While searching through the Social Psychology textbook, I came across many different studies that interested me and were relevant to everyday living. However, there were a few topics and discussions that intrigued me and caught my eye specifically. One of the first topics is the idea of counter factual thinking. This term means a person mentally changes some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been. An experiment was conducted where researchers interviewed people who had experienced the loss of a spouse or a child (Branscombe et al 1996 & Davis et al 1995). After the interviews were completed, data showed that a higher number of people imagined ways that the tragedy could have been avoided by mentally undoing what proceeded the tragedy. These people also reported more distress than those who did not try to mentally manipulate
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This is described as the case wherein people have an expectation about what another person is like which influences how they act toward that person, which then causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true. Researchers conducted an experiment where random elementary students in a classroom were told that they were “bloomers”, meaning that they would excel academically that year. Towards the end of the school year, the “bloomers” did in fact score higher on tests and receive better grades than the other students that were in the same class- this was due to the teacher’s and students’ expectations and their self-fulfilling prophecies (Robert Rosenhall & Lenore Jacobson, 1968).
Lastly, the final topic of discussion that I chose to elaborate on is the idea of schemas. Schemas are mental structures people use to organize knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects. In 1987, a researcher named Oliver Sacks studied a man named Thompson, a
Research Topics of Social
This is described as the case wherein people have an expectation about what another person is like which influences how they act toward that person, which then causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true. Researchers conducted an experiment where random elementary students in a classroom were told that they were “bloomers”, meaning that they would excel academically that year. Towards the end of the school year, the “bloomers” did in fact score higher on tests and receive better grades than the other students that were in the same class- this was due to the teacher’s and students’ expectations and their self-fulfilling prophecies (Robert Rosenhall & Lenore Jacobson, 1968).
Lastly, the final topic of discussion that I chose to elaborate on is the idea of schemas. Schemas are mental structures people use to organize knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects. In 1987, a researcher named Oliver Sacks studied a man named Thompson, a
Research Topics of Social