-       social psychology

o  think about, influence, relate to others

Big Ideas

-       we construct our reality

-       intuition powerful

o  can be wrong

-       behavior influenced by:

o  society

o  attitude, personality

o  biology

-       applicable to everyday life

Social Psych and Human Values

-       obvious influences

o  1. research topic

o  2. study “value”

-       subtle influences

o  1. science is subjective

§    interpretations differ

§    social representations

·    socially shared beliefs

o  2. concepts have hidden values

§    “well-adjusted”, “normal”

§    therapist’s advice

§    labels

§    value judgments

Just Common Sense?

-       findings are obvious

-       hindsight bias

o  I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon

§    obvious after facts are known

§    consequences

·    arrogance

·    blame

How It’s Done

-       forming/testing hypotheses

o  theory

o  hypothesis

§    testable prediction

-       correlational research

o  relationship between variables

o  advantages

o  disadvantages

§    correlation does not equal causation

·    TV violence causes violent behavior

-       survey research

o  describe, not predict

o  potential biases

-       experimental research

o  determine cause and effect

o  control variables

o  independent variable

§    thing changed

o  dependent variable

§    behavior observed

o  “Power Ranger” study

o  75% of research

Ethics

- on your own, pages 26-27