Text in black is from the DD307 course book. 3.1 Introduction ●
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Historically, the study of social psychology has ​
been dominated by methodology ​
(​
how​
: the methods used (e.g. quantitative vs. qualitative) rather than what​
is studied); In the twentieth century this was driven by desire to be ​
scientific ​
(cf. Watson, behaviourism, cognitive revolution etc.); ○ Psychological Social Psychology was more affected by this than Sociological Social Psychology which tended towards qualitative, naturalistic methods. ●
Methods produce knowledge ­ ​
the method used affects what is “found”, it doesn’t just reveal this knowledge​
; ○ i.e. the method used can improve what is found, but ​
can potentially distort or limit it​
; ●
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Four approaches are covered in this chapter: ​
experimental, discursive, phenomenological and psychoanalytic​
; Two quantitative methods are covered in more detail: ​
experiment​
(Milgram) and ​
psychometrics​
. 3.2 Four social psychological methods Social Cognitive Discursive psychological Phenomenological Social psychoanalytic Origins • 1960s Developed to answer • 1970s • Sociological • 1900s (Husserl) • Used by clinicians initially • Adopted in psychology in psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 criticisms of behaviourism • Mainly psychological rather than sociological • Potter & Wetherell included discourse and how it’s used the 1990s Ontology (foundations, philosophy, theory of being) • Behaviour of individuals within society can be explained by how they process information • Social identity is created through cognition • We actively use language as a tool to explain/blame/justify • We draw on socially constructed discourses to self­identify • Multiple identities used in different social contexts • How people behave is influenced by what they feel as embodied individuals during their interactions with others • Meaning­making is constant, we don’t have a fixed core • Conflict between unconscious drives and their interaction with conscious thought drives behaviour • Defence mechanisms protect against this conflict Epistemology (what knowledge is considered valid) • Empiricism • Perception of the objective world • Measured data produce knowledge • Generalised laws (causal or correlational) • Social constructionism • Mediated social construction of meaning • The outcome of critically analysing social discourses (spoken word, written texts (ideally not those produced for research purposes)) using rhetorical, CDA, conversational etc. • Social discourses are socially constructed through intersubjectivity • Social constructionism • Mediated social construction of meaning • The subjective meanings constructed from first­person lived experience (personal and intersubjective lifeworld) • Social constructionism • Mediated social construction of meaning • What is said, what is interpreted by the analyst (including what is left unsaid ­ unconscious meanings) • Subject positions (discourse), object relations (psychoanalysis) Methodology (approach) • Quantitative, scientific • Qualitative • Discourse analytic • Qualitative • Examination of phenomenon/consciousness • Qualitative Methods (how the approach is implemented) • Statistical analysis of data sets such as experimental results, psychometric responses etc. • Discourse analysis, including conversation analysis, rhetorical analysis, Foucauldian discourse • First­person interviews • Written accounts of people’s own feelings • Epoche/bracketing, • Free association narrative interviews (FANI) • Observation, case study • Interpretation of what is not psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 Units of analysis (what is studied) • Observations (quantified) • Experiment analysis of texts horizontalisation, • Reflexivity said as well as what is • Identifying splitting, projection, projective identification etc. • Reflexivity • The fictive individual • Behaviour • What people think in experimental conditions • The social individual • The discourses available in society • Discourses replaced attitudes as the object of study • Interpretive repertoires, subject positions, ideological dilemmas • The social individual • Detailed accounts of how people in social groups feel • The social individual • The unconscious psyche, conflicts within it 3.2.1 Four approaches to a headline about hate Experimental social psychology Experimental approaches ​
might seem inappropriate​
for dealing with extreme emotions or life­and­death situations; However stories like the one described are not empirical ­ no data, only expression of feeling so can’t be understood in isolation; Example: schadenfreude​
(pleasure in response to another’s misfortune): ● like hatred, rarely expressed; ● not legitimate to express: opportunistic (needs someone else to be unfortunate), dangerous if they recover ! ● however was possible to research using experiments: people were more honest/showed more schadenfreude when attached to a (bogus) sensor than when not. This suggests ​
experiments are useful​
­ they reveal more information about what is being thought, even if it’s unconscious. However ​
experiments should be used to complement other methods​
: ● could help discursive by identifying underlying factors; ● could help psychoanalytic by revealing unconscious drives. psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 Social psychoanalysis Considers the ​
feelings evoked in the researcher​
by the expression of hate so that it’s clear what they themselves believe and how these beliefs might affect their research conclusions; How it makes them feel, subjective response; How the writer of the piece might have felt in documenting the interviewee’s reactions, how this might have shaped the report; Co­production of meaning between the writer, the reader and the interviewees; No established psychoanalytic method in social psychology (it’s a clinical tool) but it can inform how interviews are carried out: ● Free Association Narrative Interviewing​
(FANI) avoids constraining interviewees in the way that structured interviewing does; ● It avoids making assumptions in the questions used; ● Uses open questions to try to ​
prevent generalisations​
and common discourses in favour of the individual’s ​
meanings​
; ● Follow­up questions are used to elicit the interviewee’s own ​
experiences ​
and ​
inner feelings​
; ● Analysis identifies conflicts and emotion in the interviewee’s ​
narrative​
. The main focus is on the speaker, not what they say (as in discursive). Discursive psychological Focus is on ​
the actual words used​
(and descriptions, accounts), ​
not the speaker​
; Analyses ​
discourse, not the events described​
, to find out how these explain cause, how they make people feel and how this affects political decisions and policies; Investigates the everyday use that people make of discourse, e.g. talk from counselling and newspaper reports after Princess Diana’s death: ● Why did the press select “grief” as the emotion to assign to her brother (not say “anger” which he’d expressed at how the papers reported her death, which would draw attention to them) ? ● Why did they use the word “bitter” ? (Maybe to paint him as someone who would tend to be critical e.g. of the press rather than “anger” that he’d directed towards photographers etc.); ● Indicates a desire to deflect attention onto the psychological state of her brother and away from his criticism of their coverage and practices. Analyses discourse as it’s found, rather than through interviews which create a different context to everyday life; Examines how people use quotes from others, and the effect of this (inc. conversation analysis); Doesn’t try to find cause­and­effect, considers that people create order in the social world: actions based on norms instead; Phenomenological social psychology Focus is on the ​
experience of others​
, e.g. the interviewees ­ understand the hatred they expressed; Seeks to elicit descriptions of these experiences; Researcher uses ​
epoché​
: psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 ●
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Based on Husserl’s philosophical approach; Uses “bracketing” to remove one’s own feelings on the subjects at hand ­though this is not completely possible; Data collected from first­person accounts/interviews; Researcher focuses on getting description, not explaining. 3.2.2 Similarities and differences Similar ●
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Different All the qualitative methods are ​
reflexive​
(include the effect of the researcher on findings); ○ Social psychoanalytic and phenomenological methods make this explicit; Researchers using each method justify why their choice of method is appropriate to their particular topic; All the qualitative methods try to improve ​
ecological validity​
by setting research in natural environments; ○ Structured interviews are used less now because they are less reflective of everyday life compared to narrative methods (e.g. FANI); ○ Discourse analysis tries to use narratives that occurred naturally, not constructed through interview; ●
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In some approaches the object of analysis is visible: ○ Social cognitive ­> people’s behaviour; ○ Discursive ­> the words people use, “emotion terms” not emotions; Other approaches study concealed factors: ○ Social psychoanalytic ­> unconscious drives, emotions; ○ Phenomenological ­> hidden qualities revealed through description, emotions; Social psychoanalytic and social cognitive look for cause, discursive rejects this, phenomenology ignores it (focus is on the effect/experience); Social cognitive attempts to control variation in the research setting to eliminate confounding variables ­ this may compromise ecological validity; 3.2.3 Historical change psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 ●
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Social psychoanalysis draws on much older psychoanalytic methods used clinically but has only recently been used in psychology; Discourse analysis (1980s) has roots in symbolic interactionism (everyday talk/interaction) and in interest in linguistics from European SSP; ○ Macro ­ e.g. Foucauldian analysis of discourses such as “Power”, “Madness” ○ Micro ­ e.g. conversation analysis, words used, pauses etc. Phenomenological is based in philosophy (Husserl); Experimental has been around longest, but changed due to the ‘crisis’ in the 1960s and the ‘linguistic turn’ in the 1980s. 3.3 The experimental approach and the crisis ●
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Quantitative methods came under attack for assuming that statistical correlations could be used to reach conclusions about people’s thoughts, behaviours etc. Principal objections to these methods included: ○ The assumption that only statistics could explain these; ○ That only objective knowledge was valid (no place for the influence of subjectivity); ○ That method is king ­ if the theory and method don’t match, change the theory. Danziger (1990)​
also raised the objection that experimental methods were only so prevalent because institutions, publications and the researchers involved had the power to impose their views on this approach, even though it has key weaknesses; These included: ○ Demand characteristics​
where participants’ responses are (unconsciously or otherwise) biased by cues in the research that enable them to guess at the outcome that is sought (​
Orne, 1962​
); ○ Experimenter effects ​
where accidental bias is introduced by the researcher’s actions (​
Rosenthal, 1966​
); ○ lack of ​
validity​
(​
Tajfel, 1972​
); ○ Ethical questions​
(​
Kelman, 1972​
); ○ Irrelevance ​
where findings failed to remain useful over time (​
Gergen, 1973​
). ■ Gergen argued that if independent and dependent variables are taken outside the context of everyday life (e.g. isolated in a lab) they lose their meaning. Because meaning is situated in time and place, this means they can’t actually demonstrate cause/effect, so the main strength of the experimental method is called into question. The situation was that social psychology was then implicated as being irrelevant due to these flaws in its primary methodology. psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 3.4 The experimental setting: obedience to authority ●
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Until the late twentieth century it was assumed that experiments were not affected by factors such as: ○ interactions between the participants and researchers; ○ the setting of the experiment; Milgram had awareness of this ­ he treated the social setting as an independent variable in some experiments, moving out of Yale to “rundown offices” ●
Milgram (1960s)​
investigated obedience to authority ­ participants ordered to test ‘volunteers’, give them increasing levels of electrical shocks when they got wrong answers, 67% gave the highest level; 3.4.1 Power relations in the production of knowledge ●
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Example: Milgram had the power to propose the “new knowledge” that ​
people were obedient to authority​
; ○ The “interaction laboratory” at Yale University was prestigious and would have impressed participants; ○ Milgram recognised this and moved to the basement, then to a downtown office, but claimed this didn’t affect his findings; ○ Actually the percentage of participants who gave full shocks fell from 65% to 48%, which seems like a lot !! The ​
historical context​
of the experiment is also salient: ○ Americans were interested in why so many Germans carried out the Holocaust ­ were they “just following orders” ? ○ Milgram claimed that social forces were responsible ­ that people will carry out orders if the context requires that they do, and the social forces demand that they obey what society defines as authorities; ○ His experiment appears to have successfully replicated one of these social contexts according to Gergen’s criteria: ■ Gergen claimed ​
social context affected the outcome of experiments​
and that ​
meanings are socially situated​
; His experiment has been criticised on ​
ethical grounds​
for placing the participants under unreasonable stress and deceiving them ○ his response was that he couldn’t assume they would be stressed ­ this may be a valid assumption in his methodology ! ○ Baumrind criticised Milgram for not protecting this participants; psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 ○
He had some awareness of this but even when participants were asked, some thought ethical considerations were outweighed by the need to find scientific knowledge; ○ However it was clear that participants were stressed, and the same procedure wouldn’t probably be allowed today; Harré​
claimed that Milgram’s experiment didn’t test for obedience at all, but ​
trust ○ He suggested the participants followed orders because they trusted the researchers wouldn’t let the ‘victims’ come to any harm. ○ Milgram didn’t consider this possibility; ●
Strengths of Milgram’s experiment ●
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Weaknesses of Milgram’s experiment it recognised the effect of setting and conditions (social context); it was ecologically valid ­ laboratory situation was similar to real­world power relations; it used qualitative methods as well as quantitative. ●
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statistical methods masked the contributions of 40­50% of participants the participants’ meanings were not included in Milgram’s findings focus on being objective meant that Milgram’s effect in the research was not considered emphasis on ethics was reduced, maybe because Milgram failed to identify with his participants Milgram’s experiment and interrogative themes Power relations ●
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Situated knowledge Experiments were considered to be scientifically authoritative The experimental setting influenced participant behaviour Politically significant social settings were reflected in the way authority was deployed in the experiment Milgram did not include (or chose to exclude ?) trust as a factor in the experiment ●
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Experiences of atrocities in the Second World War suggested people obeyed authoritarian orders Statistical methods were considered completely valid even though they discounted a significant percentage of disobeying participants Politically significant social settings were reflected in the way authority was deployed in the experiment Views on ethics at the time affected the amount of protection given to participants psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 3.5 Social psychometrics: the case of attitude research ●
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Measurement of ​
attitudes​
was considered important in research in the 1920s: ○ This was applied psychology, used to measure social influences to change them; ○ It relied on quantitative methods (so similar weaknesses to experiments); ○ The critical view is that the methodology determines the theory, not the other way around ! ○ Attitudes are measured in similar ways to personality traits ­ standard names given to them, amounts measured using ​
Likert scales​
(5­ or 7­point scales, “strongly disagree/disagree/neutral/agree/strongly agree” etc. ○ Intelligence​
was studied in a similar way ­ what is measured is constrained by the scales used (and the numbers they can measure). This style of ​
measurement affects respondents’ behaviour​
: ○ The researcher decides on the question (and the possible responses); ○ The respondent (who may never have vocalised their attitude to the particular aspect of life in the question before) has to pick a number from the choices offered by the researcher; ○ This requires them to make an answer that might be radically different in a different situation ­ in real­life situations they may feel completely different about the topic in the question. ○ Consequently the method may give a false impression of how people feel, compared to one that opens out the options rather than reducing/constraining them. Potter and Wetherell (1987)​
strongly criticised empirical attitude research: ○ They claimed it places ​
objects of thought​
(e.g. “attitudes towards coloured immigrants”) on ​
dimensions of judgement​
(e.g. the choices offered to respondents to indicate how much sympathy they feel towards these), and ​
assumes that everyone evaluates these in the same way​
; ○ They claim this is a ​
false assumption​
­ people given the same cues (“coloured immigrants”) may form different mental objects of thought, for example they each construct their own version of these objects. ○ Potter and Wetherell ​
see these objects of thought as discursive​
­ they are dynamic social constructs, not just simple fixed objects that people can express a stable view of. psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015 3.6 Sampling and generalising in different approaches ●
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Both quantitative and qualitative methods are now appreciated to have value (previously quantitative/scientific was considered more valid); They have different applications, for example in ​
how widely findings can be generalised​
and ​
what sample sizes are appropriate​
; Qualitative research often uses very small samples (one or two participants) ­ it is not possible to ​
generalise statistically​
from such a small sample, but it is possible to make some generalisations; The notion that only statistical generalisation is valid emerged as quantitative methods became more respected than qualitative ones; Qualitative approaches consider that ​
generalisability is not always desired or important anyway​
­ it may be completely irrelevant to the research question for example if the object of research is the experience of one individual; Extrapolation​
of findings (including specifying the conditions where they may apply and where they may not) may be more appropriate than generalisation. 3.7 Conclusions ●
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The research methods used affect what knowledge is found; Ontological (what social aspect of people is of interest) and methodological choices must be made explicit in qualitative research, along with the chosen methods. psycho.yellowbell.net/dd307
Last updated: 02/05/2015