In the words of psychologist Gordon Allport,Social Psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods “to comprehend and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual or implied presence of other human beings.”
What are the factors that shape our attitudes? Why are some people born natural leaders? How does prejudice develop and how can human beings overcome it? These are just a few big questions in the field of Social Psychology. Social psychologists handle various issues, from understanding the desire to bully to analysing why people often fail to help individuals in the hours of need.
The field of Social Psychology is proliferating with time. Newspapers, journals, websites and other channels of media frequently report the findings of social psychologists, and how the outcomes of social psychological research are influencing decisions in various areas.
Let us discuss in details the intricacies of Social Psychology.
Social Psychology is the study of the behaviour of an individual in a social context. Social dynamics strongly influence the behaviour of people. Social psychologists, therefore, aim to uncover how group interaction can affect an individual’s behaviour. They also tend to analyse how the behaviour of an individual can alter the behaviour of a group.
Topics that are examined in Social Psychology include self-concept, social cognition, social influence, attribution theory, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, aggression, attitudes and stereotypes.
In terms of Social Psychology, an attitude refers to a person, a product or a social group. The evaluation of the attitude object ranges from extremely negative to extremely positive ones.
The study of attitudes is a core topic in Social Psychology. Attitudes are involved in every other area of Social Psychology, including conformity, interpersonal attraction, social perception, and prejudice.
Social psychologists have concluded that every human being holds numerous attitudes towards family, friends, political figures, terrorism, abortion rights, preferences for music and much more. Every attitude has its unique characteristics. No two attitudes influence a human being in a similar way. Research has found that some of the attitudes are inherited partially via genetic transmissions from the parents, while other attitudes are developed through direct and indirect experiences with the attitude objects.
Beliefs are usually defined as convictions that the ideas held in mind are true. According to social psychologists, if the individuals think that some specific tenets are likely to be true, they believe them. On the other hand, if they think that particular tenets are unlikely to be true, they disbelieve them.
As such, there is a fine difference between attitudes and beliefs. Beliefs form the essential foundations of attitudes and behaviour. These can be incredibly difficult to change.
Psychology and Sociology go hand in hand. These branches of knowledge belong to one discipline called Social Science.
Sociology and Psychology are closely interlinked, inter-dependent, and inter-related. Their relationship will become clear on analysing their inter-relationship and mutual dependency.
Psychology is the study of the human mind. It deals with the psychological process of human beings like thinking, learning and remembering. Modern psychologists also study motivation, feelings, and emotion of a person.
Sociology is a study of the socialisation of the human and the psychological factors that contribute towards personality development. It is a study of how a person behaves in society. All these factors are measured in Psychology, which gives a definite shape to the social structure.
Several psychologists like Freud and MacDougal have enriched the branch of Sociology in numerous respects. They opine that the entire social life can be reduced to psychological forces. Each social problem and social phenomenon must have a psychological basis.
Psychology also requires help from Sociology in numerous cases. Social environment, culture, traditions and customs are influencing the human mind and personality. Hence, Psychology takes the aid of Sociology to comprehend it.
Research methods enable social psychologists to study the causes of what makes people behave differently in certain social situations. To study social behaviour, psychologists rely on numerous scientific methods to conduct useful research on various Social Psychology topics. These research methods allow researchers to test hypothesis and theories. It also enables them to study the relationship between different variables.
The research methods are as follows:
Control group: The control group of participants receive no treatment. They serve as a baseline.
Experimental group: Researchers manipulate the level of a few independent variables in the group. Then they measure the effects. As the researchers can control the independent variables, the method of experimental research can be used to find the causal relationships between variables.
The study of the behaviour of human beings is as complex as the behaviours themselves. Thus, it is so significant for social psychologists to utilise various empirical methods of selecting participants, gathering data, analysing the outcomes and reporting their results.
The social norms that guide the everyday behaviour of human beings and create social influence are derived from our culture. The culture represents a group of people living within a given geographical region. They share a common set of social norms including religion, family values and moral beliefs.
The culture in which humans live affects their thoughts, feelings and behaviour through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission. It won’t be inappropriate to say that cultures of human beings define their lives just as much as the evolutionary experience does.
According to social psychologists, there is a fundamental difference in social norms of Western Cultures and East Asian cultures.
Norms Of western cultures are mainly oriented towards individualism. It comprises of cultural norms that focus significantly on self-enhancement and independence. East Asian cultures norms connect people with others. They should be more oriented towards interdependence.
Wrapping it up
Social Psychology is an empirical science that attempts to answer numerous questions on human behaviour by testing a hypothesis, both in the laboratory and in the field. A relatively recent field, Social Psychology has a significant impact not only in the academic worlds of Psychology, Sociology and other sciences in general but it has influenced public understanding and expectation of human social behaviour as well.
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