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Social psychology research (Scientific Method (4) Design experiment, 5)…
Social psychology research
Where do research questions come from?
Curiosity
What % of people will administer a lethal electric shock?
Testing techniques
Social inclusion: Cyberball VS ball toss
Testing a theory
Theory: general principle accounting for empirical findings
Differing complexity (terror management theory vs lie detection)
Used to derive predictions (TMT: morality salience bolsters worldview)
Demonstrating a phenomenon
Physical warmth increases interpersonal warmth
: target = warmer personality; chose gift for friend > self
Social psychology
Social Psyc Research:
how feelings, thoughts and behaviours influenced by actual, implied or imagined presence of others
Why is research required?
Insufficient justification
& dissonance
Festinger & Carlsmith (1959): Counter-intuitive to prefer $1 over $20 for lying about a non-enjoyable task
Reliance on heuristics (confirmation bias, sterotyping)
Intuition is inadequate
Hindsight bias
Insight into reasons for our own/others behaviour is limited
Approaches
EXPERIMENTAL
WITHIN SUBJECTS
Biasing effect of topic importance
Importance of research topic increases the chance of being published
Every participant serves as a control & treatment condition
IV:
Legitimate journal editors received 6 flawed descriptions of studies; 3 important, 3 unimportant
DV
: publish-ability (9 point scale rated methodological rigour)
Within-subjects
Advantage: controlling, less subjects required
Disadvantages: Practise effects, contamination
FACTORIAL DESIGN
Portion size and consumption
Large container size will increase intake of booth fresh and stale popcorn
Two independent variables
IV 1
: 2 container sizes: medium and large
IV 2:
palatability: fresh and stale
DV:
Weight left over (ratings also taken of popcorn quality)
Results
Large container increased consumption of both fresh and stale popcorn
Advantages
show effects of IVs alone or together
Typically involve 2 or more categorical IVs
Between subject: treat VS control
Within subjects: same people tested on 2 or more occasions
BETWEEN SUBJECTS
Washing away sins
A threat to moral purity activates a need for physical cleansing
Random assignment
IV:
Manipulation of moral purity
Control (ethical deed) or treatment (unethical deed)
DV:
Preference for free cleansing gift or pencil (equal preference)
Results
Unethical deed: 75% wipe VS 25% pencil
Allows us to make inferences about causality as there are no differences due to random allocation
QUASI EXPERIMENT:
Stress and magical thinking
Those who are exposed to high stress will exhibit higher levels of magical thinking
Questionnaire assessed
magical thinking:
context of Gulf War 1991
Example interview item: "If I had a photo of Saddam Hussien with me during a missile attack I would rip it to pieces"
IV:
high-stress (frequently bombed cities Tel-Aviv) low-stress (never attacked Jerusalem)
DV:
higher rating = higher magical thinking
Results
Stress results in magical thinking
Advantages:
Investigates naturally occurring characteristics that cannot be induced in a lab (eg. depression, extreme stress, ethical)
Disadvantages
No random assignment
Difficult to impute causality (correlation: eg. other variables such as income, socioeconomic status)
Chacteristics
Comparing treatment & control groups
Allows impute causality
CORRELATIONAL
CORRELATIONAL DESIGN
Pathogens, personality & culture
Is regional disease prevalence correlated with personality?
Hypothesis
: Prevalence of infectious disease correlated with personality styles that reduce sexual & social contact (negative relationship b/w disease prevalence and; openness, extraversion and unrestricted sexual style)
Measure
Who: Cross-cultural studies of big 5 and Socio-sexual orientation
Disease prevalence negatively correlated with promiscuous sexual style, openness to experience, extraversion
What: Archival data of disease prevalence
Can we conclude causality
(1) Relationship
: Yes, negative correlation between prevalence and personality
(2) Non-spurious:
Unknown (no treatment/control) yet after removing many different variables; relationship still survived (life expectancy, climate, economic development, individual/collectivism)
(3) Cause precede effect
: Disease before personality? Not typically: but in this case; current day personality correlated with 1940s disease prevalence only weekly with current disease prevalence
No random allocation to treatment & control conditions
Difficult to impute causality (need relationship, non-spurious occurrence, order)
Advantage: explore questions that are impossible with experimental methods
Scientific Method
4) Design experiment
5) Collect data
3) Operationalise
6) Analyse data
2) Generate hypotheses (specific, directional)
7) Draw appropriate conclusions
1) Research Q