Sociology -> focus on society and social instituitons

Social Psych -> study of individual and group dynamics

Early personality-> internal dynamics and individual differences

Social Psych -> focus on social situations that affect common humanity

Ex. job interviews, marraige, friendship, persuasion, helping vs. not helping

Environment determines behavior

(makes you who you are, the way your family raised you, the culture you were raised in, friends)

The individual alone has control over personal behaviors, thoughts, feelings

people can influence us but at the end of the day we make the decisions

Belief that all events are shaped and governed by forces beyond control of individual

karma, justice, other people

Goals of Research

2 basic steps

Determine if a variable influences some form of behavior

Basic Steps

1. Vary the quantity or quality of the variable

2. See if the variable had an impact on behavior

Independent Variable

IV

Dependent Variable

DV

Behavior being studied --> involves some measure

(measure of some kind of behavior)

Sample Size

(n)

Control of IV, control everything

Random assignment of participants

Simplify the world--> control behavior

Mundane Realism

External Validity

Demand Characteristics

Experimenter Expectancies

Evaluation Apprehension

Degree to which the experiment resembles real-world events

(most research studies are low in mundane realism)

Degree of "generalizability" of the findings of other populations

(take data you have uncovered and apply it to people who weren't in your experiment

lab studies low in external validity

Cues that reveal the hypothesis under study

An experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment's purpose and unconsciously change their behavior accordingly

Overt

Covert

High external validity

Mundane realism high than in lab

Covert studies avoid evaluation apprehension and demand characteristics (can't act a certain way if you don't know you're being watched)

Very little contol over IV, it must be obvious

DV is often simple (behavior is either there or not)

Practical problems- little control over real world and unexpected events may destroy study

Old view: benefits outweigh any costs

New view: humane concern for participants overrides any benefit to science

Informed consent- get participants approval before the experiment

Debriefing- full explanation (after study)

Happiness

Sadness

Surprise

Fear

Anger

Disgust

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

-The first person to scientifically study emotion

-Facial expressionas are universal and instinctive

-Expressions evolved from animal emotions and expressions

-Have survival value

-Insanity= promitive stage of emotional development (insane emotion cause by poor blood circulation in brain)

Studying Darwin's beliefs

Hypothesis: Facial expressions carry the same meaning regardless of culture, context or language

-Ekman + Friesen: emotional expressions in tribal people

-Mapping facial muscles

-Micro-momentary Expressions (MME) (analysis and clincal intervention)

-Telling lies

-Masking

-Display rules

Micro-Momentary Expressions

(MME)

Studies have suggested we are incapable of consciously apprehending expressions which last less than 2/5 of a second.

Micromomentary expressions of 1/5 of a second can be detected using slow motion film.

It appears that we have an immediate response to the world which we very quickly mask with the expression we want to convey.

Lie detection with law-enforcement personnel

-CIA, FBI, DEA, Secret Service, judges, etc.

**U.S. secret service-- only group that could accurately detect liars

Newborns born with all but one facial muscle

-We come into world ready to communicate with face

Most infants smile shortly after birth

Babies only 36 hours old could imitate happy, sad and suprise emotion

Body Language

Emblems

Gestures, movements, postures

Emblems: Body movements with highly specific meaning in a given culture

Attribution based on internal characteristics

(personality,talent, moods, effort)

We make a judgement about a person

Attribution based on external factors

(luck, government, religion)

Generalized beliefs about the control of one's personal and situational behavior (and the behavior of others)

We need to have a sense of control over our lives

a person's belief about what causes the good or bad results in his or her life, the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them

Internal Locus of Control

(ILOC)

Individual assumes personal resbonsibility for life events

(originating point comes from within)

ILOC related to high parental expectations and autonomy in childhood

ILOC-> high levels of education and GPA

External Locus of Control

(ELOC)

Person accepts uncontrollable forces that determine life events

(parents, boss, boyfriend, friends control your life)

ELOC related to restricted, hostile upbringing

ELOC-> higher drop-out rates

Aging is associated with increase in ILOC

Trauma may produce shift to ELOC

Fundamental Attribution Error

FAE

Tendency to overestimate dispostional factors and ignore situational factors

when you judge other people you tend to judge them on what you see rather than the impact of situations on their behavior

Ex. Someone bumps into you, you think "what a jerk, he obviously saw me" when in fact someone could have bumped into him, or your bags are taking up a lot of room

Tendency to attribute our behavior to situational causes and the behavior of others to dispositional causes

Ex. I drive bad because I'm in a hurry and late, other people drive bad because they are trying to show off or they are just bad drivers

Tendency to overestimate commonality of one's opinions, beliefs, attributions and behavior

We tend to think everyone thinks what we think

People ignore consensus info in favor of self-generated attributions -> believe their behavior is "typical"

Tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs and attributions

Look for people to tell us we're right

When a person's initial expectation about someone leads to actions that cause the expectation to come true

Ex. Experiment with "star" student in school

Tendency to base beliefs on vivid images or anecdotes (stories) rather than on consensus statistical data

Ex. Presidential debates, will tell you story of someone rather than give you statistics

Rule-of-Thumb method that allows us to make quick (although not always accurate) judgements

Trading accuracy for speed, making an educated guess

Tendency to base a judgement on the availability of information in memory

Ex. Are there more words that start with R, than ones that have R as third letter?

Going to NYC more worried about being mugged then in a car wreck

Tendency to classify information according to how similar it is to a typical case

People have mental images of how things/people should be, compare people to this ideal