Take an event that has happened to you (or that you witnessed personally) and analyze it from the perspective of a social psychologist.
Description
Take an event that has happened to you (or that you witnessed personally) and analyze it from the perspective of a social psychologist. Describe the situation in one paragraph. Then, use at least 2 social psychological theories/principles/concepts that we discussed in class to explain the people’s behavior that you observed. For example, if you witnessed a fight between two people, you may wish to discuss 1) attribution (e.g., how the Fundamental Attribution Error was primarily responsible for the initiation of the fight; how other errors in attribution, such as the actor-observer effect, were made during the fight, etc.) and 2) the self (e.g., how people engaged in self-serving cognitions during the fight; what strategies people engaged in to maintain their self-esteem once they lost the fight, etc.). You can, of course, use any other social psychological principles we discussed in class, as long as they are relevant to the event you are discussing. Feel free to pick virtually any event you wish, as long as you can relate two social psychological concepts to it. You may also speculate about how these concepts might have been related to the event, even if you do not know for certain whether they actually did. Creativity is encouraged (as long as it is logical)! This assignment should be about 2-3 pages long, double-spaced. You will be graded based on how well you relate social psychological ideas/theories/phenomena to this event, and the depth of your analysis. I’m looking to see whether you truly understand how to apply these concepts to real life events. Simply saying something like aggression or stereotyping was involved in the event is not sufficient as that does not demonstrate a social psychological understanding of those phenomena.
