Social Psychology : A Unique Subfield Of Psychology

“Social psychologists investigate how we view ourselves and others, how we interact with others, how we influence others, and how we act when we are part of a group. Given the amount of time each of us spends thinking about and interacting with the people we encounter every day, much of our lives are spent with the subject matter of social psychology.”(p.22)

What is Social Psychology all about? Why is the study of it so important? Is there truly a purpose and benefit from the findings of the studies? Let’s look at each of these questions, break them down, and try to make sense of it all. Simply defined, Social Psychology is the scientific study of individual attitude and how it effects or influences others in a social context. It is helpful to understand the why, what, or could be, behind a behavior or reaction. Those that research this field, can provide credible insight to assist with understanding and ultimately contribute to the success of peace-keeping within society. There

In life people will come in contact with others, who are from a different background, culture, lifestyle or ethnicity as them, yet still every individual is equal, they’re all humans. As humans, people have the tendency to have their own unique perspectives on the world around them and everything it encounters. Psychologist Gordon Allport (1985), one of the founding fathers of personality psychology, defined social psychology as a discipline in which scientific methods are used in order “to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings” (Cherry).Social psychology involves

and in some cases enlist the help of a “confederate”, someone who appears to be a naïve part of

Huffman (2012) explains that social psychology is a subject which, “studies how other people influence our individual thoughts, feelings and actions” (p. 567). Understanding the way people act around others can be important when society is faced with challenges, and can even help others learn how to reduce conflict with each other.

This essay aims to explore and describe some of the key studies within Social Psychology and show why social psychology is still important within the science of psychology today. Social psychology was once described by Allport (as cited in Lindzey & Aronson, 1985, p.5) as, “the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others”. One of the first psychologists to study social psychology was Kurt Lewin. Lewin is considered the “father of social psychology” by many as he took a stand against the dominant behaviourist approach during the 1920’s through his belief that interaction between the individual and their environment is key to affecting behaviour, rather than environment alone. His revolutionary ideas matured into the study of group dynamics, which is widely used by many organisations today (Collin, 2012).

Social psychology is an empirical science that studies how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. This field focuses on how individuals view and affect one another. Social psychology also produces the idea of construals which represent how a person perceives, comprehends or interprets the environment. Construals introduce the idea that people want to make themselves look good to others and they want to be seen as right. It is also said that the social setting in which people interact impacts behavior, which brings up the idea of behaviorism. Behaviorism is the idea that behavior is a function of the person and the environment.

The principles and theories of Social Psychology are important and useful in assessing behaviors in situations. These social psychological principles and their applications can be seen in fictional films which can also be attributed to everyday life. One such film that holds certain social psychological perspectives is Will Gluck’s 2010 production of Easy A. A film about high school student Olive Penderghast and how a sudden change in popularity and financial status, after an unintentional rumor about how she supposedly lost her virginity to a college guy spread through the entire her school. The film draws on the behavioral connections of pronounced hussy Olive Penderghast and her English class’s assigned reading of The Scarlet Letter.

Chapter 12 social psychology cover how we affect one another’s behaviors. Culture, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination attitude, and interpersonal attraction are all factors that contribute to behavior in a social setting. Understanding how we influence one another on a social level forces us to look at not only ourselves, but also look at how others affect the world we live in and why it is important to be able to identify these influences and the impact they have on our behaviors good or bad

Social psychology is the understanding of an individual’s behavior in a social context. It is the scientific field that focuses on the nature and causes of that individual’s behavior in social situations. It looks at the human behavior that has been influenced by others and in the social context with which it occurred. Social psychology pays attention to how feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and goals are constructed and how these factors influence our behavior and interactions with others. This paper will examine the principles of social psychology and help us to

Social psychology is a subfield of Psychology and Sociology that is interested in how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals and social groups are influenced by the presence of others such as families, work groups, and organisations. Indeed, Robbins (2003) states that many theories originally developed within Social Psychology have directly influenced the concepts and theories found in organisational behaviour concerning communication processes, decision-making, conflict management and politics and in turn have led to the development of many techniques used in these areas.

There are many explanations for the origins of modern social psychology. It is therefore important to consider that social psychology cannot be traced back to one single source of origin (Burr, 2003). Hence, this is the reason why there are debates of what social psychology is. Allport (1985) described social psychology as the study an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours which are influenced by the actual, imagines, or implied presence of others. As seen from this definition there is a direct link between social science and the individual psychology (Sewell, 1989). Social psychology cannot be seen as a linear phenomenon. This is because social psychology has been derived from a combination of influences. The development of

Social psychology, the study of how we think about, influence, and relate to another, can be used to explain many situations and phenomena that happen in the world. For instance, it can be used to explain why and how people react the way they do when they perform poorly in an act that they’re usually good at, also known as self-serving bias. It is blaming external factors when bad things happen, but contributing internal factors to the reason why good things happen.

Social psychology is not common sense, it is known after the fact. The ‘outcomes’ are more obvious once they are revealed after the fact. How exactly do social psychologist go about doing their research one might ask. They must organize their ideas and findings into a theory, which is an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Their research is either correlational, the study of the naturally occurring relationships among variables, or

This artwork took a lot of thought and I wanted to demonstrate more than just a topic, but rather Social Psychology as a whole. The piece has three aspects, there is a person to the left hand side at a closer look to represent a person as an individual, the mirror with the main person’s reflection on how the individual views themselves and how others would see the main person, then groups of people to the right of the image. This is broken down into groups that the main person associates with, the group that the main person does not associate with, and the person of romantic interest for the main person. The colors that are in every person’s ‘brain’ in the groups (including the main individual) is the person’s personality and individual self. All of these parts show different aspects of social psychology.