Day 1 notes:
- Social psychology = environment/situational factors common to many of us
- Societal applications to trace a line/pave the way for social transformation
- Directly relevant to situations most of us face
- “I knew it all along” eect (hindsight bias)
- Two dierent “facts” given to students, asked whether the nding was surprising
- Many people said the nding was not surprising
- Social psychology - how people act in relationships/groups, as well as study of environment aecting
people | “the scientic study of how people inuence, think about, and relate to one another”
- How does it dier from sociology?
- Sociology = more about social systems than social individuals
- Institutions, global markets, policies
- Replication crisis in psychology because some ndings don’t replicate
- Be critical consumers of information
- Focus most heavily on replicated, classic social psychology examples
Day 2 notes:
- Conrmation bias: search for info that conrms hunch
- Four card task: things that conrm/reinforce the rule are frequently ipped over
- Has to do with how we construct reality on day to day basis
- People have certain biases/preconceived notions
- Counterevidence is explained away (ex. stereotypes)
- Common when people are given a rule that’s agreeable/nonthreatening
- Looking for disconrming evidence is not natural
- If people are motivated enough, they can disconrm rules
- Self-fullling prophecy
- “The self-fullling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false denition of a situation, evoking a
behavior that makes the original false statement true”
- Misconception/falsehood that, due to behavioral dynamics, later proves true
- Rosenthal and Jacobson study
- Grade school teachers were given diagnostic information that some of their students
would bloom in the coming year (around ⅕)
- The bloomers were selected at random
- As measured by IQ tests, about eight months later, the ones who were described as
academic bloomers had signicantly higher IQ tests
- Those kids were getting more attention/latitude from the teachers
- Incorrect information that induced expectation that brought about what was earlier
predicted (the Pygmalion eect)
- Very replicable and real phenomenon
