Chapter 1
The Mission and the Method
Learning Objectives
After studying the chapter students should be able to:
1) Describe the work of the two earliest researchers in social psychology.
2) Explain the major issues or focus of each period of social psychological history.
3) Describe how behaviorism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and social psychology relate to one another.
4) Define social psychology and explain the ABC triad.
5) Explain how anthropology, economics, history, political science, and sociology differ in their focus on different aspects of social life.
6) Explain how social psychology is different from and intertwined with biological psychology, clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and personality psychology.
7) Describe the reasons for studying social psychology.
8) Explain what the relation is between accumulated common wisdom and social psychological research.
9) Describe the scientific method.
10) Describe the place of scientific theories in social psychology.
11) Explain the research designs used by social psychologists including defining independent variable, dependent variable, experiment, random assignment, quasi experiment, internal validity, field experiment, and external validity.
12) Contrast experimental realism and mundane realism.
13) Describe the correlation approach.
14) Describe how mistakes in science are corrected.
15) Explain the potential effect of reliance of student samples and culture on research findings.
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