ABSTRACT
Although considered an essential tool in the cognitive neuroscience lab, psychophysiological methods are underutilized in social psychology, and the promise they hold for illuminating mechanisms of the social mind remains largely unrealized. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have a number of advantages that can augment behavioral research programs, including the capacity for continuous measurement of neural responses relevant to social-personality theory. In this chapter, we begin by making a case for the importance of the timing of mental events, and outlining the utility of ERPs for measuring that timing. We provide a general description of ERP methodology and review common practices and approaches to assessing psychometric properties of ERP components. We then review several specific ERP components that have been used to address theoretical questions relevant to social psychologists, and we outline the psychometric properties of each of these components.
