Social Psychology Laboratory

Offering a hands-on introduction to how psychologists develop and test their research, this book takes students through each step of the process from hypothesis generation to the writing and dissemination of research findings. Students also gain experience in using diverse data collection methods.

A collection of classroom-tested laboratory and field exercises exploring central problems and topics in social psychology.

This unique book offers a comprehensive introduction to field studies as a research method in social psychology, demonstrating that field studies are an important element of contemporary social psychology, and encourages its usage in a methodologically correct and ethical manner. The authors demonstrate that field studies are an important and a much-needed element of contemporary social psychology and that abandoning this method would be at a great loss for the field. Examining successful examples of field studies, including those by Sherif and Sherif, studies of obedience by Hofling, or the studies of stereotypes of the Chinese by LaPiere, they explore the advantages and limitations of the field study method, whilst offering practical guidance on how it can be used in experiments now and in the future. Covering the history and decline of the field study method, particularly in the wake of the replication crisis, the text argues for the revival the field study method by demonstrating the importance of studying the behaviour of subjects in real life, rather than laboratory conditions. In fact, the results point to certain variables and research phenomena that can only be captured using field studies. In the final section, the authors also explain the methods to follow when conducting field studies, to make sure they are methodologically correct and meet the criteria of contemporary expectations regarding statistical calculations, while also ensuring that they are conducted ethically. This is an essential reading for graduate and undergraduate students and academics in social psychology taking courses on methodology, and researchers looking to use field study methods in their research.

"For the past fifty years, one fundamental aspect of the methodology of psychology has resisted evolution and growth--the relationship of the human subject to the psychological experiment. Adopting the natural science model of the experimental method, we have regarded the interaction of subject, experimenter, and study as fixed and the laboratory as a methodologically sterile setting for the study of behavior. Recent research on the social psychology of the psychological experiment has proved us wrong. Research has revealed 'social contamination' in the laboratory; the subject and experimenter provide a stimulus for each other, their respective attitudes, feelings, and expectations influencing the data that are collected. This research as proposed ways to control or measure subject and experimenter bias in a study as well as alternatives to the traditional laboratory experiment. Because of its diversity, however, it is not easily interpretable, and its implications for methodological changes are not clear. This book provides an integrated view of this research and speculates on its implications for future experimentation. It is hoped that readers will gain from it a mature understanding of the experimental process, concern for its human element, and an appreciation of some of the unique controls they must exercise."--

What a pity it would have been if biologists had refused to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, which has been essential in helping biologists understand a wide range of phenomena in many animal species. These days, to study any animal species while refusing to consider the evolved adaptive significance of their behavior would be considered pure folly--unless, of course, the species is homo sapiens. Graduate students training to study this particular primate species may never take a single course in evolutionary theory, although they may take two undergraduate and up to four graduate courses in statistics. These methodologically sophisticated students then embark on a career studying human aggression, cooperation, mating behavior, family relationships, or altruism with little or no understanding of the general evolutionary forces and principles that shaped the behaviors they are investigating. This book hopes to redress that wrong. It is one of the first to apply evolutionary theories to mainstream problems in personality and social psychology that are relevant to a wide range of important social phenomena, many of which have been shaped and molded by natural selection during the course of human evolution. These phenomena include selective biases that people have concerning how and why a variety of activities occur. For example: * information exchanged during social encounters is initially perceived and interpreted; * people are romantically attracted to some potential mates but not others; * people often guard, protect, and work hard at maintaining their closest relationships; * people form shifting and highly complicated coalitions with kin and close friends; and * people terminate close, long-standing relationships. Evolutionary Social Psychology begins to disentangle the complex, interwoven patterns of interaction that define our social lives and relationships.