Understanding Human Behavior In Social Situations: An Essay On Social Psychology And Evaluation.

Description of two personal experiences or observations and experiences that exemplify the social psychological principles or phenomena

Discuss about the Social Psychology and Evaluation.

Social psychology mainly focuses on the understanding of why individuals behave and think in different social situations. This involves the imagined and actual preference on all these facts. Social psychology can, therefore, be defined as the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and cause of individual behaviors and thoughts (Higgins and Kruglanski,2007 )Social psychology seeks to accomplish this goal through the use of scientific methods by considering the fact that social behavior is influenced by a wide range of social cognitive, environment, culture and biological factors. Psychologists focus on thoughts, emotions, behavior and conscious experience (Deaux & Snyder, 2012)

Description of two personal experiences or observations and experiences that exemplify the social psychological principles or phenomena

Principles may be used use to mean ways to understand the world while on the other hand, phenomena may be used to mean knowledge, situations, events or experiences that we gain over the cause of our lives hence helping us learn (Sanderson, 2010). As an individual, I have had a couple of experiences and observations both on my behaviors and others’ behaviors. As noted in the introduction, social psychology focuses on emotions, thoughts, behavior and personal experiences but all come from a situation or event that took place. Hence the situation that i faced or which was faced by another person faced was the cause of the resultant behavior.

Withdrawal is a phenomenon of social psychology that many people go through. It takes place because of different experiences (Charlsmith & Gross,1969)For instance, when I lost my brother who was do dear to me, I felt like they world had come to an end. When one loses someone close to them, a lot of things go through his/her mind and that is exactly what happened to me.  The loss was quite traumatizing, and this led to withdrawal. I stayed all alone behind closed doors thinking, wondering and asking why me? I felt like had come to the end. He had been sick the better part of his life, but I never thought of him dying. I knew he would get better some day and come back home. But at this time he wasn’t going to come back. He was dead. I would lock close myself in my room and cry all day. My behavior changed completely. That was my interpretation of death (Fiske, 2010)

Description and explanation of the theory that is closest to the personal experiences

As noted above, social psychology deals with human behavior and the mental process. The brain must be involved and therefore lead to a certain behavior (Delamater & Ward, 2013).In my thoughts I thought that my life could not continue without my brother and therefore I behaved in a way likely to suggest so. I had very bad emotions towards myself, my dead brother and everyone else around me.

My second observation was where I witnessed prejudice and domestic violence. Personally, I do not have a spouse, but I have witnessed domestic violence and prejudice of the highest order.  I had a female friend and being in a land where there’s male dominance, she was likely to face prejudice. Despite this being an issue of the past, it still existed though not as much. My friend was withdrawn because she was looked down upon due to her gender. She never felt easy being close to males because she feared prejudice and thought she was inferior. However, she met a man who by then thought otherwise of her and adored her. One thing led to the other and they got married. After a short while, everything changed. Her husband started becoming violent. Marriage is an act that changes the opinion and behavior of the other. I expected changes from both sides but in a positive way. Apart from fighting other wars outside, she had to fight to save her marriage. She felt lonely and with no one to confide in. She couldn’t share her worries with me because according to her, I would be of little help. She had gone through a lot of stress from childhood and only when she thought she could get through it after getting married it turned out not to be(Heatherton.2010).

The two experiences and observations let to a common phenomenon- withdrawal and as the definition of social psychology suggest that they all involved emotions, thoughts behaviors and experiences.

Field theory of behavior. This theory was pioneered by Kurt Lewin in the period between during 1930s and 1940s. The theory was based on the argument that people subjective interpretation of events in the social setup drove their social behavior. This was a whole new perspective in social psychology. For example, as pointed in my experience, whether I decided to stay withdrawn all my life due to my brother’s death, it all depended on two things, one, my subjective guess about my chances of feeling better or two, the benefits of staying locked and crying. By emphasizing subjective interpretations, Lewin didn’t mean to imply that no objective reality existed instead; he emphasized the interaction between events in the situations and person’s interpretation. Lewin believed that a person’s interpretation of a situation also related to his or her goals at the time (fiske,2010)The emphasis on the interpretation between inner experience and outside world led to a close association between social psychology and cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology studies the mental process involved in noticing, interpreting, judging and remembering events in the environment.

Application of the theory and supporting empirical research to real-world observation together with an evaluation of the ‘fit’ of the theory in real life.

This theory is based on four main principles. The person, how a person behaves is seen as a reflection of the environment that he or she perceives, the environment which is defined as the situation in which an individual perceives and acts, behavior which is the action of the person as a result of the change in the environment and life space which is a combination of all efforts that influence an individual’s behavior at any time.

An application of the theory provided and supporting empirical research to the real world observation together with an evaluation of the ‘fit’ of the theory of real life.

A supporting research of this was conducted to explore how one's reactions to any social event can be influenced by cognitive factors such as attention and memory. Such experiment involved seeking the opinion on their ability to earn big salaries and amass a lot of wealth and the importance they placed on this possibility. Students were then supposed to respond to the question in the presence of members of the opposite sex or those of the same sex (Cook,1985)It was found out that the opinion of girls was not affected by the presence of boys, while the presence of girls made boys to exaggerate the value that they placed on wealth. It was also found out that an ad with a beautiful model affected male students at the university than an ad with an old man in the response on financial success. According to the researcher, the response by men after seeing a beautiful woman on in the presence of female students can be attributed to simple cognitive mechanism. Which stimulates the thought on what women desire in men, including financial stability. (Crocker and Mjaor,1989)

Social cognitive applies to my experiences and observations in that; it states that person’s subjective interpretation of events in the social world is the driving force behind social behavior. For instance, the death of my brother was an objective reality and my interpretation of that event was that it was too painful for me to contain and also to get along with people, therefore, leading to withdrawal. The resulting behavior was as a result of the stressful environment to which I was in at the moment. My interpretation was that it was the end .The hostilities and stresses of my friend were objective realities, but her interpretation was that if she kept quiet, she could save her marriage and reduce the violence and therefore she endured the pain. She also thought that keeping quiet would help her maintain her image and self-esteem. Hence this theory readily applies to my experiences and observations. This then confirms that behaviors depend on our interpretations of events/situations. This theory can also be applied in real life to evaluate when some people in the society became deviant .It is readily fit to the real life experience because all the principles were at play, it shows how my behavior was influenced by the real life situation that I had experienced .According to me there’s no particular discrepancy between the experiences and social cognitive hence the theory and the experiences readily apply and match (Mark, Donaldson & Campbell, 2011)

Conclusion

As per the definition of social psychology, it is therefore possible to say that the society/environment readily affects our mental processes hence leading to different behaviors. people act and behave according to the social situation in which they find themselves. As shown in my personal experience. With a supporting theory and application of the theory to my experience, we can say that the society and social events have an important role to play as regards to our behaviors. It is therefore important to note that individuals are likely to behave differently based on the environments to which they are exposed

Reference List

Deaux, K., & Snyder, M. (2012). The Oxford handbook of personality and social psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Heatherton, T. F. (2010). The social psychology of stigma. New York: Guilford Press

Crocker, J. and B. Major (1989). “Social stigma and self-esteem: the self-protective properties of stigma.”

Carlsmith, J. M. and A. E. Gross (1969). “Some effects of guilt and compliance.” Journal of personality and social psychology.

Fiske, S. T. (2010). Social beings: A core motives approach to social psychology. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley.

Higgins, E. T., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2007). Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. New York [u.a.: Guilford Press.

DeLamater, J. D., & In Ward, A. (2013). Handbook of social psychology.

Cook, S. W. (1985) “Experimenting with social issues: the case of school desegregation.” American psychologist.

Mark, M. M., Donaldson, S. I., & Campbell, B. (2011). Social psychology and evaluation. New York: Guilford Press.

Sanderson, C. A. (2010). Social psychology. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.