CHAPTER 2 METHODLOGY: How Social Psychologists Do Research e.g. Pornography harmful or not? Does it increase rape, violence?

ce? A woman murdered in an alley in New York attack lasted for 45 minutes noone helped, called the police at least 38 people were aware of such an attack first comment: dehumanizing big city life! People didnt care about the screams as a result of apathy Formulating Hypotheses and Theories First: a question Based on accumulation of knowledge, personal observation a) Generated from past theories and research science is a cumulative process you might be dissatisfied with an existing theory /explanation e.g. Leon Festinger was dissatisfied with behaviorism in explaining attitude change he developed dissonance theory b) Generated based on personal observations observe something in your life, find it curious and interesting develop a hypothesis or theory e.g. those who didnt help the woman some researcher studied the case they thought someone else surely did call the police. Methods of Research: 1) Observational method Aim: description of social behavior - Observe - then, Record systematically all measurements / impressions Ethnography is one form observe from the inside. Key: observe without any preconception Archival Analysis: examine archives (documents, researches, diaries, novels, magazines, newspapers, music lyrics, movies, TV shows, Ads, etc) societys beliefs and values can be described. Limits to observation: some behavior is difficult to observe wait for its occurence + Limits to archival analysis: source might be wrong; might be inadequate in coverage

2) Correlational Method Aim: prediction of social behavior - 2 variables - measure them - and see whether there is a relationship between them can we predict one of the variables from the existence of the other? is there a correlation? (correlation coefficient -1.00 to +1.00) - positive or negative no causation one cannot say that one causes the other they just vary together e.g. is there a relationship between the amount of violence children see on TV and their aggressiveness? What is the relationship between the amount of pornography people see and their likelihood of engaging in sexually violent acts? 3) Experimental method Aim: causality Independent variable: the variable that the researcher changes, to see if has an effect on the other variable Dependent variable: the variable expected to vary according to the independent variable: the researcher measures the variation in it when he changes the independent variable. Difficult to design an experiment in social psychology. Internal validity: make sure that nothing affects the dependent variable, except for the independent variable. To minimize the effect of the differences between participants random assignment of participants to a condition equal chance of participating in any condition of the experiment External validity: the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people generalizability to other situations: not a real life situation; it is a laboratory situation artificial settings. The aim is to increase the realism of the experiment the extent to which the experiment - is similar to real life situations - triggers psychological processes that occur in everyday life

 use a cover story to hide the real purpose of the experiment, so that the participants are unprepared as it is the case in real life generalizability accross people: randomly choose people from a university for e.g. but even so, there are different cultures, different ages, different sexes, different occupations, income groups, etc. ???? So replication: repeating a study with different populations, or in different settings Cross-cultural research: replicating a research with members of different cultures very difficult; not enough to translate because cultures are different and situations are defined differently !!!! What about differences in time????? 1960s, 2000s ???? Some experiments can be conducted in natural settings to increase external validity field experiment But you cannot create an experiment in an alley with someone being attacked and raped or murdered!!!! ---.------Ethical issues: Deceiving people Informed consent sometimes thats impossible Debriefing: explaining the real purpose of the experiment, all that really happened to participants, after the experiment is completed