PSYC 1250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Hindsight Bias
19 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Social Psychologist
Understands how and why individuals behave, think, and feel as they do in
social situations - ones involving the actual or imagined presence of other
persons
•
Social Psychology
Scientific study of individuals in social contexts
•
Scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual
behaviour and thoughts in social situations
•
Scientific study of the way people think about, influence, and relate to one
another
•
Discipline that sets out to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings,
and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied
presence of others
•
Who you are, how you dress, how you behave, etc. depends on where you are
and who you're around
Like kids playing tag, the person who is "it" runs to the left, so you run to
the right, your behaviours are influenced by those around you
○
Keeping on a diet can be from the imagined presence of another person
telling you to stay on track. They are not there to tell you what to do but
you can imagine them being there.
○
•
How people act around others, not in a vacuum
•
Social Psychology Defined
Scientific
•
Individuals
•
Social situations
•
Affect, behaviour, and cognition
•
Values That Make Social Psychology a Science
Accuracy: A commitment to gathering and evaluating information about the
world (including social behaviour and thought) in as careful, precise, and error-
free a manner as possible.
1.
Objectivity: A commitment to obtaining and evaluating such information in a
manner that is as free from bias as humanly possible
2.
Skepticism: A commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent
that they have been verified over and over again.
3.
Open-Mindedness: A commitment to changing one's views - even views that are
strongly held - if existing evidence suggests that these views are inaccurate
4.
Social Psychology is not…
Simply common sense/folk wisdom•
Hindsight bias: the tendency to exaggerate, after learning an outcome, one's
ability to have foreseen how something turned out; the I-knew-it-all-along-
phenomenon
•
Sociology Social Psychology Personal Psychology
Provides general
laws and theories
about societies, not
individuals
Studies the psychological
processes people have in common
with one another that make them
susceptible to social influence
Individual in the context of the
social situation
Looks at the situational forces
Studies the characteristics
that make individuals
unique and different from
one another
focused on the individual
difference
Construal
The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world•
Social Behaviour Stems From Many Different Causes
Cognitive processes•
Biological factors•
Action and characteristics of others•
Ecological variables•
Cultural variables•
Lecture 01/08
January 8, 2018
10:27 AM
Document Summary
Understands how and why individuals behave, think, and feel as they do in social situations - ones involving the actual or imagined presence of other persons. Scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviour and thoughts in social situations. Scientific study of the way people think about, influence, and relate to one another. Discipline that sets out to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Who you are, how you dress, how you behave, etc. depends on where you are and who you"re around. Like kids playing tag, the person who is it runs to the left, so you run to the right, your behaviours are influenced by those around you. Keeping on a diet can be from the imagined presence of another person telling you to stay on track.
