August 12th, 2004
LAST DAY OF CLASS (BESIDES FINAL)
Don't forget tomorrow is the final.
Tomorrow be here at 8:30!
Doog walks in with a grin on his face. (A rather goofy look I'd say)
He now procedes to pester a student a great deal.
He then wants to start class later due to a large amount of slacking.
The last day of class is rail on Doog day.

He then busts in through the window.
What is up with Doug?

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Social Psych...

Doug confesses it has grown on him over the years.

Doug says "The Psych of the Obvious"

Its the study of how something interacts with something else. It can be
individuals with groups or with other individuals, or countries with 
countries etc...

Usually "How you would respond" is pretty good indicator of expected 
reactions (Basically and assuming you're pretty "normal")

One of the first advances in Social Psych was Atribution theory...

"We as people attempt to try and dicern why people and groups do things"
- They have an underlying set of reasons that is driving their behavior
  and we try and find out what the reasons are.

If you know the reasons you can then manipulate these reactions and actions
more easily.

We tend to engage in something called a fundamental atribution error...
- We tend to over-estimate personality traits in driving someone's behavior.
- and underestimating situational and social factors.

- When the situation is reversed we tend to prefer situational 
  rationalization or over estimate the situational.
- And we also tend to underestimate the personality.
  (we were are the person in our own analyzation.)

We are all wearing "masks" that change in different situations etc...
You're also monitoring the perceptual changes with a group or individual
of your mask.

Another thing that is interesting in Social Psych

is Cognitive Dissonance...
That an individual can find merrit in two competing ideas. Which produces an
uncomfortable state in a person. This person will attempt to come up with 
new frameworks that reduce that uncomfortable state that exists by the two
competting notions.

A place that this is played out is the idea "Where did we come from?"

Created Vs Evolved... people will find merrit in some of both of these ideas
and so suffer the "anxiety" associated with that.

Certain people who engaged in Cognitive Dissonance with this subject came up
with the idea of Theistic Evolution... the creation of a new framework.

This C.D. doesn't have to be on weighty matters such as these. It can be 
other more trivial things like "Does she like me?"

Pp 658 and 659 are necessary reads... 660-661 is good about obedience as 
well.

COMFORMITY EXPERIMENT and OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENT.

POLITICS...
1994... Doog was a grad student in psych. His University had a stupid rule.
If you hadn't had a class in experimental psych, or social psych. You had to
go back and take one...

So his teacher let him write a paper to get out of the class.

He had to do an experiment on this: what makes them vote. What causes 
advertisements to work? 

We define ourselves along party lines. We declare an INGROUP and in doing
so we declare the OUTGROUP. An atack add is designed to pain the opposition
candidate NEGATIVELY. This causes C.D. where the group or member is
presented bad so you have to move your framework... "Maybe I'm not gonna 
vote this time."

This is the desired effect. That you don't Vote or vote for the attack
candidate.

When you get Attacked what can you do? 
You can Attack back and it becomes mudslinging. Sometimes it works well
sometimes it does not.

You can play the "I'm above this" card.
This is designed to produce a backlash effect.

Pollititians have shadowy third party groups put out adds that cuases
the backlash effect to be negated. 


Good luck on your exams...