Social Psychology For Dummies

Personality psychology is sometimes called the psychology of individual differences. Its goal is to measure and quantify the ways in which we differ from one another.

The principle tools of personality psychology are questionnaires and surveys. Researchers ask participants to answer a large number of questions about their behaviour, habits, likes and dislikes. Then the researchers perform statistical analyses on the answers (called factor analysis) to see if there are consistent patterns.

Personality psychology is sometimes called the psychology of individual differences. Its goal is to measure and quantify the ways in which we differ from one another

When you think of a scientist, you probably think of a single person: A lone genius, working in a laboratory full of bubbling test tubes or scrawling illegibly on a blackboard. But modern science is really a team effort. Social psychologists, like all scientists, work with many other people, sharing ideas and methods and data. They also collaborate with colleagues in very different disciples, from neuroscience to sociology to evolutionary biology. So rather than solitary geniuses, perhaps you should think of social scientists more like a team of superheroes, each with their own specialty and superpower (although now I’m picturing many of my colleagues wearing Lycra jumpsuits …).

No matter how smart the individual people in a group may be, together in a committee they are capable of spectacularly bad decisions.

you don’t always respect the ones you love, like the ones you respect or even like the ones you love.

More often, though, we follow the actions of others just because it feels right. Or perhaps, as I shall discuss, because not following others, being left out of the group, feels so bad. The only thing worse than being a sheep, is a lonely sheep.

you are perfectly normal and healthy. Indeed, these self-serving biases appear to be a vital part of your psychological ‘immune system’ that, more or less, keeps you happy and sane no matter what you experience.

No matter how self-deprecating or modest you may seem on the surface, you maintain a pretty good opinion of yourself. In Chapter 8, I look at the evidence that you, like everyone else, have a robust set of self-serving biases. You tend to believe that your successes are due to your personal qualities, but your failures are due to your bad luck. Whereas other people have prejudices and subjective opinions, your own views are more like objective facts.
Although you may think I’m making you out to be a horrible ego

You are awesome. You are better than average at most things, you are more moral, more correct in your opinions and you make the right choices. At least, that is what you tend to believe. The problem is, that’s what everyone else believes too. And though everyone can’t all be better than average, that is what, on average, everyone believes