SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
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Social psychology is the study of the relations between people and groups. Scholars in this interdisciplinary area are typically either psychologists or sociologists, though all social psychologists employ both the individual and the group as their units of analysis. Despite their similarity, psychological and sociological researchers tend to differ in their goals, approaches, methods, and terminology. They also favor separate academic journals and professional societies. The greatest period of collaboration between sociologists and psychologists was during the years immediately following World War II. Although there has been increasing isolation and specialization in recent years, some degree of overlap and influence remains between the two disciplines.
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologists use a number of different scientific methods to conduct research on social psychology topics. These methods allow researchers to test hypotheses and theories and look for relationships between different variables. Which type of research is best? This depends largely on the subject the researcher is exploring, the resources available and the theory or hypothesis being investigated.
Quantitative / Qualitative Correlational Research Survey Research Experimental ResearchQUANTITATIVE/QUALITATIVE:
There is usually a trade off between the number of cases and the number of their variables that social research can study. Qualitative research usually involves few cases with many variables, while quantitative involves many phenomena with few variables. There is some debate over whether "quantitative research" and "qualitative research" methods can be complementary: some researchers argue that combining the two approaches is beneficial and helps build a more complete picture of the social world, while other researchers believe that the epistemologies that underpin each of the approaches are so divergent that they cannot be reconciled within a research project.
While quantitative methods are based on a natural science, positivist model of testing theory, qualitative methods are based on interpretivism and are more focused around generating theories and accounts. Positivists treat the social world as something that is 'out there', external to the social scientist and waiting to be researched. Interpretivists, on the other hand believe that the social world is constructed by social agency and therefore any intervention by a researcher will affect social reality. Herein lies the supposed conflict between quantitative and qualitative approaches - quantitative approaches traditionally seek to minimize intervention in order to produce valid and reliable statistics, whereas qualitative approaches traditionally treat intervention as something that is necessary (often arguing that participation can lead to a better understanding of a social situation).
However, it is increasingly recognized that the significance of these differences should not be exaggerated and that quantitative and qualitative approaches can be complementary. They can be combined in a number of ways, for example:
ü Qualitative methods can be used in order to develop quantitative research tools. For example, focus groups could be used to explore an issue with a small number of people and the data gathered using this method could then be used to develop a quantitative survey questionnaire that could be administered to a far greater number of people allowing results to be generalized.
ü Qualitative methods can be used to explore and facilitate the interpretation of relationships between variables. For example researchers may inductively hypothesize that there would be a positive relationship between positive attitudes of sales staff and the amount of sales of a store. However, quantitative, deductive, structured observation of 576 convenience stores could reveal that this was not the case, and in order to understand why the relationship between the variables was negative the researchers may undertake qualitative case studies of four stores including participant observation. This might abductively confirm that the relationship was negative, but that it was not the positive attitude of sales staff that led to low sales, but rather that high sales led to busy staff who were less likely to be express positive emotions at work.
Quantitative methods are useful for describing social phenomena, especially on a larger scale. Qualitative methods allow social scientists to provide richer explanations (and descriptions) of social phenomena, frequently on a smaller scale. By using two or more approaches researchers may be able to 'triangulate' their findings and provide a more valid representation of the social world. A combination of different methods are often used within "comparative research", which involves the study of social processes across nation-states, or across different types of society.
CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH: DETECTING NATURAL ASSOCIATIONS
First, we might discern whether any relation—or correlation, as we say—exists between educational level and earnings. For example, if college is a good financial investment, then college graduates should, on average, earn more than those who don't attend. Sure enough, shows that college graduates have a whopping income advantage. So can we now agree with college recruiters that higher education is the gateway to economic success?
”The study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables”.
Before we answer yes, let's take a closer look. We know that formal education correlates with earnings; that's beyond question. But does this necessarily mean that education causes higher incomes? Perhaps you can identify factors other than education that might explain the education-earnings correlation-
Correlation versus Causation
The education-earnings question illustrates the most irresistible thinking error made by both amateur and professional social psychologists. When two factors like education and earnings go together, it is terribly tempting to conclude that one is causing the other. Consider two examples of the correlation-causation issue in psychology. If a particular style of child-rearing correlates with the personality traits of children exposed to it, what does this tell us? If parents who often spank or even abuse their children often have unruly children, what does this tell us? With every correlation, there are three possible explanations. The effect of the parents on the child (x →y) is one. Perhaps punitive parents are more likely to have aggressive children because the parents' own example teaches such behavior. You might, however, be surprised at the strength of the evidence for children affecting their parents (x←y).Unruly children may elicit punishment from exasperated parents.
“Researchers have found a modest but positive correction between adolescents' preference for heavy metal music and their having attitudes favorable to premarital sex, pornography, Satanism, and drug and alcohol use.”
These studies can suggest cause-effect relation? in correlational research by pulling apart obviously related factors (like education, family status, and attitude) to isolate the predictive power of each. Such studies can also consider the sequence of events (for example, by detecting whether changes in achievement more often precede or follow changes in self-esteem), Yet the moral of the story remains: Correlational research allows us to predict; but it cannot tell us whether changing one variable (such as education) will cause changes in another (such as income). So, the great strength of correlational research is that it tends to occur in real-world settings where we can examine factors like race, sex, and education that we cannot manipulate in the laboratory. Its great disadvantage lies in ambiguous results. Knowing that two variables change together enables us to predict one when we know the other. But this does not give us cause and effect.
SURVEY RESEARCH
How, then, do we measure such variables as education and income? One way is by surveying representative samples of people. Survey researchers obtain a representative group by taking a random sample—one in which every person in the total group has an equal chance of participating. With this procedure any subgroup of people—red-haired people, for example—will tend to be represented in the survey to the extent they are represented in the total population. Bear in mind that polls do not actually predict voting; they only describe public opinion as of the moment they are taken. Public opinion can shift. To evaluate surveys, we must also bear in mind four potentially biasing influences: unrepresentative samples, the order of questions, the response options, and the wording of the questions.
Survey procedure in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion.
Unrepresentative Samples: Not only does sample size matter in a survey, but also how closely the sample represents the population under study. In 1984, columnist Ann Landers accepted a letter writer's challenge to poll her readers on the question of whether women find affection more important than sex. Her question: "Would you be content to be held close and treated tenderly and forget about 'the act?" Of the more than 100,000 women who replied, 72 percent said yes. An avalanche of worldwide publicity followed. In response to critics, Landers granted that "the sampling may not be representative of all American women. But it does provide honest—valuable—insights from a cross section of the public. This is because my column is read by people from every walk of life, approximately 70 million of them." Still, one wonders, are the 70 million readers representative of the entire population? And are the 1 in 700 readers who participated representative of the 699 in 700 who did not?
Order or Questions: Given a representative sample, we must also contend with other sources bias, such as the order in which we ask questions. Asked whether "the Japanese government should be allowed to set limits on how much American industry can sell in Japan,” most Americans answered no. Simultaneously, two-thirds of an equivalent sample were answering yes to the same question because they were first asked whether "the American government should be allowed to set limits on how much Japanese industry can sell in the United Stales," Most of these people said the United States has the right to limit imports. To appear consistent, they then said that Japan should have the same right.
Response Options: Consider, too, the dramatic effects of the response options. When Joop van der Plight and his co-workers (1987) asked English voters what percentage of Britain's nuclear energy they wished came from nuclear power, the average preference was 41 percent. They asked others what percentage they wished came from (1) nuclear, (2) coal, and (3) other sources. Their average preference for nuclear power was 21 percent.
Wording: The precise wording of questions may also influence answers. One poll found that only 7 percent of Americans thought government programs should be cut back if they cut out "aid to the needy." Yet 39 percent would kill funds if the "needy" item was called "public welfare" (Marty, 1982). Even subtle changes in the tone of a question can have large effects (Schumnn & Kalton, 1985). "Forbidding" something may be the same as "not allowing" it.
Response, order, and wording effects enable political manipulators to use surveys to show public support for their views— for or against nuclear power, welfare, or unrestrained speech. Consultants, advertisers, and physicians can have similar disconcerting influences upon our decisions by how they "frame" them.
EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH: SEARCHING FOR CAUSE AND EFFECT
The near impossibility of discerning cause and effect among naturally correlated events prompts most social psychologists to create laboratory simulations of everyday processes whenever this is feasible and ethical. These simulations are similar to how aeronautical engineers work. They don’t begin by observing how flying objects perform in a wide variety of natural environments. The variations in both atmospheric conditions and flying objects are so complex that they would find it difficult to organize and use such data to design better aircraft. Instead, they construct a simulated reality that is under their control a wind tunnel. Now they can manipulate wind conditions and ascertain the precise effect of particular wind conditions on particular wing structures.
Control: Manipulating Variables Like aeronautical engineers, social psychologists experiment by constructing social situations that simulate important features or our daily lives. By varying just one or two factors at a time—called independent variables—the experimenter pinpoints how changes in these one or two things affect us. As the wind tunnel helps the aeronautical engineer discover principles of aerodynamics, so the experiment enables the social psychologist to discover principles of social thinking, social influence, and social relations- As wind tunnel researchers aim to understand and predict the flying characteristics of complex aircraft, so social psychologists experiment to understand and predict human behavior.
Independent variable; just The experimental factor that a researcher manipulates.
Social psychologists have used the experimental method in about three-fourths of their research studies. In two out of three studies the setting has been a research laboratory, television’s effects on children's attitudes and behavior. Children who watch many violent television programs tend to be more aggressive than those who watch few. This suggests that children might be learning from what they see on the screen. But, as r hope you now recognize, this is a correlational finding.
So far we have seen that the logic of experimentation is very simple: By creating and controlling a miniature reality, we can vary one factor and then another and discover how these factors, separately or in combination, affect" people. Now let's-go a little deeper and see how an experiment is done.
Every social-physiological experiment has two essential ingredients. One we have just considered control. We manipulate one or two independent variables while trying to hold everything else constant. The other ingredient is random assignment.
Random Assignment: The Great Equalizer Recall that we were reluctant to credit having gone to college with the higher incomes of college graduates, who may benefit not only from their education but also from their social backgrounds and aptitudes. A survey researcher might measure each of these likely other factors and then note the income advantage enjoyed by college graduates above and beyond what we would expert from these other factors. Such statistical gymnastics are well and good. But the researcher can never adjust .or all the factors that might distinguish graduates from nonattenders. The alternative explanations for the income difference are limitless, perhaps ethnic heritage, or sociability, or good looks, or any of hundreds of other factors the researcher has never thought of.
Dependent variable: The variable being measured. so-called because it may depend on manipulations of the independent variable.
Experimental research: Studies which seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant).
Random assignment: The process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition. (Note the distinction between random assignment in experiments and random sampling in surveys Random assignment helps us infer cause and effect, Random sampling helps us generalize to a population.)
The Ethics of Experimentation: Our college example also illustrates why some experiments are neither feasible nor ethical. Social psychologists would never manipulate people's lives in this way. In such cases we rely upon the correlational method and squeeze from it all the information we can.
In other cases, such as the issue of how television affects children, we briefly alter people's social experience and note the effects. Sometimes the experimental treatment is a harmless, perhaps even enjoyable experience to which people give their knowing consent. Sometimes, however, researchers find themselves operating in that gray area between the harmless and the risky.
Social psychologists often venture into that ethical gray area when they design experiments which really engage people's thoughts and emotions. Experiments need not have what Elliot Aronson, Marilyn Brewer, and Merrill Carlsmith (1985) call mundane realism. That is, laboratory behavior (for example, delivering electric shocks as part of an experiment on aggression) need not be literally the same as everyday behavior. For many researchers, that sort of realism is indeed mundane, not too important. But the experiment should have experimental realism, it should absorb and involve the participants. Experimenters do not want their people consciously play-acting or ho-humming it; they want to engage real psychological processes. Forcing people to choose whether to give intense or mild electric shock to someone else can, for example, be a reali5tic measure of aggression.
Mundane realism: Degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations.
Experimental realism: Degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants.
Experimenters also seek to hide their predictions lest the participants, in their eagerness to be "good subjects," merely do what's expected. In subtle ways, the experimenter's words, tone of voice, and gestures may inadvertently call forth desired responses. To minimize such demand characteristics, experimenters typically standardize their instructions or even write or tape-record them.
Demand characteristics: Cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behavior is expected.
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