Lecture 1.1: Welcome, Social Psychers!

Welcome to Social Psychology!

I am so glad you're taking this course.

I'm Scott Plous, Executive Director of Social Psychology Network,

which I'll talk about in a later video, and Professor of Psychology at

Wesleyan University, a liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut,

almost exactly between New York and Boston— about two hours from each city.

Here's our corner of the world.

Wesleyan is a private university, nonreligious, fairly selective, and expensive,

but thanks to the magic of Coursera, and a decision by the Wesleyan administration,

this short course is being offered free of charge to anyone who's interested.

So, let's hear it for Coursera and Wesleyan!

Seriously, Wesleyan has contributed funds for the hardware and software

needed to create this course as a sort of experiment in higher education,

and of course, as a public service.

To help administer the course, we have terrific support staff behind the scenes

and a wonderful teaching crew including students

who have previously taken Social Psychology.

As for my own background, the Coursera website already has an overview

and links, so I'll be brief. My undergraduate psychology degree came from

the University of Minnesota, where I spent many happy hours in dear old Elliott Hall.

And my doctoral and postdoctoral work was done at Stanford University,

with Phil Zimbardo as my graduate advisor.

As you can see from this photo, Professor Zimbardo

has become something of a superhero in the field,

and he's done this course a good deed by generously granting

anyone who takes this course free access to his documentary

on the famous Stanford Prison Experiment.

You'll also have free access to several other online videos:

a great video entitled "The Abilene Paradox"

(in a later lecture, I'll talk about what the paradox is—

it's really, really fascinating);

Stanley Milgram's classic film Obedience and an ABC News Primetime follow-up;

a PBS documentary with surprising research on what makes us happy,

and just as important, what doesn't;

two animated guest lectures (the first, called "Secrets from the Science

of Persuasion," is a joint lecture by two world-class experts on the topic,

and the second is on empathy and the power of "outrospection,"

of getting to know yourself not just through introspection, but through

the lives of other people); and of course, much, much more.

One unique aspect of the course is the large number of individuals

and organizations contributing free materials, beginning with

David Myers of Hope College and Mike Sugarman of McGraw Hill,

who are allowing us to use two outstanding textbooks authored by

Professor Myers. Here are just some of the contributors—please see

our course page for a more complete list, and I'll acknowledge

others as the course unfolds. These groups have been just incredibly generous.

Another unique aspect of the course is that we'll be using resources from

Social Psychology Network—the world's largest online community devoted

to social psychology. In a later video, I'll give you a tour of the Network,

which I founded in 1996 (long time ago now!), and which has had over

a quarter billion page views since then. In that video, I'll describe some features

that I think would be of special interest to members of the class,

and I'll invite you to join the Network. Coursera and Social Psychology Network

have teamed up to create some wonderful new resources that I think that you'll like.

You can see that the Network is very excited to meet you.

One other aspect of the course that makes it a bit unique is that we'll begin

with a "Snapshot Quiz" to take a picture of your thinking

before being exposed to the lectures and assigned readings.

That way, you'll be able to compare your answers with

the results of research that we discuss later.

In other words, you'll be able to privately view your own quiz answers

right in the lecture videos—a new feature that Coursera created just for our class,

and as far as I know, something that's never been done before in an online course.

And when the course ends, the Snapshot Quiz will also help you

see how much your psychology expertise has changed.

You know, it's easy to say that psychology is just common sense,

but when you dig deeper, there are all sorts of questions

in which you can think of good reasons why the answer might be yes,

and equally good reasons why it might be no.

In dating and marriage, do opposites attract?

Does punching a pillow reduce aggression?

Do women fall in love faster than men?

Is it true that money can't buy happiness?

That's where social psychology comes in.

It's the scientific study of how people think about, influence,

and relate to one another. It uses many of the same

experimental methods found in other branches of science.

It uses many of the same techniques for data analysis.

And the results of these investigations are typically

published in peer-reviewed research journals.

And as long as we're talking about research, I should also mention

that from time to time in these videotape lectures,

I'm going to pause the action to ask you a question.

It might be to predict research findings before

I share them with you, just to take a guess,

or it might be to ask you about something covered in the lecture,

just to make sure that you're following the material;

it might even be to ask you a question that doesn't have

a right or wrong answer, just to stimulate your thinking,

to help you think about a topic actively rather than passively watching the videos.

Let me just turn out the lights for a moment and give you an example.

If you're like most people, you answered "yes" to this question.

Not everyone does, but most people do.

What's interesting is that if you give a different set of people

the opposite research finding—that is, that attractive people are

seen as more intelligent—most people again say that

that's what they would have guessed.

Why? What's going on here?

Well, it's something known as "hindsight bias," or the

"I-knew-it-all-along effect," and it's covered in this week's assigned readings.

It's the tendency for people to see things as more obvious in hindsight,

after they already know what the outcome is.

The moral of the story with respect to social psychology findings is that—

whether they're about attractiveness or anything else—they're a whole lot

harder to predict when you don't know already what the answer is.

And that's what makes it interesting.

That's what makes it worth studying.

So, if you want to know, for example, whether attractiveness is associated

with people seeing you as more intelligent, or you want to know

whether opposites attract, stick around, and you'll learn about that

and many other research findings throughout this course.

That's the deal—that's the deal.

If you commit yourself to a few hours each week for

the duration of the course, rather than picking and choosing

particular topics or particular videos and readings, if you take it

as a package, I promise that I will do everything possible

to make this course worth your valuable time.

How will it work?

That's the subject of our next video.

I'll see you there!

Social Psychology

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