New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research

New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research

New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research

What impact do cross-cultural studies, the evolutionary approach, and social neuroscience research have on the way in which scientists investigate social behavior?

Social psychologists are always looking for new ways of investigating social behavior, and in recent years some exciting new methods have been developed.

1. A researcher is interested in whether moods vary by the day of the week. She codes the postings on thousands of Facebook pages to see whether people express more positive comments on some days than others. Which research method has she used? a. Ethnography b. Survey c. Experimental method d. Archival analysis

2. The observational method is best at answering which of these questions? a. How polite are people in public places? b. Are people from the southern United States more polite in public places than people from the northern United States?

c. What makes people act politely or rudely in public places?

d. Does music played in department stores influence how polite people are in those stores?

3. The correlational method is best at answering which of these questions?

a. How polite are people in public places? b. Are people from the southern United States more polite in public places than people from the northern United States?

c. What makes people act politely or rudely in public places?

d. Does music played in department stores influence how polite people are in those stores?

4. The experimental method is best at answering which of these questions?

a. How aggressively do people drive during rush hours in major U.S. cities?

b. Are people who play violent video games more likely to drive aggressively?

c. Are people who play violent video games more likely to be rude to someone who cuts in line in front of them?

d. Does playing violent video games cause people to be more rude to someone who cuts in line in front of them?

5. Suppose a researcher found a strong positive correlation between the number of tweets people send each day and their reported happiness. Which of the following is the best conclusion he or she can draw from this finding?

a. Sending tweets makes people happy.

b. Feeling happy makes people want to tweet more.

c. Happy people are more likely to send a lot of tweets than sad people.

d. There is a third variable that makes people happy and send a lot of tweets.

6. A researcher wants to see whether people are more likely to donate money to a charity when they receive a small gift from that charity. She sends an appeal for money from the charity to 1,000 people. For half of the people (randomly chosen) the letter includes free address labels and for half it does not. The researcher then sees whether those who got the address labels donate more money. Which of the following is true about this study? a. It uses the correlational method. b. The independent variable is whether people got address labels and the dependent variable is how much money they donate.

c. The independent variable is how much money people donate and the dependent variable is whether they got address labels.

d. The study is low in internal validity because the people who got the address labels may differ in other ways from the people who did not.

7. Which of the following is the best way to increase the external validity of a study? a. Make sure it is low in psychological realism. b. Conduct the study in the laboratory instead of the field. c. Replicate the study with a different population of people in a different setting. d. Make sure you have at least two dependent variables.

8. Social psychologists often do experiments in the laboratory, instead of the field, to: a. increase internal validity. b. increase external validity. c. conduct a meta-analysis. d. decrease psychological realism.

See page AK-1 for the answers.

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Methodology: How Social Psychologists Do Research 43

These methodological advances have been spurred on by new questions about the origins of social behavior, because new questions and new methods often develop hand in hand. New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research.

Culture and Social Psychology Social psychology largely began as a Western science, conducted by Western social psychologists with Western participants. This raises the question of how universal the findings are. To study the effects of culture on social psychological process, social psychologists conduct cross-cultural research (Cohen, 2014; Gelfand, Chiu, & Hong, 2014; Heine, 2010; Kitayama & Cohen, 2007; Miller & Boyle, 2013; Nisbett, 2003). Some findings in social psychology are culture-dependent, as we will see throughout this book. In Chapter 3, for example, we will see that Westerners and East Asians rely on fundamentally different kinds of thought to perceive and understand the social world. In Chapter 5, we’ll discuss cultural differences in the very way people define themselves. Whether we emphasize personal independence or social interdependence reflects our cultural values (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010).

Conducting cross-cultural research is not simply a matter of traveling to another culture, translating materials into the local language, and replicating a study there (Heine et al., 2002; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). Researchers have to guard against imposing their own viewpoints and definitions, learned from their culture, onto another culture with which they are unfamiliar. They must also be sure that their inde- pendent and dependent variables are understood in the same way in different cultures (Bond, 1988; Lonner & Berry, 1986). New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research.

Suppose, for example, that you wanted to replicate the Latané and Darley (1968) seizure experiment in another culture. Clearly, you could not conduct the identical experiment somewhere else. The tape-recorded discussion of college life used by Latané and Darley was specific to the lives of New York University students in the 1960s and could not be used meaningfully elsewhere. What about more subtle aspects of the study, such as the way people viewed the person who had the seizure? Cultures vary considerably in how they define whether or not another person belongs to their social group; this factor figures significantly in how they behave toward that person (Gudykunst, 1988; Triandis, 1989).

If people in one culture view the victim as a member of their social group but people in another culture perceive the victim as a member of a rival social group, you might find very different results in the two cultures—not because the psychological processes of helping behavior are different, but because people interpreted the situation differently. It can be quite daunting to conduct a study that is interpreted and perceived similarly in dissimilar cultures. Cross- cultural researchers are sensitive to these issues, and as more and more cross-cultural research is conducted carefully, we will be able to determine which social psycholog- ical processes are universal and which are culture-bound (Heine, 2010).

For example, there is substantial evidence that playing violent video games makes people act in more aggressive ways and makes them less likely to help others. But is this true just in Western countries? A recent review of the literature compared studies of video games in the United States and Japan. As it happened, the deleterious effects of violent video games were the same in both countries (Anderson et al., 2010). New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research.

The Evolutionary Approach Evolutionary theory was developed by Charles Darwin (1859) to explain the ways in which animals adapt to their environments. Central to the theory is natural selection, the process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations, because organisms with those traits are more likely to produce offspring. A common example is how giraffes came to have long necks. In an environment where food is scarce, giraffes that happened to have …

Some basic psychological processes are universal, whereas others are shaped by the culture in which we live. For example, are people’s self-concepts shaped by cultural rules of how people must present themselves, such as the requirement by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that women cover themselves from head to toe? Cross-cultural research is challenging but necessary for exploring how culture influences the basic ways in which people think about and interact with others.

Cross-Cultural Research Research conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised. New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research.

Natural Selection The process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations; organisms with those traits are more likely to produce offspring long necks could feed on foliage that other animals couldn’t reach. These giraffes were more likely to survive and produce offspring than were other giraffes, the story goes, and the “long neck” gene thus became common in subsequent generations.

In biology, evolutionary theory is used to explain how different species acquired physical traits such as long necks. But what about social behaviors, such as the tendency to be aggressive toward a member of one’s own species or the tendency to be helpful to others? Is it possible that social behaviors have genetic determinants that evolve through the process of natural selection, and, if so, is this true in human beings as well as animals? These are the questions posed by evolutionary psychology, which attempts to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection. The core idea is that evolution occurs very slowly, such that social behaviors that are prevalent today, such as aggression and helping behavior, are due at least in part to adaptations to environments in our distant past (Buss, 2005; Durrant, Ellis, Nelson, Mizumori, & Weiner, 2013; Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2010).

We will discuss in upcoming chapters how evolutionary theory explains social behavior (e.g., Chapter 10 on interpersonal attraction, Chapter 11 on prosocial behavior, and Chapter 12 on aggression). Here, in our chapter on research methods, it is important to note that a lively debate has arisen over the testability of evolutionary hypotheses. Because current behaviors are thought to be adaptations to environmental conditions that existed thousands of years ago, psychologists make their best guesses about what those conditions were and how specific kinds of behaviors gave people a reproductive advantage. But these hypotheses are obviously impossible to test with the experimental method. And just because hypotheses sound plausible does not mean they are true.

For example, some scientists now believe that giraffes did not acquire a long neck in order to eat leaves in tall trees. Instead, they suggest, long necks first evolved in male giraffes to gain an advantage in fights with other males over access to females (Simmons & Scheepers, 1996). Which of these explanations is true? It’s hard to tell. On the other hand, evolutionary approaches can generate novel hypotheses about social behavior that can be tested with the other methods described in this chapter. New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research.

Social Neuroscience As we have seen, social psychology is concerned with how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people. Most research studies in social psychology, then, study just that—thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Human beings are biological organisms, however, and social psychologists have become increasingly interested in the connection between biological processes

and social behavior. These interests include the study of hormones and behavior, the human immune system, and neurological processes in the human brain. To study the brain and its relation to behavior, psychologists use sophisticated technologies, including electroencephalography (EEG), in which electrodes are placed on the scalp to measure electrical activity in the brain, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in which people are placed in scanners that measure changes in blood flow in their brains. Social psychologists take these measurements while participants think about and process social information, allowing them to correlate different kinds of brain activity with social information processing. This kind of research promises to open up a whole new area of inquiry into the relationship of the brain to behavior (Cacioppo & Cacioppo, 2013; Chiao et al., 2010; Lieberman, 2013; Ochsner, 2007).

Social psychologists are studying the brain and its relation to behavior. They use technologies such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Evolutionary Psychology The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection