PSYC 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Androcentrism, Heteronormativity, Hindsight Bias
1 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Social psychology studies the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals. Themes: friendship, romantic attraction, emotions, helping others, hurting others, conformity, rebellion, stereotyping, prejudice . What is social psychology not: sociology, societal/group level vs. individual level, clinical/abnormal, unusual patterns of behaviour, often connected with mental disorders. Diverse topics, consistent themes: power of the situation, importance of subjective construal. Bush administration: blamed a few bad apples . Zimbardo: it"s more like a bad barrel converting good apples into bad apples , it"s not just a few bad people ( bad apples ), but it"s a bad situation ( bad barrel ) that is responsible for behaviour. Content is directly relevant to people"s lives so generally very interesting. But: lay theories, intuition, and social folklore that also provides explanations for the things that we are interested in. Common sense is not always that common . Social behaviour is complex and multiply determined.
