Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or
falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are
different from our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying
“Opposites attract.”
Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or
falling in love, we are most attracted to people whose traits are similar
to our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old saying “Birds of a
feather flock together.”
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
KENNETH CHARLES D.
BERMEJO, RPm, LPT
• a father and son are in a horrible car
crash that kills the dad. The son is
rushed to the hospital; just as he’s
about to go under the knife, the
surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that
boy is my son!”
• How is the surgeon related to the kid?
Social psychology
• a MOTHER and DAUGHTER are in a
horrible car crash that kills the
MOM. The DAUGHTER is rushed to
the hospital; just as She’s about to
go under the knife, the NURSE says,
“I can’t ASSIST ON THIS OPERATION
—that GIRL is my DAUGHTER!”
Introduction to
Social Psychology
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
• The scientific study of
how people think
about, influence, and
relate to one another.
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
• Social psychology lies at psychology’s boundary
with sociology. Compared with sociology (the
study of people in groups and societies), social
psychology focuses more on individuals and
performs more experiments. Compared with
personality psychology, social psychology
focuses less on differences among individuals
and more on how people, in general, view and
affect one another.
Does our social behavior depend more on the
situations we face or on how we interpret them?
San mo
nilagay
‘yung
shopee Baka stress lang
delivery sya, kaya niya ko
ko!!! nasisigawan!
San mo
nilagay
‘yung
Napaka walang-
shopee
hiya talaga ng
delivery
asawa ko na ‘to!
ko!!!
Would people be cruel if ordered?
kasabw
at
Wina-
wow mali
dehumanize
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them-all?
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To help? Or to help oneself?
Help yourself?
$ 2 million
$ 100, 000
surrendered
$ 1,900,000
missing
What are social
psychology’s big ideas?
We Construct Our Social Reality
Our Social Intuitions Are Often
Powerful but Sometimes Perilous
• Our instant intuitions shape fears (Is flying dangerous?),
impressions (Can I trust him?), and relationships (Does
he like me?). Intuitions influence presidents in times of
crisis, gamblers at the table, jurors assessing guilt, and
personnel directors screening applicants. Such
intuitions are commonplace.
Social Influences Shape Our
Behavior
• People are, above all, malleable.” Said differently, we
adapt to our social context. Our attitudes and behavior
are shaped by external social forces.
“Mahiya kayo sa magulang niyo,
‘wag sa akin…”
Personal Attitudes and Dispositions
Also Shape Behavior
• Internal forces also matter. We are not passive
tumbleweeds, merely blown this way and that by the
social winds.
• Our inner attitudes affect our outer behavior.
• Our political attitudes influence our voting behavior.
• Our attitudes toward alcohol influence our susceptibility
to peer pressure to drink alcohol.
• Our attitudes toward the poor influence our willingness
to help them. (Our attitudes also follow our behavior,
which means we often believe strongly in what we have
committed ourselves to or suffered for.)
Social Behavior Is Biologically
Rooted
• As evolutionary psychologists remind us, our inherited
human nature predisposes us to behave in ways that
helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. We carry
the genes of those whose traits enabled them to
survive and reproduce. Our behavior, too, aims to send
our DNA into the future. Thus, evolutionary
psychologists ask how natural selection might shape
our actions when dating and mating, hating and
hurting, and caring and sharing.
Homo
neanderthal
ensis
Homo
sapiens
Homo
neanderthal
ensis
Homo
sapiens
Social Psychology’s Principles Are
Applicable in Everyday Life
• Social psychology has the potential to illuminate your
life, to make visible the subtle influences that guide
your thinking and acting. It also offers many ideas
about how to know yourself better, how to win friends
and influence people, and how to transform closed fists
into open arms.
• Scholars are also applying social psychological insights.
Principles of social thinking, social influence, and social
relations have implications for human health and well-
being, for judicial procedures and juror decisions in
courtrooms, and for influencing behaviors that will
enable an environmentally sustainable human future.
Is Social Psychology
simply common
sense?
Hindsight bias = The tendency to exaggerate, after
learning an outcome, one’s ability to have foreseen how
something turned out Negative consequences:
• conducive to arrogance: an overestimation of our own
intellectual powers
• blaming decision-makers for “obvious” bad choices than
praising them for good choices which also seem “obvious”
• we blame not only others but also ourselves for “stupid
mistakes”
Research
Methods
• Theory = An integrated set of
principles that explain and predict
observed events; ideas that summarize
and explain facts
• Hypothesis = A testable proposition
that describes a relationship that may
exist between events
• A good theory:
o Effectively summarizes many
observations
o Makes clear predictions to:
o Confirm or modify a theory
o Generate new research
• Sampling: Choosing participants
• Random sampling = Survey
procedure in which every person in the
population being studied has an equal
chance of inclusion
• Nonrandom sampling = causes the
most problems when the sampling is
skewed by interest in the topic or other
factors that might strongly affect the
outcome (White & Bonnett, 2019)
• Sample size = number of participants
in a study
Correlational
Research:
Detecting
Natural
Associations
• Definition = The study of the naturally
occurring relationships among variables
• Advantage: examines important
variables in natural settings that occurs
in real-world
• Disadvantage: difficulty determining
cause and effect
Experimental
Research:
Searching for
cause and
effect
• Definition = Studies that seek clues to
cause–effect relationships by
manipulating one or more factors
(independent variables) while
controlling others (holding them
constant)
• Random assignment = The process of
assigning participants to the conditions
of an experiment such that all persons
have the same chance of being in a
given condition
• Control: Manipulating variables
• Independent variable = the experimental factor
that the researcher manipulates
• Dependent variable = the outcome being
measured; so called because it may depend on
manipulations of the IV
Ethics of experimentation
• Mundane realism = degree to which an experiment is
superficially similar to everyday situations
• Experimental realism = degree to which an experiment
absorbs and involves its participants
• Deception = a strategy by which participants are
misinformed or misled about the study’s methods and
purposes
• Demand characteristics = Cues in an experiment that
tell the participant what behavior is expected
Ethics of experimentation
• Replication: are the results reproducible?
Repeating a research study, often with different
participants in different settings, to determine
whether a finding could be reproduced.
• Meta-analysis = A “study of studies” that statistically
summarizes many studies on the same topic.
Ethics of experimentation
• Ethical principles by APA (2017), Canadian Psychological
Association (2017), and British Psychological Society
(2018) mandates:
• Tell potential participants enough about the
experiment to enable their informed consent (An
ethical principle requiring that research participants be
told enough to enable them to choose whether they
wish to participate)
• Be truthful
• Protect participants from any harm and significant
discomfort
Ethics of experimentation
• Ethical principles by APA (2017), Canadian
Psychological Association (2017), and British
Psychological Society (2018) mandates:
• Keep information about individual participants
confidential
• Debrief (post experimental explanation of the
study) participants
• Keep information about individual participants
confidential