Hi, I'm Bodhi 🌱
You might remember me from PSY 100. I'll pop up through these readings to flag the thing people trip on, the study worth remembering, and the places where a classic finding didn't survive a closer look. Think of me as a margin note that talks back.
How to use this site
Each page takes one topic and goes deep — the theory behind the demos, the studies that usually get only a name-check, where the classic finding stands today, and self-checks to test yourself as you read.
Course map
One page per topic, in the order the course follows. Reading · Enrichment page
1 · Foundations — how the field thinks
Where social psychology came from, and the two things that make it a science instead of opinion: method and ethics.
History of Social Psychology
From Triplett's cyclists to social neuroscience — read the timeline as one long argument about the power of the situation.
Reading02Research Methods
Correlation vs. causation, the true experiment, Clever Hans, and why "significant" doesn't mean what students think.
Reading03Ethics in Research
Tuskegee, the Belmont principles, IRBs — and the uncomfortable problem of knowledge gained unethically.
2 · The social thinker — perceiving & judging
How the mind builds a picture of the social world — fast, automatic, and reliably biased.
Social Cognition I: Automaticity & Schemas
Autopilot thinking, priming, the Stroop effect, and why perception often beats reality.
Reading05Social Cognition II: Heuristics & Biases
Availability, representativeness, anchoring, the conjunction fallacy — the cognitive-miser toolkit.
Reading06Social Perception I: Impressions & Nonverbals
Thin slices, the halo effect, reading faces — how much can 100 milliseconds really tell you?
Reading07Social Perception II: Attribution
Covariation, the fundamental attribution error, actor–observer and self-serving biases — and their cultural limits.
3 · The social self & social influence
How our own behavior reshapes our beliefs, and how the presence of others reshapes our behavior.
Cognitive Dissonance
Why $1 changed more minds than $20, insufficient justification, and the modern "did dissonance replicate?" story.
Reading09Conformity & Compliance
Sherif, Asch, informational vs. normative influence, and the compliance tricks marketers still use.
Reading10Obedience & Milgram
The 65% figure, what the archives later revealed, and why "the situation" isn't the whole story.
Reading11Groups & Group Decisions
Social facilitation, loafing, deindividuation, groupthink, and group polarization.
4 · Living with others — good, bad, and mortal
Compassion, helping, attitudes, mortality, and prejudice — social psychology aimed at the biggest human questions.
Compassion & Self-Compassion
What compassion is (and isn't), Neff's three components, and whether it can be trained.
Reading13Prosocial Behavior & the Bystander Effect
Kitty Genovese, diffusion of responsibility, the Good Samaritan study, and empathy vs. egoism.
Reading14Terror Management Theory
Mortality salience, worldview defense, self-esteem as a buffer — and the replication debate.
Reading15Attitudes & Persuasion
The Elaboration Likelihood Model, central vs. peripheral routes, and when attitudes actually predict behavior.
Reading16Prejudice & Discrimination
Modern/aversive racism, implicit bias and the IAT debate, stereotype threat, and the contact hypothesis.
Reading17Attraction & Close Relationships
Proximity, mere exposure, the "opposites attract" myth, the shaky bridge, Sternberg's triangle — and why relationships last.
Reading18Aggression
Hostile vs. instrumental, frustration-aggression, Bobo, heat and alcohol, the media-violence debate — and the catharsis myth, demolished.
★ · Across the whole course
Three connective pages that tie the topics together.
The Timeline
Every landmark study from 1897 to today, on one scrollable line. See the field's obsessions shift.
Enrichment↻Science Corrects Itself
The replication crisis, plainly: what held up, what shrank, what fell — and why that's the system working.
EnrichmentA–ZGlossary
Every key term in the course, searchable, each with a one-line plain-English definition.
A note on how to study this material
Social psychology feels like common sense after you hear the result — that's the hindsight bias, and it's the single biggest trap in the subject. The useful skill isn't recalling conclusions; it's recognizing which process is at work in a situation you haven't seen before. So as you read, collect the mechanisms, not the verdicts. The demos on these pages exist to make a few of those mechanisms happen to you, so they stop being vocabulary and start being something you've felt.