PSY 2110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Operationalization, Authoritarianism, External Validity

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 2110
• Professor: Daniel Bentley

Document Summary

Personality psychology: interested in how particular traits are acquired and how traits influence the individual"s behaviour. Social psychology: interested in the impact of the social situation on the individual"s behaviour, personality variables as moderators, and power of strong social situations to background personality influences. 1880s: earlier experiments, social loafing: ringelmann (pg 12) The presence of other people seems to decrease effort. 1898: the first experiment, social facilitation: triplett (pg 11) The presence of other people affects your performance. Practiced skills are done better when other people are present and unpractised skills are done worse. 1924: defining the field, floyd allport (pg 12) Areas of study/key figures: psychometrically sound measurement of attitudes/thurstone, development of group norms/ sherif, attitudinal change/newcombe, military reasearch/hovland. Propaganda/mass communication (hovland et al. : immigration to us of refugee academics fleeing nazism (ex. Led to a great expansion of social psychological research: cognitive dissonance/festinger, consistency theory & attribution theory/ heider, obedience and authoritarianism/ adorno et al.