Methodology - How Social Psychologists Do Research

 How do researchers develop hypotheses and theories:

 When we study human behavior, the results may appear to have been
predictable—in retrospect.
 There is a well-known human tendency called the hindsight bias,
whereby after people know that something occurred, they exaggerate
how much they could have predicted it before it occurred.
 Hindsight Bias – the tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing
that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it before
it occurred.

 Formulating hypotheses and theories:
 Research begins with a hunch, or hypothesis, that the researcher
wants to test.
 Science is a cumulative process, and people often generate
hypotheses from previous theories and research.
 Inspiration from earlier theories and research:
o Many studies stem from a researcher’s dissatisfaction with
existing theories and explanations.
o After reading other people’s work, a researcher might believe
that he or she has a better way of explaining people’s behavior.
o Social psychologists, like scientists in other disciplines, engage in
a continual process of theory refinement: A theory is developed;
specific hypotheses derived from that theory are tested; based
on the results obtained, the theory is revised and new
hypotheses are formulated.
  Hypotheses based on personal observations:
o Social psychology also deals with phenomena we encounter in
everyday life. Researchers often observe something in their lives
or the lives of others that they find curious and interesting,
stimulating them to construct a theory about why this
phenomenon occurred—and to design a study to see if they are
right.
o In science, idle speculation will not do; researchers must collect
data to test their hypotheses. Let’s look at how different
research designs are used to do just that.

 What are the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs
that social psychologists use?
 Social psychology is a scientific discipline with a well-developed set of
methods for answering questions about social behavior.
 There are three types of methods: the observational method, the
correlational method, and the experimental method.

 Any of these methods could be used to explore a specific research

question; each is a powerful tool in some ways and a weak tool in
others.

 The observational method: describing social behavior:
 There is a lot to be learned by being an astute observer of human
behavior. If the goal is to describe what a particular group of people or
type of behavior is like, the observational method is very helpful.

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  Observational Method – the technique whereby a researcher
observes people and systematically records measurements or
impressions of their behavior.
 Disadvantages of observational method:
o Does not answer why.
o Some behaviors occur only rarely or only in private.
o Difficult to predict when behaviors will occur.
 One example of observational learning is ethnography, the method by
which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by
observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived
notions they might have.
 Interjudge Reliability – the level of agreement between two or more
people who independently observe and code a set of data; by showing
that two or more judges independently come up with the same
observations, researchers ensure that the observations are not the
subjective, distorted impressions of one individual.
 The researcher can also examine the accumulated documents, or
archives, of a culture, a technique known as an archival analysis.
 Disadvantages of archival analysis:
o Tells us little about the effects on their attitudes to behavior of
doing certain things.

 The correlational method: predicting social behavior:
 A goal of social science is to understand relationships between
variables and to be able to predict when different kinds of social
behavior will occur.
 With the correlational method, two variables are systematically
measured, and the relationship between them—how much you can
predict one from the other—is assessed.

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  Researchers look at such relationships by calculating the correlation
coefficient, a statistic that assesses how well you can predict one
variable from another.
o A positive correlation means that increases in the value of one
variable are associated with increases in the value of the other
variable.
o A negative correlation means that increases in the value of one
variable are associated with decreases in the value of the other.
o It is also possible for two variables to be completely unrelated,
so that a researcher cannot predict one variable from the other.
o

 Limits of correlational method:

o Correlation does not equal causation.
o The major shortcoming of the correlational method is that it tells
us only that two variables are related, whereas the goal of the
social psychologist is to identify the causes of social behavior.
We want to be able to say that A causes B, not just that A is
correlated with B.
o If a researcher finds that there is a correlation between two
variables, it means that there are three possible causal
relationships between these variables.

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  The reverse is true. (playing violent video games makes
you violent or aggressive people play video games)
 No causal relationship between the 2 variables. Caused by
a third variable.
 The correlational method is often used in surveys, research in which a
representative sample of people are asked questions about their
attitudes or behavior.
 Surveys are a convenient way to measure people’s attitudes.
 Psychologists often use surveys to help understand social behavior and
attitudes.
 Advantages of surveys:
o Surveys have a number of advantages, one of which is allowing
researchers to judge the relationship between variables that are
difficult to observe.
o Another advantage of surveys is the capability of sampling
representative segments of the population.
o Answers to a survey are useful only if they reflect the responses
of people in general—not just the people actually tested (the
sample).
 Survey researchers go to great lengths to ensure that the people they
test are typical. They select samples that are representative of the
population on a number of characteristics important to a given
research question. They also make sure to use a random selection of
people from the population at large, which is 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. As
long as the sample is selected randomly, we can assume that the
responses are a reasonable match to those of the population as a
whole.
 Disadvantages of surveys:

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 o Sample may not be representative of population if accidentally
not randomly selected.
o Accuracy of the responses: asking survey participants to predict
how they might behave in some hypothetical situation or to
explain why they behaved as they did in the past is an invitation
to inaccuracy. Often people simply don’t know the answer—but
they think they do.

 The experimental method: answering causal questions:
 The only way to determine causal relationships is with the
experimental method.
 Experimental Method – the method in which the researcher randomly
assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these
conditions are identical except for the independent variable (the one
thought to have a causal effect on people’s responses).
 Independent and dependent variables:
 Independent Variable – the variable a researcher changes or varies to
see if it has an effect on some other variable.
 The researcher then observes whether the independent variable has
the predicted effect on the outcome of interest, namely the
dependent variable.
 Dependent Variable – the variable a researcher measures to see if it is
influenced by the independent variable the researcher hypothesizes
that the dependent variable will depend on the level of the
independent variable.
 Internal validity in experiments:
 Keeping everything but the independent variable the same in an
experiment is referred to as internal validity.
 Maybe the observed differences in helping were due to characteristics
of the participants instead of the ind pendent variable. Fortunately,

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 there is a technique that allows experimenters to minimize differences
among participants as the cause of the results: random assignment to
condition.
 Random Assignment to Condition – a process ensuring that all
participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an
experiment; through random assignment, researchers can be
relatively certain that differences in the participants’ personalities or
backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions.
 Even with random assignment, however, there is the (very small)
possibility that different characteristics of people did not distribute
themselves evenly across conditions.
 Probability Level (p-value) – a number calculated with statistical
techniques that tells researchers how likely it is that the results of
their experiment occurred by chance and not because of the
independent variable or variables; the convention in science, including
social psychology, is to consider results significant (trustworthy) if the
probability level is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be due to
chance factors and not the independent variable.
 The key to a good experiment is to maintain high internal validity.
 Internal Validity – making sure that nothing besides the independent
variable can affect the dependent variable; this is accomplished by
controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people
to different experimental conditions.
 External validity 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 generalizability are at issue:
o The extent to which we can generalize from the situation
constructed by an experimenter to real-life situations, referred
to as generalizability across situation.

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  When it comes to generalizability across situations,
research in social psychology is sometimes criticized for
being conducted in artificial settings that cannot be
generalized to real life.
 Instead, psychologists attempt to maximize the study’s
psychological realism.
 Psychological Realism – the extent to which the
psychological processes triggered in an experiment are
similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday
life.
 If the study is high in psychological realism, we can
generalize the results to everyday life.
 Psychological realism is heightened if people feel involved
in a real event. To accomplish this, experimenters often
tell participants a cover story.
 Cover Story – a description of the purpose of a study,
given to participants, that is different from its true
purpose and is used to maintain psychological realism.
o The extent to which we can generalize from the people who
participated in the experiment to people in general, referred to
as generalizability across people.
 The only way to be certain that the results of an
experiment represent the behavior of a particular
population is to ensure that the participants are randomly
selected from that population.
 Ideally, samples in experiments should be randomly
selected.
 Increasingly, social psychologists are conducting
research with diverse populations and cultures,
some of it over the Internet.

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 o But, unfortunately, it is impractical and
expensive to select random samples for most
social psychology experiments.
 Field experiments:
 One of the best ways to increase external validity is by conducting field
experiments.
 Field Experiments – experiments conducted in natural settings rather
than in the laboratory.
 The participants in a field experiment are unaware that the events
they experience are in fact an experiment. The external validity of
such an experiment is high, because, after all, it is taking place in the
real world, with real people who are more diverse than a typical
college student sample.
 There is almost always a trade-off between internal and external
validity—that is, between being able to randomly assign people to
conditions and having enough control over the situation to ensure that
no extraneous variables are influencing the results, and making sure
that the results can be generalized to everyday life. We have the most
control in a laboratory setting, but the laboratory may be unlike real
life. Real life can best be captured by doing a field experiment, but it is
very difficult to control all extraneous variables in such studies.
 The trade-off between internal and external validity has been referred
to as the basic dilemma of the social psychologist.
 Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist – the trade-off between
internal and external validity in conducting research; it is very difficult
to do one experiment that is both high in internal validity and
generalizable to other situations and people.
 Most social psychologists opt first for internal validity, conducting
laboratory experiments in which people are randomly assigned to
different conditions and all extraneous variables are controlled; here
there is little ambiguity about what is causing what. Other social

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 psychologists prefer to maximize external validity by conducting field
studies. And many social psychologists do both. Taken together, both
types of studies meet the requirements of our perfect experiment.
 Replications and meta-analysis:
 Replications are the ultimate test of an experiment’s external validity.
 Replications – repeating a study, often with different subject
populations or in different settings.
 Only by conducting studies in different settings, with different
populations, can we determine how generalizable the results are.
 If an independent variable is having an effect in most of the studies,
the meta-analysis is likely to tell us that, on average, it does influence
the dependent variable.
 Meta-Analysis – a statistical technique that averages the results of
two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is
reliable.
 Basic versus applied research:
 Basic Research – studies that are designed to find the best answer to
the question of why people behave as they do and that are conducted
purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity.
 Applied Research – studies designed to solve a particular social
problem.
 Building a theory of behavior is usually secondary to solving the
specific problem.

 New frontiers in social psychological research:
 Culture and social psychology:
 Cross-Cultural Research – research conducted with members of
different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of

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 interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to
the culture in which people were raised.
 The evolutionary approach:
 Evolutionary Theory – a concept developed by Charles Darwin to
explain the ways in which animals adapt to their environments.
 Natural Selection – the process by which heritable traits that promote
survival in a particular environment are passed along to future
generations; organisms with those traits are more likely to produce
offspring.
 Evolutionary Psychology – the attempt to explain social behavior in
terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the
principles of natural selection.

 Ethical issues in social psychology:
 For scientific reasons, we want our experiments to resemble the real
world as much as possible and to be as sound and well controlled as
we can make them. But we also want to avoid causing our participants
stress, discomfort, or unpleasantness. These two goals sometimes
conflict as the researcher goes about the business of creating and
conducting experiments.
 The dilemma is less problematic if researchers can obtain informed
consent from their participants prior to their participation.
 Informed Consent – agreement to participate in an experiment,
granted in full awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has
been explained in advance.
 It’s essential that the participant experience contrived events as if they
were real; this is called a deception experiment.
 Deception – misleading participants about the true purpose of a study
or the events that will actually transpire.

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  When deception is used in a study, the post experimental interview,
called the debriefing session, is crucial.
 Debriefing – explaining to participants, at the end of an experiment,
the true purpose of the study and exactly what transpired.
 If any participants have experienced discomfort, the researchers
attempt to undo and alleviate it. During debriefing too the participants
learn about the goals and purpose of the research.
 To ensure that the dignity and safety of research participants are
protected, the American Psychological Association (2010) has
published a list of ethical principles that govern all research in
psychology.
 In addition, any institution (such as a university) that seeks federal
funding for psychological research is required to have an institutional
review board (IRB) that reviews research before it is conducted.
 Institutional Review Board (IRB) – a group made up of at least one
scientist, one nonscientist, and one member not affiliated with the
institution that reviews all psychological research at that institution
and decides whether it meets ethical guidelines; all research must be
approved by the IRB before it is conducted.

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 

 Summary:
 How do researchers develop hypotheses and theories?
o Social Psychology: An Empirical Science A fundamental principle
of social psychology is that social influence can be studied
scientifically.
 Formulating Hypotheses and Theories Social psychological
research begins with a hypothesis about the effects of
social influence. Hypotheses often come from previous
research findings; researchers conduct studies to test an
alternative explanation of previous experiments. Many
other hypotheses come from observations of everyday life.
 What are the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs
that social psychologists use?
o Research Designs Social psychologists use three research
designs: the observational method, the correlational method,
and the experimental method.

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  The Observational Method: Describing Social Behavior
The observational method, whereby researchers observe
people and systematically record their behavior, is useful
for describing the nature of a phenomenon and generating
hypotheses. It includes ethnography, the method by which
researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by
observing it from the inside, without imposing any
preconceived notions they might have. Another method is
archival analysis, whereby researchers examine
documents or archives, such as looking at photographs in
magazines to see how men and women are portrayed.
 The Correlational Method: Predicting Social Behavior The
correlational method, whereby two or more variables are
systematically measured and the relationship between
them assessed, is very useful when the goal is to predict
one variable from another. The correlational method is
often applied to the results of surveys in which a
representative group of people are asked questions about
their attitudes and behaviors. To make sure that the
results are generalizable, researchers randomly select
survey respondents from the population at large. A limit of
the correlational method is that correlation does not equal
causation.
 The Experimental Method: Answering Causal Questions
The only way to determine causality is to use the
experimental method, in which the researcher randomly
assigns participants to different conditions and ensures
that these conditions are identical except for the
independent variable. The independent variable is the one
researchers vary to see if it has a causal effect (how much
TV children watch); the dependent variable is what
researchers measure to see if it is affected (how
aggressive children are). Experiments should be high in

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 internal validity, which means that people in all conditions
are treated identically, except for the independent
variable (how much TV children watch). External validity—
the extent to which researchers can generalize their
results to other situations and people—is accomplished by
increasing the realism of the experiment, particularly its
psychological realism (the extent to which the
psychological processes triggered in the experiment are
similar to those triggered in everyday life). It is also
accomplished by replicating the study with different
populations of participants. As in any other science, some
social psychology studies are basic research experiments
(designed to answer basic questions about why people do
what they do), whereas others are applied studies
(designed to find ways to solve specific social problems).
 What impact do cross-cultural studies, the evolutionary approach, and
social neuroscience research have on the way in which scientists
investigate social behavior?
o New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research In recent years,
social psychologists have developed new ways of investigating
social behavior.
 Culture and Social Psychology To study the ways in which
culture shapes people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior,
social psychologists conduct cross-cultural research. This is
not simply a matter of replicating the same study in
different cultures; researchers have to guard against
imposing their own viewpoints and definitions, learned
from their culture, onto another culture with which they
are unfamiliar.
 The Evolutionary Approach Some social psychologists
attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic
factors that have evolved over time according to the

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 principles of natural selection. Such ideas are hard to test
experimentally but can generate novel hypotheses about
social behavior that can be tested with the experimental
method.
 Social Neuroscience Social psychologists have become
increasingly interested in the connection between
biological processes and social behavior. These interests
include the study of hormones and behavior, the human
immune system, and neurological processes in the human
brain.
 How do social psychologists ensure the safety and welfare of their
research participants, while at the same time testing hypotheses about
the causes of social behavior?
o Ethical Issues in Social Psychology Social psychologists follow
federal, state, and professional guidelines to ensure the welfare
of their research participants. These include having an
institutional review board approve their studies in advance,
asking participants to sign informed consent forms, and
debriefing participants afterwards about the purpose of the
study and what transpired, especially if there was any deception
involved.

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