Social

Psychology
NIMRAH AHMED
 The year is 2080. A nuclear war has occurred. There are 13 people living
in a bomb shelter and there is only enough oxygen left for nine people to
survive. You must decide as a majority who gets to stay and which four
people must leave. The remaining nine people in the bomb shelter will go
on to create an entire new society on earth.

A 35-year-old black poet who is unmarried

A 12-year-old boy
A young doctor who is HIV positive
A Catholic priest
A 16-year-old high school dropout who is highly intelligent and possibly
pregnant
A female electrical engineer who graduated from college two years ago
A famous male singer who is a recovered alcoholic
A reformed prostitute who is now college professor and the mother of two
An armed policeman who will not relinquish his gun
A 50-year-old female scientist who specializes in biology and plant life
The husband of the scientist who is addicted to cocaine
A male computer programmer
A professional athlete
 Which people were easy to select? What was it that you
valued about them?

Which people did the group have a controversy over

and why?

What is the gender of the professional athlete? Why?

Where do we get our beliefs about these people?

 Values, beliefs and experiences determine what we
think we know about others
Sometimes what we think is a fact is just based on our
experience
Values change and take shape as we discuss issues
with each other
Groups can be difficult to manage as people might
have opposing values
Introduction to Social
Psychology

NIMRAH AHMED
What is social
psychology?
The study of how people think about, influence
and relate to others, whether their presence is
actual or implied
- Gordon Allport

These influences are active when others are not

present, we carry internal representations of
others. How often have you considered carrying
out an action when alone and thought What
would ______________ think?
It covers the entire span of social existence, but
with the individual as the focus
What is social psychology
NOT?
Anthropology
Cultural level of analysis
Sociology
Societal level of analysis
Personality psychology
Individual level of analysis

Social psychologists believe in the power of

the situation and an interpersonal level of
analysis
Why are people social?
Social behavior is goal-oriented motivation
Establish social ties
Understand ourselves and others
Gain and maintain status
Defend ourselves and our loved ones
Attract and retain mates

Social behavior represents an interaction between

the person and the situation.
Why do we need to study social
behavior?
Different situations activate different parts of the self
Not everyone responds in the same way to the same
situation
People change their situations (Example)
People choose their situations (Example)
Situations change people (Example)
Situations choose people (Example)
People are inconsistent across situations. People only seem
to be consistent because we observe most people in a very
narrow range of situations
Why study social psychology?

Basic and applied research ?

Kurt Lewin (1946), was a social psychologist and

coined the term action research- rejects the
separation of basic and applied studies

People influence our thoughts, behaviors and

performance
How do groups affect individuals and how do
individuals influence groups?
Self-concept, self-identity and self-esteem
 Social psychology aims to
Understand the nature and causes of individual
behavior and thought in social situations.
Understand and explain how the thought,
feeling, and behavior of individuals are
influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied
presence of others.
Is social psychology just
common sense? (True/False
Activity)
o Opposites attract?
o Subliminal advertising (i.e., persuasive messages
that are displayed out of our awareness on TV or
movie screens) is very effective in getting us to
buy products?
o The greater the reward promised for an activity,
the more one will come to enjoy engaging in that
activity?
o People pull harder in a tug-of-war when theyre
pulling alone than when pulling in a group?
Hindsight Bias
I knew it all along- The tendency to think that
we could have predicted something that we
probably would not have been able to predict

Anything seems commonplace, once

explained.
- Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes
Why we shouldnt trust
common sense
Absence makes the heart Out of sight, out of mind
grow fonder

Two heads are better than one Too many cooks spoil the broth

Familiarity breeds content Familiarity breeds contempt

Look before you leap He who hesitates is lost

Social psychology relies on SCIENTIFIC

EVIDENCE
Principles of social
psychology
Scientific
Focuses on the behavior of individuals
Seeks to understand the causes of social thought and
behavior
Social interactions
Cognitive processes
Environmental variables
Cultural context
Biological and evolutionary factors
NOTE

Dear students,
In the first class we covered the work from p.3
p.9. Kindly read through it.
Figure 1.1 is important (p. 4) and Figure 1.2 is
an elaboration of it.
P.13-p.16 is detailed work on hindsight bias.
Dont miss it!