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Social Psychology Elliot Aronson Timothy D. Wilson Robin M. Akert

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1 Social Psychology Elliot Aronson Timothy D. Wilson Robin M. Akert
6th edition Elliot Aronson University of California, Santa Cruz Timothy D. Wilson University of Virginia Robin M. Akert Wellesley College slides by Travis Langley Henderson State University

2 Chapter 2 Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research
“Theory is a good thing, but a good experiment lasts forever.” –Peter Leonidovich Kapista

3 Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.
How can we decide who is right about the effects of something like pornography? Some say it increases the likelihood men will commit sexual violence. Some conclude that it does not. Is there a more scientific way to determine the answer? Social psychologists believe there is. In 1970 the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded that pornography did not contribute significantly to sexual violence. But in 1985 another group, appointed by the attorney general of the United States, concluded that pornography is a cause of rape and other violent crimes. Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.

4 Social Psychology: An Empirical Science
A fundamental principle of social psychology is that social influence can be studied scientifically. The results of some of the experiments you encounter may seem obvious, because social psychology concerns topics with which we are all intimately familiar—social behavior and social influence. This familiarity sets social psychology apart from other sciences. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

5 Social Psychology: An Empirical Science
Scientific methods of answering questions are of three types: the observational method, the correlational method, the experimental method. Each is a powerful tool in some ways and a weak tool in others. Part of the creativity in conducting social psychological research involves choosing the right method, maximizing its strengths, and minimizing its weaknesses.

6 Social Psychology: An Empirical Science
Once we know the winner of a political election, the outcome seems inevitable and easily predictable, even if we were quite unsure who would win before the election. The same is true of findings in psychology experiments; it seems like we could have easily predicted the outcomes—once we know them. The trick is to predict what will happen in an experiment before you know how it turned out. Hindsight Bias The tendency for people to exaggerate how much they could have predicted an outcome after knowing that it occurred. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

7 Formulating Hypotheses and Theories
Social psychological research begins with a hypothesis about the effects of social influence. There is a lore in science that brilliant insights come all of a sudden, as when Archimedes shouted “Eureka! I have found it!” when the solution to a problem flashed into his mind as he bathed. Though such insights do sometimes occur suddenly, science is a cumulative process, and people often generate hypotheses from previous theories and research. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

8 Inspiration from Earlier Theories and Research
Many studies stem from a researcher’s dissatisfaction with existing theories and explanations. After reading other people’s work, a researcher might In the 1950s, for example, Leon Festinger was dissatisfied with the ability of a major theory of the day, behaviorism, to explain why people change their attitudes. He formulated a new approach—dissonance theory—that made specific predictions about when and how people would change their attitudes. As we will see in Chapter 6, other researchers were dissatisfied with Festinger’s explanation of the results he obtained, and so they conducted further research to test other possible explanations. believe that he or she has a better way of explaining people’s behavior (e.g., why they fail to help in an emergency). Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

9 Inspiration from Earlier Theories and Research
Social psychologists, like scientists in other disciplines, engage in a continual process of theory refinement: A theory is developed, Specific hypotheses are derived from that theory are tested, Based on the results obtained, the theory is revised and new hypotheses are formulated. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

10 Hypotheses Based on Personal Observation
Many other hypotheses come from observations of everyday life, such as Latané and Darley’s hunches about why people failed to help murder victim Kitty Genovese. 38 neighbors failed to call police during her prolonged and violent murder. Genovese’s neighbors might have assumed that someone else had called the police. Instead of focusing on “what was wrong with New Yorkers,” Latané and Darley thought it would be more interesting and more important to examine the social situation in which Genovese’s neighbors found themselves: “We came up with the insight that perhaps what made the Genovese case so fascinating was itself what made it happen—namely, that not just one or two, but thirty-eight people had watched and done nothing” (Latané, 1987, p. 78).

11 Hypotheses Based on Personal Observation
Latané and Darley (1968) called this diffusion of responsibility. Perhaps the bystanders would have been more likely to help had each thought he or she alone was witnessing the murder. Once a researcher has a hypothesis, how can he or she tell if it is right? In science, idle speculation will not do; the researcher must collect data to test a hypothesis.

12 The Observational Method: Describing Social Behavior
The technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements or impressions of their behavior. If the goal is to describe what a particular group of people or type of behavior is like, the observational method is very helpful. The observational method may take many forms, depending on what the researchers are looking for, how involved or detached they are from the people they are observing, and how much they wish to quantify what they observe. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

13 Ethnography Ethnography
The method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have. Ethnography is the chief method of cultural anthropology, the study of human cultures and societies. As social psychology broadens its focus by studying social behavior in different cultures, ethnography is increasingly being used to describe different cultures and generate hypotheses about psychological principles. (Fine & Elsbach, 2000; Hodson, 2004),Uzzell, 2000)

14 The Observational Method
In the early 1950s, a group predicted that the world would come to an end in a violent cataclysm on a specific date. Leon Festinger and colleagues wanted to observe this group closely and chronicle how they reacted when their beliefs and prophecy were disconfirmed. To monitor conversations of this group, the social psychologists joined and pretended they too believed the world was about to end. (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956) See Chapter 6 for a description of Festinger and his colleagues’ findings. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

15 The Observational Method
Suppose a researcher wants to investigate how much aggression children exhibit during school recesses. The observer would systematically look for particular behaviors that are concretely defined before the observation begins. The observer might stand at the edge of the playground and systematically record how often aggressive behaviors occur. How do we know how accurate the observer is? An investigator might be interested, for example, in how much aggression children exhibit during school recesses. In this case, the observer would be systematically looking for particular behaviors that are concretely defined before the observation begins. For instance, aggression might be defined as hitting or shoving another child, taking a toy from another child without asking, and so on. The observer might stand at the edge of the playground and systematically record how often these behaviors occur. If the researcher were interested in exploring possible sex and age differences in social behavior, he or she would also note the child’s gender and age. How do we know how accurate the observer is? In such studies, it is important to establish interjudge reliability, which is the level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data. By showing that two or more judges independently come up with the same observations, researchers ensure that the observations are not the subjective, distorted impressions of one individual. Interjudge Reliability The level of agreement between two or more people who independently observe and code a set of data. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

16 The Observational Method
Think back to the question of the relationship between pornography and violence. One problem with addressing this question is in defining what pornography is. Archival analysis enables researchers to describe the content of documents present in the culture: Nature of characters depicted, Differences in how men and women are depicted, Aggressive themes. One researcher, for example, studied the content of pornography in adults-only fiction paperback books sold at newsstands and regular bookstores (Smith, 1976). His data strikingly indicated that “the world of pornography is a male’s world” (p. 21). The main character in the books was typically young, single, white, physically attractive, and heterosexual. Women’s bodies were described in minute detail, whereas males’ bodies received little attention. The most disturbing finding was that almost one-third of the sex episodes in the books involved the use of force (physical, mental, or blackmail) by a male to make a female engage in unwanted sex. Thus aggression against women was a major theme in these pornographic stories (Cowan & Campbell, 1994). A second archival analysis focused on photographs posted on Internet newsgroups (Mehta, 2001). The researcher randomly selected nearly 10,000 images from thirty-two internet newsgroups that carried pornography and analyzed their content. Compared to an earlier archival study, he found fewer images portraying bondage but an increase in the percentage of images depicting children and adolescents. Archival Analysis A form of the observational method in which the researcher examines accumulated documents (archives). e.g., diaries, magazines, newspapers Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.

17 Limits of the Observational Method
Certain kinds of behavior are difficult to observe because they occur only rarely or only in private. With archival analysis, the original writers may not have included all the information researchers would later need. Social psychologists want to do more than just describe behavior. They want to predict and explain it. Had Latané and Darley chosen the observational method to study the effects of the number of bystanders on people’s willingness to help a victim, we might still be waiting for an answer, given the infrequency of emergencies and the difficulty of predicting when they will occur. With archival analysis, they would have quickly run into problems: Did each journalist mention how many bystanders were present? Was the number accurate? Were all forms of assistance noted in the newspaper article?

18 The Correlational Method: Predicting Social Behavior
The technique whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them (i.e., how much one can be predicted from the other) is assessed. Researchers might be interested in questions like: What is the relationship between pornography and adult aggression? Or between the amount of violent television children watch and how aggressive they are? Two variables are systematically measured, and the relationship between them—how much you can predict one from the other—is assessed. People’s behavior and attitudes can be measured in a variety of ways. Just as with the observational method, researchers sometimes make direct observations of people’s behavior. For example, researchers might be interested in testing the relationship between children’s aggressive behavior and how much violent television they watch. They too might observe children on the playground, but here the goal is to assess the relationship, or correlation, between the children’s aggressiveness and other factors, like TV viewing habits, that the researchers also measure. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

19 The Correlational Method
Correlation Method The technique whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them (i.e., how much one can be predicted from the other) is assessed. Positive correlation Increases in the value of one variable are associated with increases in the value of the other variable. Height and weight are positively correlated; the taller people are, the more they tend to weigh. For example, one study found that the correlation between height and weight was .47 in a sample of men aged 18 to 24 (Freedman, Pisani, Purves, & Adhikari, 1991). This means that, on average, the taller people were heavier than the shorter people, but there were exceptions. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

20 The Correlational Method
Correlation Method The technique whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them (i.e., how much one can be predicted from the other) is assessed. Negative correlation Increases in the value of one variable are associated with decreases in the value of the other variable. Vaccination rate correlates negatively with disease rate: The more often people get vaccinated, the less often people get the disease. If height and weight were negatively correlated in human beings, we would look very peculiar—short people, such as children, would look like penguins, whereas tall people, like NBA basketball players, would be all skin and bones! It is also possible, of course, for two variables to be completely unrelated, so that a researcher cannot predict one variable from the other. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

21 Correlation coefficients are expressed as numbers that can range from –1.00 to +1.00.
1.00 means that two variables are perfectly correlated in a positive direction. 0 means that two variables are not correlated –1.00 means that two variables are perfectly correlated in a negative direction. In everyday life, of course, perfect correlations are rare.

22 The Correlational Method
Surveys Research in which a representative sample of people are asked questions about their attitudes or behavior. Survey results are often correlated. To make sure that the results are generalizable, researchers randomly select survey respondents from the population at large. Political scientists, for example, might be interested in whether people’s attitude toward a specific issue, such as gun control, predicts how they will vote. Psychologists often use surveys to help understand social behavior and attitudes—for example, by seeing whether the amount of pornography men say they read is correlated with their attitudes toward women.

23 Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Advantages of Surveys Researchers can judge the relationship between variables that are difficult to observe, such as how often people engage in safer sex. Another advantage of surveys is the ability to sample representative segments of the population. As long as the sample is selected randomly, we can assume that the responses are a reasonable match to those of the population as a whole. Answers to a survey are useful only if they reflect the responses of people in general—not just the people actually tested (called the sample). Survey researchers go to great lengths to ensure that the people they test are typical. They select samples that are representative of the population on a number of characteristics important to a given research question (e.g., age, educational background, religion, gender, income level). Random Selection A way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

24 Potential Problem of Surveys
Advantages of Surveys Researchers can judge the relationship between variables that are difficult to observe, such as how often people engage in safer sex. Another advantage of surveys is the ability to sample representative segments of the population. As long as the sample is selected randomly, we can assume that the responses are a reasonable match to those of the population as a whole. Potential Problem of Surveys Asking survey participants to predict how they might behave in some hypothetical situation or to explain why they behaved as they did in the past is an invitation to inaccuracy (Schuman & Kalton, 1985; Schwarz, Groves, & Schuman, 1998). Richard Nisbett and Tim Wilson (1977b) demonstrated this “telling more than you can know” phenomenon in a number of studies in which people often made inaccurate reports about why they responded the way they did. Their reports about the causes of their responses pertained more to their theories and beliefs about what should have influenced them than to what actually influenced them. (We discuss these studies at greater length in Chapter 5.) Accuracy of responses Often people simply don’t know the answer—but they think they do. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

25 Limits of the Correlational Method: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
The major shortcoming of the correlational method is that it tells us only that two variables are related. But the goal of the social psychologist is to identify the causes of social behavior. We want to be able to say that A causes B, not just that A is correlated with B.

26 Limits of the Correlational Method: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
If two variables (e.g., TV violence & aggression) are correlated, there are 3 possible causal relationships: Maybe TV violent makes the viewer become violent, Maybe kids who are already violent are more likely to watch violent TV, Maybe both are caused by something else like parental neglect. Researchers have found a correlation between the amount of violent television children watch and how aggressive they are (similar to the pattern shown in the left-hand graph in Figure 2.1, though not quite as strong; see Eron, 1982). Experimental evidence does support one of these causal relationships; we will discuss which one in Chapter 12.

27 The Experimental Method: Answering Causal Questions
The only way to determine causality is to use the experimental method. Experimental Method Method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures these conditions are identical except for the independent variable (the one thought to have a causal effect on people’s responses). Here, the researcher systematically orchestrates the event so that people experience it in one way (e.g., they witness an emergency along with other bystanders) or another way (e.g., they witness the same emergency but are the sole bystander).

28 The Experimental Method: Answering Causal Questions
Experimental method is the method of choice in most social psychological research because it allows causal inferences. Observational method helps describe social behavior. Correlational method helps us understand what aspects of social behavior are related. However, only a properly executed experiment allows us to draw conclusions about cause and effect. The experimental method always involves a direct intervention on the part of the researcher. By carefully changing only one aspect of the situation (e.g., group size), the researcher can see whether this aspect is the cause of the behavior in question (e.g., whether people help in an emergency). Sound simple? Actually, it isn’t. Staging an experiment to test Latané and Darley’s hypothesis about the effects of group size involves severe practical and ethical difficulties. What kind of emergency should be used? Ideally (from a scientific perspective), it should be as true to the Genovese case as possible. Accordingly, you would want to stage a murder that passersby could witness. In one condition, you could stage the murder so that only a few onlookers were present; in another condition, you could stage it so that a great many onlookers were present.

29 Independent and Dependent Variables
The independent variable is the one researchers vary to see if it has a causal effect (e.g., how much TV children watch). The dependent variable is what researchers measure to see if it is affected (e.g., how aggressive children are). The dependent variable is hypothesized to depend on the independent variable Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

30 Independent and Dependent Variables
Latané and Darley (1970) Independent variable: Number of people supposedly present when a researcher pretends to have a seizure. Dependent variable: Number of people who try to help in the emergency. Outcome: When participants believed 4 other people witnessed the seizure, only 31% offered assistance. When participants believed only 2 others witnessed the seizure, helping behavior increased to 62%. When each participant believed that he or she was the only witness, nearly everyone helped (85%). See figure in next slide. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

31

32 Internal Validity in Experiments
Experiments should be high in internal validity. Internal Validity Making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable. This is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions. We can be sure of the causal connection between the number of bystanders and helping because Latané and Darley made sure that everything about the situation was the same in the different conditions except the independent variable, the number of bystanders. Latané and Darley were careful to maintain high internal validity by making sure that everyone witnessed the same emergency. They prerecorded the supposed other participants and the victim and played their voices over the intercom system. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

33 Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Random Assignment to Condition A process ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment. Through random assignment, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants’ personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions. Because Latané and Darley’s participants were randomly assigned to the conditions of their experiment, it is very unlikely that the ones who knew the most about epilepsy all ended up in one condition. Knowledge about epilepsy should be randomly (i.e., roughly evenly) dispersed across the three experimental conditions. This powerful technique is the most important part of the experimental method. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

34 Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Probability Level (p-value) A number calculated with statistical techniques that tells researchers how likely it is that the results of their experiment occurred by chance instead of the independent variable(s). The convention in science is to consider results significant (trustworthy) if probability is less than 5 in 100 that the results might be due to chance factors and not the independent variables studied. Even with random assignment, there is always the (very small) possibility that different characteristics of people did not distribute themselves evenly across conditions. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

35 External Validity in Experiments
For all the advantages of the experimental method, there are some drawbacks. By virtue of gaining enough control over the situation so as to randomly assign people to conditions and rule out the effects of extraneous variables, the situation can become somewhat artificial and distant from real life. External Validity The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people. One could argue that Latané and Darley strayed far from the original inspiration for their study, the Kitty Genovese murder. What does witnessing a seizure while participating in a laboratory experiment in a college building have to do with a brutal murder in a densely populated urban neighborhood? How often in everyday life do we have discussions with other people through an intercom system? Did the fact that the participants knew they were in a psychology experiment influence their behavior?

36 External Validity in Experiments
Note that two kinds of generalizability are at issue: Generalizability across situations: the extent to which we can generalize from the situation constructed by an experimenter to real-life situations and, Generalizability across people: the extent to which we can generalize from the people who participated in the experiment to people in general. Research in psychology is often criticized for being conducted in artificial settings. To address this, social psychologists try to make research circumstances as realistic as possible.

37 Generalizability Across Situations
There are different ways in which an experiment can be realistic. Mundane Realism The extent to which an experiment is similar to real-life situations. Psychological Realism The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life. Psychological realism can be high in an experiment even if mundane realism is low. Psychological realism is more important than mundane realism.

38 Generalizability Across Situations
Even though Latané and Darley staged an emergency that in significant ways was unlike ones encountered in everyday life . . . Was it psychologically similar to real-life emergencies? Were the same psychological processes triggered? Did the participants have the same types of perceptions, thoughts, decisions, and behaviors that they would in a real-life situation? If so, then the study is high in psychological realism and we can generalize the results to everyday life.

39 Generalizability Across Situations
Psychological realism is heightened if people feel involved in a real event. Cover Story A description of the purpose of a study, given to participants, that is different from its true purpose, used to maintain psychological realism. If Latané and Darley’s participants knew that an emergency was about to happen, the kinds of psychological processes triggered would have been quite different from those of a real emergency, reducing the psychological realism of the study. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

40 Generalizability Across People
The only way to be certain an experiment’s results represent the behavior of a particular population is to ensure that the participants are randomly selected from that population. Unfortunately, it is impractical and expensive to select random samples for most social psychology experiments. Many researchers address this by studying basic psychological processes so fundamental that they are presumably universally shared. It is difficult enough to convince a random sample of Americans to participate. In that case, participants for social psychology experiments don’t really have to come from many different cultures. Of course, some social psychological processes are likely to be quite dependent on cultural factors, and in those cases, we’d need diverse samples of people.

41 Generalizability Across People
The question then is, how can researchers tell whether the processes they are studying are universal? How can we trust that a study done with only college sophomores captures everyday responses? The ultimate test of an experiment’s external validity is replication. Do we think Latané and Darley 's results are limited to only certain kinds of emergencies? Then we should try to replicate the results with an emergency different from an epileptic seizure. Do we think that only New Yorkers would be so unhelpful? Then we should try to replicate it with southerners, Californians, or Germans. Only with such replications can we be certain about how generalizable the results are. Replication Repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

42 Generalizability Across People
Several studies might find an effect of the number of bystanders on helping behavior, for example, while a few do not. How can we make sense of this? Meta-Analysis A statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable. Earlier we discussed p-values, which tell us the probability that the findings of one study are due to chance or to the independent variable. A meta-analysis essentially does the same thing, except that it averages the results of many different studies .

43 Cross-Cultural Research
Research conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised. Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.

44 Cross-Cultural Research
Much research on human emotions has shown evidence for both: Universality: People in different cultures express emotions on their faces in the same way, even in remote cultures having no contact with the rest of the world. Cultural influences: People are best at recognizing emotions expressed by members of their own cultural group. Charles Darwin (1872) argued that there is a basic set of human emotions (e.g., anger, happiness) that are expressed and understood throughout the world. The effects of bystanders on helping behavior have been replicated in at least one other country, Israel. (Ekman, 1994; Elfenbein & Ambady, 2003) (Schwartz & Gottlieb, 1976)

45 Cross-Cultural Research
Researchers always have to guard against imposing their own viewpoints and definitions, learned from their culture, onto another culture with which they are unfamiliar. They must also be sure that their independent and dependent variables are understood in the same way in different cultures. Conducting cross-cultural research is not simply a matter of traveling to another culture, translating materials into the local language, and replicating a study there (Heine, Lehman, Peng, & Greenholtz, 2002; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). (Bond, 1988; Lonner & Berry, 1986) Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

46 The Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist
One of the best ways to increase external validity is by conducting field experiments. In a field experiment, researchers study behavior outside of the laboratory, in its natural setting. A field experiment has the same design as a laboratory experiment except that it is conducted in a real-life setting (sidewalk, store, street, campus grounds). Participants in a field experiment are unaware that the events they experience are in fact an experiment. External validity of such an experiment is high, since, it is taking place in the real world with real people. Latané and Darley (1970) demonstrated that, when witnessing an apparent (but simulated) theft in a convenience, bystander apathy increased with the number of witnesses present.

47 The Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist
There is almost always a trade-off between internal and external validity in social psychological research. By increasing internal validity, some external validity (generalizability) is sacrificed. By increasing external validity (e.g., by conducting a field experiment), researchers often lose control over the setting and sacrifice internal validity. Researchers often begin by maximizing internal validity, so that they know what is causing what, and then establishing external validity with replications in different settings and with different populations. For example, the astute reader will have noticed that Latané and Darley’s (1970) beer theft study differed from laboratory experiments in an important way: People could not be randomly assigned to the alone or in-pairs conditions.

48 The Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist
The way to resolve this dilemma is not to try to do it all in a single experiment. Most social psychologists opt first for internal validity, conducting laboratory experiments. Other social psychologists prefer to maximize external validity by conducting field studies. Many social psychologists do both. Through replication, a given research question can thus be studied with maximum internal and external validity. basic dilemma of the social psychologist (Aronson & Carlsmith, 1968) This approach has worked well in many areas of inquiry, in which lab and field studies have been conducted on the same problem and have yielded similar findings (Anderson, Lindsay, & Bushman, 1999).

49 Basic versus Applied Research
Basic Research Experiments: Designed to answer basic questions about why people do what they do. Applied Studies: Research designed to find ways to solve specific social problems. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

50 Basic Versus Applied Research
In social psychology, the distinction between basic and applied research is fuzzy. Even though many researchers label themselves as either basic or applied scientists, the endeavors of one group are not independent of those of the other group. There are countless examples of basic science advances that at the time had no known applied value but later proved to be the key to solving a significant applied problem. As we will see later in this book, for instance, basic research with dogs, rats, and fish on the effects of feeling in control of one’s environment has led to the development of techniques to improve the health of elderly nursing home residents (Langer & Rodin, 1976; Richter, 1957; Schulz, 1976; Seligman, 1975). Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

51 Basic Versus Applied Research
In order to solve a specific social problem, we often must understand the psychological processes responsible for it. Indeed, Kurt Lewin (1951), one of the founders of social psychology, coined a motto: “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” He meant that to solve social problems, one must first understand underlying psychological dynamics. Lewin illustration copyright (2007) Nick Langley. Used with permission.

52 Ethical Issues in Social Psychology
To create realistic, engaging situations, social psychologists frequently face an ethical dilemma: For scientific reasons, we want our experiments to resemble the real world as much as possible and to be as sound and well controlled as we can make them. But we also want to avoid causing our participants undue and unnecessary stress, discomfort, or unpleasantness. These two goals often conflict as the researcher goes about the business of creating and conducting experiments.

53 Ethical Issues in Social Psychology
Social psychologists are concerned with the welfare of their research participants. Researchers also make discoveries that can benefit society. To gain insight into such critical issues, researchers must create vivid events that are involving for the participants. Given the fact that social psychologists have developed powerful tools to investigate such issues scientifically, many scholars feel it would be immoral not to conduct these experiments. Some of these events might make the participants uncomfortable, such as witnessing someone having a seizure. What is required for good science and what is required for ethical science, then, can conflict. We can’t resolve the dilemma by making pious claims that participants never experience discomfort in an experiment or by insisting that all is fair in science and forging blindly ahead.

54 Ethical Issues in Social Psychology
Informed Consent Agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has been explained in advance. Suppose Latané and Darley had told their participants that a seizure was about to be staged, that it wouldn’t be a real emergency, and that the hypothesis stated they should offer help. Such a procedure would be bad science. In this kind of experiment, it’s essential that the participant experience contrived events as if they were real; this is called a deception experiment. In many experiments, this sort of description is feasible—and where it is feasible, it is done. But sometimes it is impossible.

55 Ethical Issues in Social Psychology
Deception Misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire. Note that not all research in social psychology involves deception.

56 Guidelines for Ethical Research
Guidelines to ensure the welfare of their research participants include: Having an Institutional Review Board approve their studies in advance. Asking participants to sign informed consent forms. Debriefing participants afterwards about the purpose of the study and what transpired, especially if there was any deception involved. To ensure that the dignity and safety of research participants are protected, the American Psychological Association has published a list of ethical principles that govern all research in psychology. In our experience, virtually all participants understand and appreciate the need for deception, as long as the time is taken in the postexperimental debriefing session to review the purpose of the research and to explain why alternative procedures could not be used.

57 Guidelines for Ethical Research
Investigators studying the impact on participants in deception studies find: People do not object to the kinds of mild discomfort and deceptions typically used in social psychological research. Most who participated in deception experiments said they had learned more and enjoyed the experiments more than those who participated in nondeception experiments did. We do not mean to imply that all deception is beneficial. Nonetheless, if mild deception is used and time is spent after the study discussing the deception with participants and explaining why it was necessary, the evidence is that people will not be harmed. Christensen, 1988; Epley & Huff, 1998; Finney, 1987; Gerdes, 1979; Sharpe, Adair, & Roese, 1992; Smith & Richardson, 1983.

58 Social Psychology Elliot Aronson Timothy D. Wilson Robin M. Akert
6th edition Elliot Aronson University of California, Santa Cruz Timothy D. Wilson University of Virginia Robin M. Akert Wellesley College slides by Travis Langley Henderson State University


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