PSYB10H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Kurt Lewin
Chapter 1- An Invitation to Social Psychology
• Recent Developments in Social Psychology
o Applying evolutionary concepts to human behavior and the discovery of some significant
differences in human cultures that resulted in different societies responding to the same
situation in different ways
Characterizing Social Psychology
• To explain why people, do things and certain behaviors to avoid/follow generations of people have
developed stories parables and folk
• Social Psychologists try to develop a scientific basis for understanding human behavior
o They test intuitions by making studies and experiments that isolate the causes of behaviours in
social situations
• Social psychology- The scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviours of individuals in social
situations
➢ Explaining Behavior
o Through seeing the torture that the American soldiers placed on the Iraqi prisoners we assume
that these soldies ae eil
▪ Instead of assuming that they were bad people they performed an experiment that
found out that the environment changes the way that they would treat the prisoners
o Roles of Social psychologists
▪ study the way that people place influence on each other and the way that people
respond to influence attempts
▪ they also try to figure out how people make sense of the world
▪ plays an important part in many aspects if our society
▪ they research topics such as decision making, social influence, judgement, and how
people act in group settings
▪ they look into the makings of our society at large (ex. Reducing stereotypes)
o the research provided to us by the social psychologists help with decisions that are made in the
government and in courts
➢ Comparing Social Psychology with Related Disciplines
o Personality Psychology focuses on individual differences in behaviour rather than in a social
situation
o Personality Psychologists vs. Social Psychologists
▪ PP’s try to find a consistent pattern on how individuals behave across situations where
as “P’s eaie the soial situatio that ous i geeal
o Cognitive Psychologist vs. Social Psychologists
▪ CP’s t to eaie the a people peeie thik aout ad eee aspets of the
old hee as “P’s diffe eause the topis that the stud ae oe soial
o Sociologists vs. Social Psychologists
▪ Sociologists study the stats in general (ex. The number of people that get divorced)
where as Social Psychologists study the reasons (ex. Why people fall in love, get married
and some of these marriages end in divorce)
The Power of the Situation
• Adolf Eichmann-the person that ae up ith totue tehiues duig Hitle’s ule
• Hannah Arendt (philosopher)- she did’t eliee that Eiha as sadisti o deeted ut she
believed he was just a person with a very high sense of duty (so he just in reality wanted to be very
good at his job)
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