1. Chapter 1: Introduction
Social Psychology
Chapter 1: Introduction

2. Ways of thinking

3. Intuitive vs. rational
Rational or logical thinking implies that we systematically search reasons and evidence and use these to come to a conclusion.
Intuitive thinking implies that we go with the conclusion that appears reasonable or feels good without necessarily making our evidence or reasoning explicit.

4. Accidental vs. conspiratorial frameworks
Some people tend to see the event of history and of contemporary life as accidental or coincidental.
For example, evolution is an accidental theory of origins.
Others tend to see those events as being caused or controlled by people or forces behind the scenes.
For example, creation or intelligent design is a conspiratorial framework. It implies that God or some supernatural being created us for a purpose.

5. A Mixture of Ideas
Most people do not operate exclusively within either framework, but switch back and forth between the two.
This does not necessarily imply a 50-50% breakdown. Most probably use one preferred framework more often, but the other in certain areas of thought, or at certain times.
The context of the issue will make a difference along with the individual’s, worldview, religion, etc.

6. What are some examples? What do you believe UFO’s really are?
What is your soul-mate? Do you have one?
Does America have a “shadow government?”
How much would you be willing to bet on your team winning the game?
Do you think that you were born for “such a time as this?”
If you have a friend killed in an accident, do you say he/she was “at the wrong place at the wrong time”, or do you say that his/her “number was up”?

7. More Difficult Examples
Why has America become so much friendlier to socialism?
Why has American morality become so much looser?
Why is there so much more autism, ADHD, Alzheimer's, diabetes, etc.
For these questions, we know that “forces” are behind the changes, but we don’t know if someone has brought them about on purpose to suit their agenda.

8. Conclusion
In short, our conclusions, our assumptions, our attribution of motives, and our assessment of outcomes will be influenced by whether we are thinking accidentally or conspiratorially.

9. Premodern, Modern & Postmodern Frameworks for Thinking

10. Premodernism, Modernism, Postmodernism:
Historical changes in the Intellectual Thinking Framework among Academics and Intellectuals
Most of this information was gleaned from Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture by Gene E. Veith, Jr, 1994 (Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL)

11. Pre-modernism
Belief in the supernatural, a spiritual reality from which life gains its meaning
Nature is God’s creation.
Human beings are sinful, but valuable and the object of God’s salvation.
The physical world is orderly and knowable.
Truth is objective and there are absolutes.
Man, society and nature are not operating autonomously, but depend upon the sovereignty of God.

12. The transition from Premodernism to Modernism
The supernatural was discounted, ignored.
Religion was replaced with reason.
The sovereignty of God was replaced with the sovereignty of human reason (operating on the data of the senses). (science)
Sought a rational religion (deism), where God created the universe and abandoned it to man.
Morality became utilitarian.
Materialism – The only reality is what we can sense.
The transition from Premodernism to Modernism

13. Moral Utilitarianism
Things are understood by causes – effect within a closed system.
Actions are good if they make the system (society) work and evil if they do not.
(Can justify slavery, child labor, abortion, euthanasia, etc. under this system)

14. Birth of the social sciences – Can apply scientific methods to study people and groups/societies.
Can construct or engineer societies and economies. Karl Marx: Communist society will have no private property, no religion, and individualism and native cultures will be suppressed.
Existentialism. There is no inherent meaning or purpose in life. There are only the orderliness of nature and logical conclusions.
Relativism – People must create their own meanings. “What’s true for you may not be true for me.” Since meanings are personal and subjective, they must all be equally valid. It becomes impolite or politically incorrect to tell anyone that you think they are wrong.
Results of Modernism

15. Postmodernism Modernism peaked in the 20th Century.
Postmodernism challenged its belief in linear progress, absolute truth, rational planning, standardization of knowledge, and “totalization of chaos” – the imposition of order which would be treated as objective and universally binding.
Postmodernism sought to replace it with reality as a “social construct” – where order is only provisional and varies from person to person. It embraces fragmentation and indeterminacy instead. It “affirms the chaos”.

16. Societies who suffer schism of the soul commit cultural suicide.
Fall into a sense of abandon
Stop believing in morality
Succumb to escapism
Sense of drift – yield to a meaningless determinism as if their efforts do not matter
Feel guilt or self-loathing due to moral abandon
Accept almost anything with uncritical tolerance
Surrender themselves to the “melting-pot”
Are decentered – not anchored to anything
Feel anxious, irrational and helpless
Sir Arnold Toynbee, 1940

17. Schism means a split. We have reached a point in our culture that it is often difficult to discuss things because our frameworks for thought are so different. We are definitely divided, confused, and frustrated. Without a commonly accepted political, moral or religious framework that we can fight for or against, our arguments are adrift – one opinion canceling out the other. We have individuals willing to start controversy over trivial matters and protesters who don’t even seem to know what they are protesting. Maybe we fit Toynbee’s description. But what to do about it?

18. Definition
Social psychology is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.

19. Social Science “Cousins”
Sociology – more emphasis on the group as a unit and the function of larger groups and organizations
Personality psychology – more emphasis on personal, individual differences to explain differences in behavior
Social psychology – looks at the person in the situation.

20. What is a construal?
- the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world
- “Well, that’s just the way that I see it.”
Originated in the Gestalt theories of psychological perception.
Naïve realism (Lee Ross) – the conviction that we perceive things as they really are

21. What is human nature/ Why do we respond the way that we do?
What are our motives?
Dual: 1) We have tendencies to respond in certain ways. 2) Culture may trigger those tendencies. e.g., What is funny; what is insulting

22. Short history of Social Psychology
1853 – Herbert Spencer – instinctive behavior
William McDougall – 1908 First Textbook
1920 – Sigmund Freud – hidden desires
1930 – Behaviorist John B. Watson
- Opposed instinct theory; behavior shaped by experience (reward/punishment; pleasure/pain principle)
1924 – Floyd Allport Social Psychology

23. Short history of Social Psychology
Also shaped by historical events. WW II Cultural revolution of the 1960s Beliefs about the nature of reality (post-modernism) Existential perspective – meaning, identity Neuroscience

24. Short history of Social Psychology
1970s and 80s – cognitive psychology How do we perceive, remember, interpret and understand our own world?
1990s – cognitive, evolutionary, cultural
What is our own symbolic conception of reality? Meaning, identity, free will

25. Core Assumptions
1. Behavior is a joint product of the person and the situation.
The importance of the situation is the great lesson of social psychology. (Kurt Lewin, 1936)
Each of us is unique, but we have similar tendencies to react.

26. Core Assumptions
2 – Behavior depends upon a socially constructed view of reality.
Experience, assumptions, values, beliefs

27. Core Assumptions
3 – Social Cognition shapes behavior (Fritz Heider, 1958)
How we think about other people, especially causal explanations of behavior.

28. Core Assumptions
4 - The use of science is the best way to understand.

29. Cultural Knowledge Intuitive encyclopedia – from experience
Becomes common knowledge or common sense

30. What is a culture? - system of order - self-evidently true
- accepted naturally and automatically
- a set of beliefs, attitudes, values, norms, morals, customs, roles, statuses, symbols, rituals shared by a self-identified group whose members think of themselves as a group

31. What are the elements? Beliefs – accepted ideas about reality
Values – guiding principles
Norms – shared beliefs about what is appropriate or expected
Attitudes – preferences, likes/dislikes, opinions about good/bad
Morals – social role obligations, response to authority, group loyalty, rights

32. What are the elements? Social roles
Is there a basic, universal structure to a culture?
Are there better and worse cultures/