a short history and intro to social psychology

• Gordon Allport: '“an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others”'
• Sociology


  Provides general laws and theories about societies, not about individuals
• Functions of Frontal Lobe

  • Movement of the body
  • Concentration, planning, problem solving
  • Meaning of words
• Ideas and thoughts about psychological phenomena have been present since antiquity
• George Gunnesch-Luca presented Social Psychology


  27.02.2024
• Early 19th century saw the first attempts to approach psychological questions systematically and scientifically
• The Big Five Personality Traits have high heritability with 50% genetic influences
• Big Five Personality Traits

  • Openness: Creative, trying new things, new challenges
  • Conscientiousness: Preparation, attention to detail, scheduling
  • Extraversion: Meeting new people, making friends
  • Agreeableness: Cares about others, helpful, empathy
  • Neuroticism: Anxious, worries about things
• Definition of social psychology

  • Use of scientific methods (especially the experiment), the unit of investigation is usually the individual
• Personality Psychology


  Examines the traits that make individuals unique, distinguishes them from others and the variance of these differences
• Definition of social psychology

  • An attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others
• Franz Josef Gall believed that the bumps and uneven geography of the human skull were caused by pressure exerted from the brain underneath
• Humours in Galen’s Humorism

  • Sanguinic: cheerful, lively, light-hearted, imaginative, talkative, optimistic
  • Choleric: excitable, unbalanced, hot-tempered, strong-willed, fearless, determined
  • Melancholic: melancholic, gloomy, sad, tendency to distrust & criticism, reliable
  • Phlegmatic: slow, quiet, ponderous, sluggish, peace-loving, orderly, reliable
• The Five Factor Model of Personality is relatively stable in adults with slight changes in Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness
• Functions of Parietal Lobe

  • Touch and pressure
  • Taste
  • Body awareness
• High Conscientiousness leads to better grades in school and university, as well as higher job performance (Poropat, 2009)
• The Big Five Factors (OCEAN) are predictors for various outcomes
• Wilhelm Wundt founded the first Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig


  1879
• Early social psychological experiments were conducted shortly before 1900, including studies on coordination loss, social loafing, and social facilitation
• In adults, the Big Five personality traits are relatively stable
• Classical conditioning was introduced through Pavlov's experiments, where a neutral stimulus became a conditioned stimulus eliciting a conditioned response
• Shaping is a process within operant conditioning where reinforcement moves behavior closer to the desired goal
• There is a slight decrease in Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness, and a slight increase in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness (Vaidya et al., 2002)
• Schmitt et al. conducted a study on the Big Five personality traits in adults

  2007
• Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Openness are highly related to marital satisfaction (Donnellan, Conger, and Bryant, 2004)
• High heritability

  50% genetic influences (Yamagata et al., 2006)
• From the 1960s, there was a cognitive turn in psychology, focusing on mental processes and how they influence behavior
• First textbook on Psychology: William James, Principles of Psychology (1890)
• Behaviorism emerged as a revolution and counter to Wundt's approach, focusing on the objective study of behavior without reference to mental processes
• Operant conditioning modifies behaviors through reinforcement or punishment, affecting behaviors based on consequences they produce
• Development of an independent European social psychology only from about 1966 (=foundation of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology)
• Operant conditioning: only desired behavior are rewarded, while all other responses are ignored
• Application fields

  27.02.2024
• In the 1970s: crisis of the subject, criticism of practical relevance of the topics, biasing influences of investigator expectations, lack of temporal and cultural stability of the underlying phenomena
• The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is a psychological phenomenon where high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area (effects of experimenter expectations; Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), Rosenthal and Fode (1963)), it is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy
• From the 1960s: Cognitive turn - return to original interest in mental processes, study of how mind perceives, processes, and remembers information, and how this influences behavior
• Causes of lack of reproducibility of social psychological findings include p-hacking, publication bias, lack of interest in pure replication studies, and scientific fraud
• Current trends include greater consideration of moods and emotions, use of novel imaging techniques such as MRI, and greater consideration of different theoretical approaches such as evolutionary theory and behavioral genetics
• Strong growth of social psychology after World War II, especially in the USA, influenced by European immigrants like Kurt Lewin & Fritz Heider
• George Gunnesch-Luca: 'Social Psychology'