• EXPERLMENTs are the most controlled, and therefore the most sound, research methods because they allow the researcher to determine almost definitively that a cause-and-effect relationship does or does not exist between two variables.

• Generally, experimental designs consist of three variables, changeable conditions that have the potential to affect the outcome of the experiment. The INDEPENDENT VARIABLE is the condition that the researcher manipulates to study its effects; it's the cause in the cause-effect relationship being studied. The DEPENDENT VARIABLE iS the condition that changes as a result of the independent variable; it's the effect in the cause-effect relationship being studied. ExTRANEOUS VARIABLES are other factors that may affect the outcome of the experiment; the researcher attempts to minimize the effects of these extraneous variables to increase the credibility of his or her results.

• Experimental research requires participants, or individuals to be studied. The process used in choosing participants of a sample group is called SAMPLING. For the research results to be credible, samples must be both random and representative of the larger population or of a specific group being studied (in both size and demographic construction).

• Examples

•    What is a hypothesis?
  A hypothesis is a testable idea or explanation for an observed phenomenon or phenomena. It's tested as part of the scientific method.

•    What is sampling? Why is it important?
  Sampling is the process of choosing participants of a sample group for an experiment to test a hypothesis.
  Sampling must be representative of a larger population

• in order for an experiment to be broadly reflective of the population or group being studied in order for an experiment to be valid.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Individuals are shaped by their relationships with other people. However, until recent decades, psychology was studied primarily in the context of the individual experience. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGISTS study how people interact with each other and influence each other's thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors.

Social Cognition

One of the key components of social psychology is the study of through interaction with their social world to understand and make predictions about themselves and others.

ATTRIBUTION THEORY concerns the tendency of the individual to make predictions about others based on observations and inferences. PERSONAL ATTRIBUTION attributes the cause of a behavior to the person performing it. SITUATIONAL ATTRIBUTION, on the other hand, attributes the cause of behavior to external factors. According to research by Harold Kelley, people make attributions based on three factors: CONSENSUS, determining whether the behavior can be contributed to controllable or uncontrollable factors; CONSISTENCY, determining whether the behavior is reflective of a pattern of behavior over time; and DISTINCTIVENESS, comparing the behavior with behaviors in other, similar situations.

Attitudes, Persuasion, and Cognitive Dissonance

ATTITUDES, a key focus of social psychologists, can be defined as stable opinions that affect an individual's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors toward specific issues and groups. Attitudes are evalua-tive, generally categorized as positive or negative, and shaped by varying factors. People acquire some attitudes through interactions and experiences with other people. DIRECT CONTACT shapes our attitudes by putting us in direct relationship with the issue; for example, you may have a strong opinion about gun rights because you are a hunter, so the issue directly impacts your life. CHANCE CONDITIONING occurs when exposure to a particular issue or group is limited, but our experiences have nevertheless shaped our opinions; for example, if you have only gone to two dentists in your life and they were both insensitive, you may have a negative attitude toward dentists. INTERACTION AND GROUP MEMBERSHIP both affect our attitudes by exposing us to the attitudes of others rather than exposing us to the issue itself. Finally, our upbringing likely affects our attitudes, as parental attitudes and beliefs are transmitted during child rearing

Other. more subtle. factors may shape our attitudes as well The EXPOSURE EFFECT states that a person will respond more positively toward something simply because she is exposed to it more. Advertising relies, in part, upon this effect to encourage us to buy specific consumer goods. A consumer might, for instance, be more likely to buy name-brand cereal because he has seen commercials and other advertisements for that brand of cereal. According to the FALSE-CONSENSUS EFFECT, we are also more likely to overestimate how common our own beliefs are, which makes it more difficult for us to change our ideas. Interestingly, just as our attitudes can be influenced by environment, our environment can be influenced or affected by our attitudes. A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY occurs when member of that group to behave in a way that makes the predictions come true. For example, in Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobsen's 1968 study, students whose teacher perceived them as intelligent received more support and encouragement and, con-sequently, ended up performing better than those students whose teacher perceived them to be less intelligent.

PERSUASION is one significant factor that shapes our attitudes every day, in particular through advertising. The first form of persuasion is relatively direct. In this type of advertising, we are encouraged to believe in the positive qualities of a given product; for instance, advertising for a particular product might highlight the fact that the cereal can reduce cholesterol. The peripheral route, on the other hand, is less direct. For instance, that same ad for cereal might feature attractive, healthy people living in a beautiful home, or living an active lifestyle. You might buy the cereal because you connect it to your subconscious desire for these traits, rather than because you want the health benefits or believe the product will taste good. Advertising may vary depending upon the intended audience. Research suggests that more educated audiences are less likely to be susceptible to advertising, unless it's fact based. Fear-based advertising can also, in some cases, be effective, but must be handled with extreme care to avoid creating negative product associations.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE refers to situations when individuals do not act in accordance with their stated attitudes. According to COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY, developed by Leon Festinger in the 1950s, humans generally want their behaviors to agree with their attitudes. As a result, behaviors may be responsible for shaping attitudes: a number of experiments have shown that people will change their attitudes to better align them with behaviors that have already occurred. The effect of cognitive dissonance, the change in attitude, increases when there is less external motivation for the change, forcing the individual to rectify the discrepancies on his or her own accord. With greater external motivation, individuals did not experience dissonance because they can point to a clear, uncontrollable reason for their behavior. For example, if an individual believes that cigarette smoking is an unhealthy habit but heavily smokes, he might first attempt to quit smoking; however, if he is unable to quit, he may then change his attitude either by changing the cognition (the research is not compelling enough) or by adding a new cognition (it may be unhealthy, but it helps me relax).

Social Influence

SOCIAL INFLUENCE is our tendency to change our behaviors in response to other people's words or actions. Sometimes, the influence of others can change our behaviors in a positive way: for example, we often perform better on simple tasks (like running) in the presence of others than we do on the same tasks when we are alone, a tendency called socIAL FACILITATION. On the other hand, social influence can sometimes affect our behaviors negatively; one phenomenon, called SOCIAL LOAFING, occurs when an individual in a group stops exerting effort because she knows she will still be able to take partial credit for the work of the group.

Other forms of social influence include conformity, compliance, obedience, and group dynamics. CONFORMITY is the tendency to go along with the opinions or desires of others in a group, despite a lack of pressure to do so. This type of social influence is unintentional on the part of the group and probably stems from the conforming individual's perception that he or she will not be accepted for his or her own beliefs. COMPLIANCE occurs when an individual changes his or her behaviors in response to a direct request by an individual who is not in a position of authority. There are a few factors that might influence the likelihood of an individual to comply: the FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR EFFECT suggests that once you have agreed to a small request, you are more likely to agree to a larger request; the DOOR-IN-THE-FACE STRATEGY suggests that once you have refused a larger request, you are more likely to agree to a small one; NORMS-OF-RECIPROCITY are social norms that encourage individuals to return a favor so that if you are given something, you are more likely to look favorably on a store, business, or person and do something nice in return.

OBEDIENce occurs when an individual behaves according to direct orders from an authority figure. Stanley Milgram's obedience studies found that, when told to shock volunteers (who were actually actors who were not being shocked at all) for incorrect responses, most of the study's subjects were willing to do so. However, obedience dropped when the study participants were in closer contact with the subject being shocked. Finally, when the behavior was challenged by the researcher's asking the participants to increase the voltage to dangerous level, many of the participants refused to continue. Still, this study showed that, to a certain extent, participants were willing to hurt others on the instruction of a leader.

GROUP DYNAMICS can also influence our thoughts and behaviors. Most individuals belong to many different groups, including family groups, groups of friends, and professional groups, and group dynamics vary drastically from group to group. Different groups have different norms of thought, attitude, and behavior. For example, in some groups, social roles may be quite strictly defined (mother, father, child), while in others, social roles are more Auid (coworkers might also be friends). An interesting illustration of the power of social roles can be found in Phillip Zimbardo's prison experiment. Zimbardo, studying a group of college students, assigned some of his participants to be prisoners and others to be guards. With no restraints in place and simply because of their contextual authority, the "guards" began to act abusively toward the prisoners, while the prisoners became fearful and submissive.

The experiment, which was intended to last two weeks, had to be halted after six days.

Group dynamics can influence individual thoughts and behaviors in various ways, including through group polarization, groupthink, and deindividuation. GROUP POLARIZATION OCCurS when a group makes a more extreme decision than any individual in the group would; this phenomenon is probably at least partially to blame for the partisan polarization that has occurred in America's contemporary political world. GROUPTHINk occurs when members of a group conform to the group's ideas at the expense of individual, critical thinking in order to receive acceptance; DEINDIVIDUATION occurs when individuals in a group lose or sacrifice their own sense of identity and subscribe entirely to the group's opinions. ANONYMITY, a related concept, makes group participants feel protected and may cause them to act, as part of the group, in ways they would not act individually; sometimes these choices even cross personal ethical lines and result in a loss of self-restraint.

Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Attitudes play a key role in stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimina-tion. Expectations about groups of people that result from ingrained attitudes are called STEREOTYPES. Stereotypes can be positive or negative, but both can be damaging to those being stereotyped PREJUDICE is an undeserved negative attitude toward a group, typically as the result of stereotyping. Because explicit prejudice is no longer acceptable by today's societal standards, prejudice is often SYMBOLIC, meaning it's expressed indirectly through the expression of other attitudes. As a result, prejudice can be hard to detect, even by those who hold prejudicial attitudes themselves. IMPLICIT PREJUDICE is present when an individual holds unconscious, unrecognized prejudicial attitudes. To combat this type of prejudice, there designed to give the participant insight into his or her own implicit, unconscious prejudices.

DISCRIMINATION moves beyond prejudicial attitudes and concerns behavior and actions; often discrimination refers to the systematic unequal treatment of people because of their inclusion in a certain group. For example, if a manager avoids hiring someone on the basis of race or age, he or she would be guilty of discrimi-nation. Like prejudice, discrimination is less explicit today than it was in America's history; still, less explicit forms of discrimination (like racial profiling) occur every day.

On the whole, people believe their own groups, or IN-GROUPS, are more diverse than members of other groups. This tendency, referred to as IN-GROUP BIAS, is at the root of most stereotyping, prejudicial, and discriminatory behaviors. For example, a person in Group A will likely believe that members of Group B all share the same negative qualities but will not generalize in the same way about the qualities of his or her own group. However, in-group bias and other prejudicial thoughts and behaviors can sometimes be curbed; to return to the above example, the individual in Group A may dispel his prejudices against the members of Group B by interacting with them in social settings or working with them in pursuit of shared goals.

Examples

1.    Explain social psychology. Why is it important?
   Social psychology is the study of how people's relationships and interactions with each other shape their behaviors and influence each other's attitudes and experiences. Social psychology evolved from traditional psychological thought, which focused primarily on an individual's sole experience divorced from his or her interactions in a group setting and relationships with others.

   How can groupthink lead to deindividuation? What are the consequences?
Groupthink, or when an individual abandons critical thinking in order to conform to the values of the group, can lead to deindividuation, when an individual completely loses his or her own identity and values, subsuming to those of the group. Due to group polarization, in which a group tends to adopt more extreme values than people would individually, social groups may become more extreme and social conflict more intense.