed and understood. Example: The way a news outlet presents a situation can affect the perspective of the reader regarding the situation.
Snap Judgments/First Impressions: In a snap of a second or a first glance, we form opinions about a person’s trustworthiness, competence, and likability. We base these judgments on factors as subtle as facial expressions, posture, or even the way someone dresses. These snap judgments are hard to shake off, and even after getting to know the person, the initial judgment of the person will still be present.
Errors in Secondhand Information: Information about our social environment that we get from other people; already filtered by another person’s judgments.
Misinformation: Incorrect or incomplete information – not intended to deceive.
Disinformation: Incorrect or incomplete information – intended to deceive.
Echo Chambers: Situations where people only hear opinions, beliefs, and information that agrees with their own beliefs, leading to stronger biases.
Ideological Distortions: When information is intentionally or unintentionally manipulated to promote a specific belief system, ideology, or agenda.
Availability Heuristic: The process in which judgments are made based on how readily fast they come to mind. Example: When deciding which shoe to buy, you may choose Nike because it comes to mind the fastest. You might have selected another brand if you had more information available about it.
Representativeness Heuristic: Occurs when we estimate the probability of an event based on how similar it is to a known situation. We compare it to a situation or stereotype we already have in mind.
Confirmation Bias: Selective attention to evidence that confirms your belief – ignore or find fault with evidence that disagrees.
Cognitive Dissonance: Internal tension that exists when a person holds two conflicting beliefs OR when a person’s belief does not match their behavior.
Pluralistic Ignorance: Encompasses situations in which a minority position on a given topic is wrongly perceived to be the majority position.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Are beliefs or expectations that influence actions in a way that causes those beliefs to come true. When individuals believe something will happen, they tend to act in ways that reinforce that belief, ultimately leading to the expected outcome.
Attribution
Dispositional Attribution: The cause of the behavior is something inside the person, like personality traits.
Situational Attribution: The cause of the behavior is something outside the person, in the environment or situation.
Perceptual Salience: Whatever stands out most seems more likely to be the cause of what we’re trying to explain.
Cultural Priming: Is when exposure to specific cultural symbols, values, or experiences influences how people think, feel, or behave.
Attribution Theory: Explains how people try to understand the causes behind events or behaviors. We often attribute actions either to someone’s personality (internal factors) or to the situation they are in (external factors).
Self-Serving Biases: Explains that people have the tendency to attribute their success to internal factors like effort, but when they fail, the causes are external factors like bad luck.
Actor/Observer Difference in Attributions: The actor is part of the scene, so they focus on the context of the scene from their own perspective, and it is already explained to them. The observer is outside, so the people and the context need to be explained. The actor is more likely to make situational attributions, and the observer is more likely to make dispositional attributions since they don’t fully understand the context.
Influence of Culture on Attributions: Culture plays a significant role in how people make attributions. People from individualistic cultures (U.S., Europe) are more likely to attribute behavior to personal traits (dispositional attributions). In contrast, people from collectivistic cultures (Middle East) often attribute behavior to situational or social contexts, reflecting the group’s influence.
Influence of Social Class on Attributions: In lower-class and working-class attribution tendencies are similar to those in interdependent cultures, and they are more likely to say situational factors caused a behavior. In the upper class and wealthy, attribution tendencies are similar to those in independent cultures, and they are more likely to say dispositional factors caused a behavior.
Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to overemphasize personal traits (dispositional factors) and underestimate situational factors when explaining other people’s behavior. This bias leads to assuming that others act the way they do because of who they are, rather than considering external influences. (Example: When someone drives really fast and in a manic way, we assume that they can’t drive or are irresponsible, and we don’t consider that they might have an emergency.)
Discounting: When a candidate does well in a job interview, the interviewer might discount the fact that this candidate is actually good because they know the candidate practiced before the interview. They attribute the good performance to external factors rather than just saying the candidate is a good one.
Augmentation:
Consensus: Consensus refers to how other people behave in similar situations. If most people behave similarly in a given situation, there is high consensus. If they behave differently, there is low consensus. (Example: When everyone in class struggles with an exam, there is high consensus, but if only one person struggles, there is low consensus, and the problem has probably to do with this student’s preparation.)
Distinctiveness:
Consistency: Consistency refers to whether a person behaves the same way over time in a particular situation.
Emotion
Emotion: Subjective responses to people and situations in our environment that are very brief (last from seconds to minutes).
Mirror Neurons: Activate when performing an action or when observing others do that action.
Universal Emotions: All people use the same facial muscles so they are able to understand similar facial features, mammals and humans display similar expressions, and blind people show similar emotional expressions (6 emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise).
Emotional Intelligence: Is a crucial skill for managing personal emotions and social interactions. It is the ability to recognize emotions in yourself and others, guides thinking and decision-making, helps tap into your emotions to help reasoning, helps regulate emotions and maintain emotional balance.
Social Intuitionist Model: Initial reaction that guides our moral judgment and justifies our decisions before we realize it.
Affective Forecasting:
- Immune Neglect: Overestimating the negative effects.
- Focalism: Focusing on the main events of the situation.
- Duration Neglect: Focusing on emotions and disregarding the duration.
Importance of Emotions to Social Interactions: Emotions allow us to form/maintain relationships by coordinating intentions, interpretations, and actions.
Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Emotional Responses: Adaptive emotional responses promote well-being and enable us to respond quickly to challenges and motivate goal-oriented behavior. Maladaptive hinders well-being by motivating actions with negative outcomes and reducing your reasoning and logic abilities.
Emotions and the Brain:
- Amygdala: Evaluates sensory information, rapidly assesses our threats and dangers, and emotional importance.
- Prefrontal Cortex: Helps with emotional regulation, responsible for approaching or withdrawing from situations.
Universal Emotions and Cross-Cultural Studies: Primates show similar emotional expressions and similar sounds since we share an evolutionary history with them.
Gender and Emotions: Women are associated with happiness, and men are associated with anger. However, women and men differ in what causes their responses and how they express those emotions.
How Emotions Affect Our Social Relationships: Emotions help in feelings of empathy and sympathy, motivate us to act for others’ interests, sometimes even against our own. (Feeling guilty for hurting someone motivated you to make amends.)
Broaden and Build Hypotheses: Negative emotions tend to restrict us. Positive emotions help us understand situations better, broaden our ways of thinking, and help build social relationships. When we’re happy, we tend to be more creative, build inclusive mental categories and find similarities to out-groups.
Moral Foundations Theory: When we experience situations or people that violate these rules (harm, loyalty, fairness, purity, authority), it starts guiding our moral judgment of the situation. Understanding the circumstances, making attributions, costs & benefits of our actions, and then arriving at our final moral decision about whether it’s right or wrong.
Biases that Affect Affective Forecasting:
- Immune Neglect: Overestimating the negative effects.
- Focalism: Focusing on the main events of the situation.
- Duration Neglect: Focusing on emotions and disregarding the duration.
Mood Contagion: Sitting with someone who is in a happy mood (they had a good day), so you start feeling more uplifted and happy.
Focal Emotions: Humor is a very common emotion for Egyptians.
Affect Valuation Theory:
Display Rules: In Western cultures, it is more acceptable to express individual feelings openly, such as showing anger to assert boundaries or resolve conflict.
Emotion Work: Going to a wedding of a family member that you dislike, but you have to fake that you are happy.
Emotional Priming:
Ways to Increase Happiness: Give to others, running, healthy diet, better sleep, and improve social relationships.