The full notes for the PSY2003 - Social Psychology course in 2021. Covers the following topics:
Group memberships - the social self, social identify theory and self-categorization theory
Prejudice and discrimination - conscious bias, unconscious bias, prejudice reduction
Pro-social behaviour - i...
PSY2003 – Social Psychology
Lecture 1 – What is Social Psychology
Lecture Topic:
During the lecture, take notes here. Insert a sub-page for each lecture topic.
End of year exam will have a essay on each major topic - group memberships, prejudice and
discrimination and pro-social behaviour
o MCQ 50%
o Essays 50%
o Fully online?
Study group = tutor group work
Big James' keys to success
o Read
o Meet your study group
o Revise as you go
o Use online materials
o Do the lecture activities
o Discuss the material
What is social psychology?
o
, Discussion topics:
o God no - from basic human rights perspective and due to hearts and minds doctrine
+ Hans Scharf and the kindness principle
o Interactionalist - previous experiences + biological preparedness to no-conform +
situation empowering this
o Yes, at first due to nature of wanting to be in part of highly regimented structure.
More second due to military culture often dehumanising people
o Because human nature hasn't changed, and because torture is still used as a tool of
the tyrant
,Lecture 2 – The Social Self
Self-schema
o Greeks - 'know thyself' through introspection and philosophy
o Most assume person with most accurate self-knowledge is the person in question
(Pronin, Kruger, Savitsky and Ross, 2001)
o Epley and Dunning (2006) - 6 experiments, noted people are biased towards
desirable behaviours whereas peers more accurate. But self-relevant information,
past experiences, thoughts, and feelings, meant more accuracy for experiencing
individual differences
o Vazire and Mehl (2010) asked ppts to predict 25 behaviours, e..g reading, watching
TV. Ppts assumed better self-judgement but others just as accurate
o Conclude that the introspection approach has some support but others are just as
good at predicting behaviour
o Feelings seem to be better from introspection approach, but behaviours are better
from observation
The social self
o William James (1890) - the self is derived from social relationships
o Social self-coined by Mead (1913), and has heavily been researched by Alex Haslam
o Self-knowledge derived at least in part from reflected self-appraisals which in turn
can be shaped by social norms and expectations. Reflected self-appraisals can be
referred to as the looking glass self (Cooley, 1902)
o Suggests that development of the self-starts in early childhood and is influenced by
how others react towards us, approving or disapproving
o Lieberman (2007) increased activity in medial PFC when we think about ourselves as
well as TPJ (temporoparietal junction) (perspective taking area) and Pfeifer et al
(2009) adolescents show greater neural activity in these areas than adults
o Example of social self-development is idea of the 'Born to Rebel Hypothesis', the
evolutionary approach to sibling conflict (Sulloway, 1996, 2001)
o
Independent v interdependent self-construal's
o Kuhn and McPartland (1954) western cultures more likely to do self-contained
statements focusing on uniqueness and independence, with stable traits unlikely to
change -> independent self-construal's
, o Eastern cultures focus more on relationships, roles, and duties that change over time
-> interdependent self-construal
o
o
o Matsuda et al (2008) Japanese more likely influenced by friends faces in the background.
Americans more likely to focus on the face in the centre and ignore others
o But, Tokado and Sogon (2008) say past studies were flawed and Japanese are not more
collectivist
Healthy self-esteem
o The self, and self-esteem are both stable and malleable
o Trait self-esteem -> constant and resistant
o State self-esteem -> Dynamic and changing
o Low self-esteem can be negative, but its not just whether a person''s self-esteem
score is high or low
o Crocker and Wolfe (2001) - self-esteem levels are contingent upon domains that are
of value to an individual. Effected by culture, allowing one's self to promote self-
esteem in negative environments
o Different cultures will emphasise different domains, allowing one to promote self-
esteem even in negative environments- thereby avoiding threats to the self (self-
handicapping)
o Based on contingencies of self-worth theory, it's not sensible to put eggs (self-
esteem domains) in one basket
Self-enhancement
o Generally the case that people endeavour to view themselves favourably
o Better than average effect (Alicke and Govourun, 2005) where people rate
themselves as above average on traits or abilities
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