Monday, 7 October 2019
Creative and critical approaches to social psych – lecture 1.
The sociology of the social psychology lab 1.
Always connect to ongoing issues / contemporary news issues.
Thinking critically about the lab based, experimental approach in psychological social
psychology.
Dominance of US research and generalisability.
The absence of behaviour in the self-appointed science of human behaviour.
Recap the criticisms of ‘classic’ experiments – critical objections.
Labs as social situations.
The politics of experiments
The experiment as theatre.
Psychological social psych (and psych more generally) is an experimental discipline.
The science of human behaviour.
Models itself on orthodox hard sciences: physics, chemistry, bio.
Experimental method invokes notions of control and testing variables,
measurement, repeatability, impartial scientists.
Boosts psychology’s claim to scientific status – political impact. –
psychologists called upon on news shows etc, they are the ones getting on
TV even just for a few bland comments.
Prestige element to this – psychologists want to be seen as a science, not
social science. The discipline’s knowledge claims also gain prestige: they are
perceived to be demonstrated through scientific process. Strong resistance to
being seen as a social science – can be a serious issue. At York – backlash
for creating S w/ SP. Didn’t want psychology associated with psychology.
Reflected in A level and U/G curricula, textbooks, even buildings – psych
departments have labs. – As a science, it seeks to produce objective
knowledge about the GENERIC HUMAN CONDITION.
The dominance of US experimental psychology.
US: most prestigious journals, key contemporary figures, key historical
developments, major intellectual developments.
US research sets agenda – but US research done by, and based on,
Americans – very small population. Problematic, psych claims to make
discoveries about the human condition, but based on study of US citizens.
relatively small subset of the world’s population (300 million out of over six
billion) - US research therefore based on 5% of population, the other 95% is
ignored.
Because of dominance of US research, psychology offers a skewed picture of
human behaviour (as studied by PSP)
Arnett (2008) analysed leading psych journals to asses dominance of US
researchers.
Predominantly EU Americans, moreover predominantly U/Gs. white, Anglo-
Saxons, with AA’s etc not really participating in the studies.
Commonly 18-22 y/o white Americans. Very narrow group of people.
, Monday, 7 October 2019
Danger that recent/national characteristic might be seen as a generic feature
of human behaviour
In developmental psychology: peer relations is a common topic, becomes
more important as children develop according to findings – adolescents
especially responsive to peer influence.
BUT
This is based on samples in which children’s experiences are structured by
age graded schooling (a relatively recent historical development)
ignores fact that in at least half the world, children leave school before
adolescence and inhabit predominantly adult world – for them, set
developmental stages are insignificant, they do not have these.
The curious absence of behaviour in the science of human behaviour – Baumeister
et al (2007) – note that psych defines itself as the science of behaviour.
argue that if any sub discipline of psychology would reflect this emphasis it
would be social psychology (as opposed, for example, to more neuroscientific
work on the brain) – what behaviour is the science of human behaviour
actually studying?
Behaviour is hard to find.
they examined a 2006 issue of the JPSP, looking at all empirical studies -
found that most empirical research based on participants’ completion of self
report questionnaires
made a ‘jokey’ observation that the study of human behaviour makes people
sit down in front of computers and do questionnaires.
‘Surely some important behaviour involves standing up? Or actually talking to
another live person…? Whatever happened to helping, hurting, playing,
working, talking, eating, risking, waiting, flirting, goofing off, showing off,
screwing up, compromising, selling, persevering, pleading, tricking…. Can’t
psychology find ways to observe and explain these acts, at least once in a
while?’ (p399)
Typing on a keyboard cant be as efficient as being out in the World.
Why did this become the norm?
- ethical concerns in the discipline: getting people to fill in questionnaires less
intrusive than observing them in some naturalist way
- Just much easier to get people into a lab, sit them down and tell them to
complete a questionnaire.
- History: over time the discipline came to focus on inner process (which cannot
be observed).
Other influences not noted by Baumeister et al.
- reflected emerging cognitive focus of the discipline
- actually very hard to observe behaviour formally and with scientific rigour
- expediency: self report based research easier to organise
- They note the paradoxical position in social psychology: it is allowable to do
research on inner processes without reference to actual behaviour; but any
research on actual behaviour has to refer to inner process,and cannot be
studied in itself.
Power relations in experiments (Spears and Smith 2001).
Creative and critical approaches to social psych – lecture 1.
The sociology of the social psychology lab 1.
Always connect to ongoing issues / contemporary news issues.
Thinking critically about the lab based, experimental approach in psychological social
psychology.
Dominance of US research and generalisability.
The absence of behaviour in the self-appointed science of human behaviour.
Recap the criticisms of ‘classic’ experiments – critical objections.
Labs as social situations.
The politics of experiments
The experiment as theatre.
Psychological social psych (and psych more generally) is an experimental discipline.
The science of human behaviour.
Models itself on orthodox hard sciences: physics, chemistry, bio.
Experimental method invokes notions of control and testing variables,
measurement, repeatability, impartial scientists.
Boosts psychology’s claim to scientific status – political impact. –
psychologists called upon on news shows etc, they are the ones getting on
TV even just for a few bland comments.
Prestige element to this – psychologists want to be seen as a science, not
social science. The discipline’s knowledge claims also gain prestige: they are
perceived to be demonstrated through scientific process. Strong resistance to
being seen as a social science – can be a serious issue. At York – backlash
for creating S w/ SP. Didn’t want psychology associated with psychology.
Reflected in A level and U/G curricula, textbooks, even buildings – psych
departments have labs. – As a science, it seeks to produce objective
knowledge about the GENERIC HUMAN CONDITION.
The dominance of US experimental psychology.
US: most prestigious journals, key contemporary figures, key historical
developments, major intellectual developments.
US research sets agenda – but US research done by, and based on,
Americans – very small population. Problematic, psych claims to make
discoveries about the human condition, but based on study of US citizens.
relatively small subset of the world’s population (300 million out of over six
billion) - US research therefore based on 5% of population, the other 95% is
ignored.
Because of dominance of US research, psychology offers a skewed picture of
human behaviour (as studied by PSP)
Arnett (2008) analysed leading psych journals to asses dominance of US
researchers.
Predominantly EU Americans, moreover predominantly U/Gs. white, Anglo-
Saxons, with AA’s etc not really participating in the studies.
Commonly 18-22 y/o white Americans. Very narrow group of people.
, Monday, 7 October 2019
Danger that recent/national characteristic might be seen as a generic feature
of human behaviour
In developmental psychology: peer relations is a common topic, becomes
more important as children develop according to findings – adolescents
especially responsive to peer influence.
BUT
This is based on samples in which children’s experiences are structured by
age graded schooling (a relatively recent historical development)
ignores fact that in at least half the world, children leave school before
adolescence and inhabit predominantly adult world – for them, set
developmental stages are insignificant, they do not have these.
The curious absence of behaviour in the science of human behaviour – Baumeister
et al (2007) – note that psych defines itself as the science of behaviour.
argue that if any sub discipline of psychology would reflect this emphasis it
would be social psychology (as opposed, for example, to more neuroscientific
work on the brain) – what behaviour is the science of human behaviour
actually studying?
Behaviour is hard to find.
they examined a 2006 issue of the JPSP, looking at all empirical studies -
found that most empirical research based on participants’ completion of self
report questionnaires
made a ‘jokey’ observation that the study of human behaviour makes people
sit down in front of computers and do questionnaires.
‘Surely some important behaviour involves standing up? Or actually talking to
another live person…? Whatever happened to helping, hurting, playing,
working, talking, eating, risking, waiting, flirting, goofing off, showing off,
screwing up, compromising, selling, persevering, pleading, tricking…. Can’t
psychology find ways to observe and explain these acts, at least once in a
while?’ (p399)
Typing on a keyboard cant be as efficient as being out in the World.
Why did this become the norm?
- ethical concerns in the discipline: getting people to fill in questionnaires less
intrusive than observing them in some naturalist way
- Just much easier to get people into a lab, sit them down and tell them to
complete a questionnaire.
- History: over time the discipline came to focus on inner process (which cannot
be observed).
Other influences not noted by Baumeister et al.
- reflected emerging cognitive focus of the discipline
- actually very hard to observe behaviour formally and with scientific rigour
- expediency: self report based research easier to organise
- They note the paradoxical position in social psychology: it is allowable to do
research on inner processes without reference to actual behaviour; but any
research on actual behaviour has to refer to inner process,and cannot be
studied in itself.
Power relations in experiments (Spears and Smith 2001).
