Question 1

Describe the evolutionary perspective in social psychology. Where does it look for the causes of social behavior? What is natural selection? What are adaptations? How are these important to the evolutionary perspective?

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Question 2

Why do social psychologists combine different research methods? What is the "full cycle" approach to the study of social psychology and how does it exemplify such combining?

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Question 3

Define descriptive methods, naturalistic observation, and surveys. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of naturalistic observation and surveys.

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Question 4

Compare and contrast the sociocultural and social learning perspectives. Define each and describe how they are similar and how they are different.

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Question 5

Explain the difference between internal validity and external validity in experimental research. Why must experimenters usually make a "trade-off" between internal and external validity?

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Question 6

Define the experimental method in social psychology. Describe the advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

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Question 7

Define experimental and descriptive methods in social psychology. Define the descriptive methods of naturalistic observation and survey studies. What advantages do experimental methods have over these descriptive methods?

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Question 8

Name and define the four major perspectives of social psychology. What are two views of social behavior that all four perspectives have in common?

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Question 9

Why do social psychologists sometimes choose to deceive participants about the true purpose of an experiment? What is the primary argument against deception in experiments? What is debriefing and how does it relate to experimental deception? In other words, what is the purpose of debriefing?

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Question 10

Say you are a researcher interested in studying the effects of drinking Gatorade or plain water on college student performance on a four-hour math test. Describe how you would conduct this experiment. What is the independent variable? The dependent variable? How would you decide who drinks Gatorade and who drinks water? Is deception appropriate here and, if so, what deception would you use and why?

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Quiz 1: Introduction to Social Psychology