This episode is also available as a blog post: https://screwdowncrown.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/social-psychology-and-watches/
I mentioned a week ago that I am taking a course on psychology, and so this covers some of the material from the course itself. I may end up splitting this into a few parts as there is a lot I want to cover! To me, social psychology is the most interesting field of psychology. Social psychology is the branch of psychology that deals with how we have social interactions and social thoughts, what we think of ourselves, what we think about other people, how we behave in groups, how we think about different groups, and so on. It's just extremely interesting because these are intrinsicallyinteresting topics - everybody is interested in themselves. It is also interesting because social psychologists have come up with some really cool findings.
For example, people in certain studies were shown photos of Tony Blair and Barack Obama, and then asked, "Who is more American," - now due to unconscious biases and stereotypes, various studies find that Tony Blair is thought of as more American because, due to the colour of his skin, many people think of him as more American.
There is also some evidence that we have a form of implicit egoism. When asked about our favourite letter, it is (more often than one would expect by chance) likely to be the first letter of our first or last name. More than that, psychologists find that the sort of people who move to Georgia are more likely than you'd expect to have G in their name, or those who become lawyers are more likely in fact to have L in their name.
Now, these studies, as of late, have generated a lot of scrutiny, and many have argued that the more sexy findings from social psychology, particularly those involving social priming, are not fully robust. In other words, through no fault, no fraud, nothing wrong in the part researchers, but just because of various failures to replicate the results meaningfully.
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