Difficulty: Introductory. No prerequisites, though familiarity with basic research methods (variables, sampling) is helpful.
These three chapters lay the foundation for the entire course. Chapter 1 defines social psychology as a science and walks through how researchers actually study social behaviour, from correlational designs to true experiments. Chapter 2 turns the lens inward: how we construct a sense of self, why self-esteem matters (and when it backfires), and the self-serving biases that colour our self-perception. Chapter 3 zooms out to how we judge other people and the social world, covering the mental shortcuts, illusions, and belief patterns that shape everyday thinking. If you understand these chapters well, every later topic (persuasion, prejudice, aggression, attraction) will make considerably more sense.
Social psychology studies how situations and other people shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions. We view the world through biased lenses, both when we look at ourselves (self-serving bias, planning fallacy) and when we judge others (heuristics, confirmation bias, belief perseverance). Knowing these biases is itself a corrective, because recognising how thinking goes wrong is the first step to thinking better.
Social psychology
The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. Think of it as the branch of psychology that cares most about situations and other people, not just what is inside your head.
Theory
An integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. In simple terms, a theory is a big-picture explanation that ties many observations together and tells you what to expect next.
Hypothesis
A testable proposition describing a relationship that may exist between events. Think of it as a specific, checkable prediction drawn from a theory.
Random sample
A sample in which every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion. In simple terms, it is the gold standard for making sure your results speak for the whole group, not just whoever showed up.
Sample size
The number of participants in a study.
Framing
The way a question or issue is posed. Subtle changes in wording can shift people's answers dramatically.
Correlation coefficient (r)
A statistical measure (ranging from -1.0 to +1.0) that quantifies the degree and direction of a relationship between two variables. Zero means no relationship; +1.0 means they rise together; -1.0 means one rises as the other falls.
Time-lagged correlation
A correlational technique that reveals the sequence of events, helping researchers move closer to causal inference without a full experiment.
Random assignment
The process of assigning participants to experimental conditions so that every person has the same chance of landing in any given condition. This is what eliminates extraneous factors.
Independent variable (IV)
The factor a researcher deliberately manipulates in an experiment.
Dependent variable (DV)
The factor being measured, so called because its value depends on changes to the independent variable.
Control group
The group in an experiment that does not receive the experimental treatment, providing a baseline for comparison.
Replication
Repeating a study, often with different participants and settings, to see whether a finding can be reproduced. Meta-analysis pools the results of many replications for a stronger overall conclusion.
Mundane realism
The degree to which an experiment resembles everyday situations.
Experimental realism
The degree to which an experiment absorbs and involves its participants, regardless of whether the setting looks like real life.
Deception
When participants are misinformed or misled about a study's methods and purposes.
Demand characteristics
Cues in an experiment that hint to participants what behaviour is expected.
Informed consent
The ethical requirement that participants be told enough about a study to decide freely whether to take part.
Debriefing
A full post-experimental explanation of the study given to participants.
Social psychology sits at the intersection of three big questions:
Social thinking – how we perceive ourselves and others, what we believe, the judgements we make, our attitudes
Social influence – culture, pressures to conform, persuasion, group dynamics
Social relations – prejudice, aggression, attraction and intimacy, helping behaviour
Seven "big ideas" organise the field:
We construct our social reality (there is an objective world, but we always view it through the lens of our beliefs and values)
Our social intuitions are powerful but sometimes perilous
Attitudes shape, and are shaped by, behaviour
Social influences shape behaviour
Dispositions shape behaviour
Social behaviour is also biological behaviour
Social psychology's principles apply to everyday life
Forming and testing hypotheses
Good theories summarise many observations and generate clear, testable predictions (hypotheses). A hypothesis allows us to test the theory, gives direction to research, and can make a theory practical.
Sampling and question wording
A sample is the group of people who take part in a study. How closely it represents the target population matters enormously. Survey construction can introduce bias through question order, wording, and framing.
Correlational research
Correlational research looks at naturally occurring relationships among variables. The correlation coefficient r ranges from -1.0 to +1.0. The critical limitation: correlation does not establish cause and effect. Advanced techniques such as time-lagged correlations and statistical controls for third variables can, however, move researchers closer to causal claims.
Correlational research has the advantage of often using real-world settings. Its disadvantage is that causation remains ambiguous.
Experimental research
Experiments seek cause-and-effect relationships by manipulating one or more independent variables while holding everything else constant. Two major advantages set experiments apart:
Random assignment eliminates extraneous factors by giving every participant the same chance of being placed in any condition.
Control is achieved by comparing an experimental group (which receives the treatment) with a control group (which does not).
Experiments can explore cause and effect through control and random assignment. Their disadvantage is that some important variables (e.g. gender, personality) cannot be experimentally manipulated.
Ethics of experimentation
Experiments need not mirror everyday settings (mundane realism), but they should absorb participants (experimental realism). Achieving experimental realism sometimes requires deception. The APA mandates informed consent, protection from harm, confidentiality, and debriefing.
Generalising from laboratory to life
Laboratory research involves a simplified, controlled reality. Most participants come from cultures representing roughly 12% of the world's population (predominantly Western, educated). Researchers can nevertheless distinguish the content of people's thinking from the underlying process by which they think.
Spotlight effect
The belief that others pay more attention to our appearance and behaviour than they really do. In simple terms, you think everyone noticed your bad-hair day; they almost certainly did not.
Illusion of transparency
The illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others.
Self-concept
What we know and believe about ourselves.
Self-schemas
Beliefs about the self that organise and guide the processing of self-relevant information.
Social comparison
Evaluating one's opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others.
Looking-glass self
Using how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves.
Individualism
Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining identity through personal attributes. Associated with an independent self.
Collectivism
Giving priority to group goals and defining identity through group memberships. Associated with an interdependent self.
Planning fallacy
The tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task.
Affective forecasting
Predicting the intensity and duration of future emotions. People are surprisingly bad at this.
Impact bias
Overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events. We are especially prone to it after negative events, partly because we underestimate our own coping mechanisms.
Dual attitude system
Differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Explicit attitudes shift with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly through practice and new habits.
Self-esteem
A person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth.
Terror management theory
The proposal (Jeff Greenberg and colleagues) that people exhibit self-protective emotional and cognitive responses, including stronger adherence to cultural worldviews, when confronted with reminders of their own mortality.
Narcissism
An inflated sense of self. It travels with Machiavellianism and antisocial psychopathy (the "dark triad") and is distinct from healthy self-esteem.
Self-efficacy
A sense that one is competent and effective at a specific task (Albert Bandura). Distinguished from self-esteem: self-efficacy is "I can do this"; self-esteem is "I like myself overall." A military sharpshooter might feel high self-efficacy and low self-esteem.
Self-serving bias
The tendency to perceive oneself favourably.
Self-serving attributions
Attributing positive outcomes to oneself (ability, effort) and negative outcomes to external factors.
False consensus effect
Overestimating the commonality of one's opinions and undesirable behaviours.
False uniqueness effect
Underestimating the commonality of one's abilities and desirable behaviours.
Defensive pessimism
Anticipating problems and harnessing anxiety to motivate effective action.
Self-handicapping
Protecting one's self-image by creating a handy excuse for later failure (e.g. not preparing for a test so a poor mark can be blamed on lack of effort rather than lack of ability).
Self-presentation
Expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favourable impression or an impression that matches one's ideals.
Self-monitoring
Being attuned to how one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting performance accordingly.
The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency both stem from egocentrism: we are the centre of our own world and assume others notice us more than they do. Social surroundings affect self-awareness, self-interest colours social judgement, self-concern motivates social behaviour, and social relationships help define our sense of self.
Self-schemas organise how we process self-relevant information. We build our self-concept through social comparisons with others and through the looking-glass self (imagining how others see us).
Culture matters: individualistic cultures foster an independent self ("to thine own self be true"), while collectivistic cultures foster an interdependent self ("no one is an island"). Collectivistic cultures tend to promote a greater sense of belonging and integration between self and others.
People are often poor at predicting their own behaviour (planning fallacy) and their own future feelings (affective forecasting, impact bias). We underestimate the speed and power of our coping mechanisms, which include rationalising, discounting, forgiving, and limiting emotional trauma.
Timothy Wilson's work suggests that analysing why we feel the way we do can make our judgements less accurate, because our explicit reasons may not match the implicit processes driving our behaviour. This connects to the dual attitude system: our automatic and controlled attitudes can point in different directions.
We have high self-esteem when we feel good about the domains that matter to us. Self-esteem fosters initiative, resilience, and pleasant feelings. Low self-esteem correlates with anxiety, loneliness, and vulnerability.
Mark Leary's sociometer theory holds that self-esteem acts as a gauge of social acceptance, alerting us to threatened rejection and motivating us to meet others' expectations.
High self-esteem becomes problematic when it tips into narcissism. Self-efficacy (Bandura) is the more reliable predictor of achievement, because it is task-specific and grows with hard-won accomplishments.
Most people maintain a favourable view of themselves. Self-serving attributions credit success to internal factors and blame failure on external ones. On subjective dimensions, most people rate themselves as "better than average," and group members' estimates of their own contributions typically sum to more than 100%.
Unrealistic optimism is common: most humans lean towards optimism over pessimism, which promotes self-efficacy and well-being but can increase vulnerability when it becomes illusory.
The false consensus effect and false uniqueness effect work in tandem to protect the ego: we overestimate how many people share our faults and underestimate how many share our strengths.
Self-serving bias can arise from information-processing errors (comparing ourselves to others is complex) and from motivational forces (striving to maintain self-esteem).
Self-handicapping provides a built-in excuse for potential failure. Self-presentation involves crafting a favourable impression. Self-monitoring describes how closely people track and adjust their social performance.
The concluding balance: self-efficacy and secure self-esteem are adaptive. They encourage persistence and protect against depression. Taken too far, however, they shade into narcissism and can lead to blaming others for their own misfortunes.
Priming
Activating particular associations in memory, which can subtly influence a subsequent thought or action. In simple terms, what you just encountered shapes what you notice next.
Embodied cognition
The mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preference and social judgements. Brain systems that process physical sensations communicate with the systems responsible for social thinking.
Automatic processing (System 1)
Implicit thinking that is effortless, habitual, and occurs without awareness. Roughly corresponds to intuition.
Controlled processing (System 2)
Explicit thinking that is deliberate, reflective, and conscious.
Overconfidence phenomenon
The tendency to be more confident than correct, overestimating the accuracy of one's beliefs. Incompetence feeds overconfidence (especially on easy-seeming tasks).
Confirmation bias
The tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions while ignoring disconfirming evidence. Linked to ideological echo chambers and the stability of self-images.
Heuristic
A thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgements.
Representativeness heuristic
Pressuming that someone or something belongs to a particular group because it resembles a typical member, sometimes despite contrary statistical odds.
Availability heuristic
Judging the likelihood of events by how easily examples come to mind. If instances of something are readily recalled, we presume it to be commonplace.
Counterfactual thinking
Imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened but did not. Imagining worse alternatives helps us feel better; imagining better ones helps us prepare.
Illusory correlation
Perceiving a relationship where none exists, or perceiving a stronger relationship than the data support.
Regression toward the average
The statistical tendency for extreme scores or behaviour to return toward the mean on subsequent measurement.
Belief perseverance
The persistence of one's initial conceptions even after the basis for them has been discredited. About 75% of a false belief can survive intact after the evidence is fully retracted.
Misinformation effect
Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A belief that leads to its own fulfilment, because the belief changes behaviour in ways that produce the expected outcome.
Experimenter bias
Research participants sometimes live up to what they believe experimenters expect of them.
Priming shows that much of our social information processing is automatic. Stimuli we do not consciously register can shape how we interpret and recall events. Embodied cognition extends the idea: bodily sensations (warmth, heaviness, cleanliness) feed into social judgements through shared brain circuitry.
Thinking operates on two tracks. System 1 (automatic processing) handles schemas, emotional reactions, expertise, and snap judgements. System 2 (controlled processing) is deliberate and reflective. Automatic thinking is fast and usually adequate, but it has a capacity for illusion, perceptual misinterpretation, and constructed beliefs.
People routinely overestimate the accuracy of their beliefs. Incompetence feeds overconfidence, particularly on tasks that feel easy. Overconfidence may persist partly because we admire confidence in others.
Confirmation bias compounds the problem: we seek evidence that supports what we already believe and avoid evidence that challenges it. This drives ideological echo chambers and helps explain why self-images remain so stable.
Remedies include obtaining prompt feedback, deliberately considering reasons a judgement might be wrong, and remaining wary of dogmatic statements (confidence and competence do not always travel together).
The representativeness heuristic leads us to categorise things by resemblance to a prototype, sometimes ignoring base-rate probabilities. The availability heuristic leads us to judge frequency by how easily examples come to mind, which explains why vivid or recent events feel more common than they are.
Imagining "what might have been" is most intense when events are significant and unlikely. Downward counterfactuals (imagining worse outcomes) make us feel better. Upward counterfactuals (imagining better outcomes) prepare us for the future.
Illusory correlations appear when we perceive a link between events that are in fact unrelated. Gamblers, for example, attribute wins to skill and losses to flukes. Regression toward the average is the statistical correction people routinely overlook: extreme performance tends to drift back toward the mean, not because of any intervention but because of natural variation.
Mood colours perception. In a good mood, the world seems friendlier, decisions feel easier, and positive memories come to mind. In a bad mood, negative memories surface and judgements become more critical. Unhappy people tend to think more carefully, making them less susceptible to weak arguments.
First impressions are often right but sometimes wrong. Political perceptions, sports-fan assessments of referees, and judgements of media bias all illustrate how prior beliefs shape interpretation.
Belief perseverance is remarkably stubborn: once a belief is formed and explained, roughly 75% of it survives even after the original evidence is fully discredited. This is particularly relevant to the problem of misinformation and "fake news."
We also reconstruct memories to fit current knowledge (misinformation effect), which means self-reports are often unreliable.
Beliefs can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Teacher expectations, for instance, influence student performance: high expectations tend to boost low achievers through a more positive attitude, warmer body language, and more attention. Students are acutely sensitive to teachers' facial expressions and body movements.
Understanding self-serving bias helps explain why couples in conflict each claim they do more than their fair share of housework. Knowing about the availability heuristic explains why people overestimate the risk of dramatic events (plane crashes, shark attacks) and underestimate mundane ones (heart disease). The planning fallacy is the reason home renovations almost always run over schedule and over budget.
Students often think correlation implies causation. It does not. A correlation between ice cream sales and drowning rates does not mean ice cream causes drowning; a third variable (hot weather) drives both.
Students confuse random sampling with random assignment. Random sampling is about who gets into the study (generalisability). Random assignment is about who gets which condition (internal validity).
Students often treat self-esteem as universally beneficial. High self-esteem is associated with resilience, but it does not guarantee success, and when it tips into narcissism it becomes destructive.
Students assume "intuition" and "gut feeling" are always wise. System 1 is efficient but error-prone; that is why the course spends so much time on biases.
⚠️ Know the difference between correlational and experimental research, including their advantages and limitations. This distinction is tested heavily.
⚠️ Be able to identify the IV, DV, and control group in a described experiment.
⚠️ Understand that self-serving bias includes self-serving attributions, the "better than average" effect, unrealistic optimism, and false consensus/uniqueness effects.
⚠️ The dual attitude system (implicit vs. explicit attitudes) connects Chapter 2 to later material on prejudice (Chapter 9).
⚠️ Self-fulfilling prophecy and teacher expectations are favourite exam topics. Know the mechanism: expectation changes behaviour, which changes the outcome.
⚠️ Know the remedies for overconfidence: prompt feedback and considering reasons you might be wrong.
True or False: A correlation of +0.80 means that one variable causes the other. (False, correlation does not imply causation.)
Fill in the blank: The tendency to underestimate how long a task will take is called the ________. (Planning fallacy.)
True or False: Random assignment helps ensure that extraneous variables are evenly distributed across conditions. (True.)
Fill in the blank: Judging the likelihood of an event by how easily examples come to mind is the ________ heuristic. (Availability.)
True or False: Self-efficacy and self-esteem mean the same thing. (False. Self-efficacy is "I can do this task"; self-esteem is "I like myself overall.")
Q: A researcher finds that students who eat breakfast get higher exam marks. Can the researcher conclude that eating breakfast causes better performance? Why or why not?
A: No. This is a correlational finding. A third variable (e.g. conscientiousness, socioeconomic status) could explain both breakfast eating and exam performance. Only an experiment with random assignment could establish causation.
Q: Explain how self-serving bias and the false consensus effect work together to protect the ego.
A: Self-serving bias leads us to attribute our successes to internal factors and our failures to external ones. The false consensus effect then reassures us that our failures and bad habits are common ("everyone does it"), while the false uniqueness effect lets us believe our good qualities are rare. Together, they maintain a flattering self-image.
Q: A teacher is told that five randomly selected students are "intellectual bloomers." By the end of the year, those students show greater gains than their classmates. What concept does this illustrate, and what is the mechanism?
A: This illustrates the self-fulfilling prophecy. The teacher's higher expectations led to warmer body language, more attention, and a more positive attitude toward those students, which in turn boosted their performance.
Q: What is the difference between mundane realism and experimental realism? Which matters more for the validity of social psychology experiments?
A: Mundane realism is how closely the experimental situation resembles everyday life. Experimental realism is how well the experiment absorbs and involves participants. Experimental realism is considered more important: even an artificial-looking study produces valid results if participants are genuinely engaged.
Q: Name two remedies for overconfidence bias.
A: (1) Seek prompt feedback on your predictions and judgements. (2) Deliberately consider at least one good reason your judgement might be wrong.
The dual attitude system introduced in Chapter 2 (implicit vs. explicit attitudes) is central to the discussion of prejudice in Chapter 9, where implicit biases operate below conscious awareness. Self-fulfilling prophecy (Chapter 3) reappears in the prejudice chapter as stereotype threat. The research methods covered in Chapter 1 (correlation vs. experiment, IVs and DVs) are the toolkit for evaluating every study discussed in the rest of the course.
Social psychology, scientific method, hypothesis, theory, correlational research, experimental research, random sample, random assignment, IV, DV, control group, replication, meta-analysis, ethics, informed consent, debriefing, deception, spotlight effect, illusion of transparency, self-concept, self-schema, social comparison, looking-glass self, individualism, collectivism, independent self, interdependent self, planning fallacy, affective forecasting, impact bias, dual attitudes, implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, self-esteem, narcissism, self-efficacy, self-serving bias, self-serving attributions, better-than-average effect, unrealistic optimism, false consensus, false uniqueness, defensive pessimism, self-handicapping, self-presentation, self-monitoring, priming, embodied cognition, System 1, System 2, automatic processing, controlled processing, overconfidence, confirmation bias, representativeness heuristic, availability heuristic, counterfactual thinking, illusory correlation, regression to the mean, belief perseverance, misinformation effect, self-fulfilling prophecy, teacher expectations, experimenter bias