Book Report #5

           The final chapter in my book is talking about social psychology as a science. The author starts out by introducing and identifying the scientific method as “an attempt to uncover lawful relationships among things.” (407) Following this are the four steps to the scientific process. The first step is observation. This is something simple as noticing your tips are bigger when you smile while waiting on tables versus being in a foul mood and not getting a large tip. The next step is making a guess that uncovers the “lawful relationship” we observed in step one. The third step is to create a testable hypothesis, and the final step is to design the experiment. The activity we did in class dealing with “Goate Bucks” is an example of an experiment that a social psychologist can conduct. The way Dr. Goate’s designed the set up of the group list and the location he placed each group in created a sense of superiority. The top group who represented the executives was large blue font, the middle group who represented the managers was one person with large font, and the bottom group consisted of everyday workers was small font with three named crammed in a small text box. A social psychologist would test this experiment to see how the students interacted and if they took on the “higher” position rules. An experiment consists of an independent variable and a dependent variable. The independent variable is a characteristic of the experiment that is manipulated or changed. The group that students were placed in is an example of this in relation to our class activity.  The dependent variable is what is being measured. Like how students in the top group treated students that were in the lower group.

            The decision to conduct an experiment depends on an assessment of the potential costs and benefits of that specific experiment. Author Elliot Aronson gives advice to his students, and tells them to follow certain guidelines. The five guidelines are: intense pain or discomfort should be avoided, participants must be given the option at ending the experiment if their discomfort becomes too intense, alternative procedures should be considered, experimenters should spend time with each participant thoroughly explaining the details of an experiment, and finally, experimenters should make sure their experiment is worthwhile and that it will answer an interesting question. After carefully following those five guidelines, Aronson gives his students the thumbs up to proceed with their experiment.