Introductory Social Psychology
Thousands of invisible threads connect human life. The places that people live and the situations they meet are all continuously and consistently shaping them and getting shaped by them. The situations an individual meets create many possibilities for him to behave. Social psychology is a specific branch of psychology that scientifically tries to understand how people influence and get influenced by one another. It is a systematic body of knowledge focusing on social thinking, social influence, and social relations. A fundamental theme of social psychology is discovering how a social situation leads very different people to act similarly. As well as how very similar people act very differently. Social psychology is a scientific discipline. It is deeply committed to understanding the nature of social behaviour and social thought.
For this reason, it makes sense to describe the field as scientific in orientation. Such a rich field has a systematic development over time. As the field progressed, the focus of its area also changed. All these processes are presented in this lesson. A fundamental theme of social psychology is discovering how a social situation leads very different people to act similarly and how very similar people act very differently.
Definitions of Social Psychology
The study of social psychology has been carried out since the very beginning of the scientific study of psychology. The history of the subject matter of social psychology seems to be continuously undergoing change, adapting to the changing needs of society. Present-day science and technology, specifically the information arena, is getting new shapes and heights, which in turn brings an enormous change in the behaviour patterns of every individual. Hence, developing a formal definition of social psychology is a complex task.
Every person gets a chance to play various types of activities. Due to this, everyone has to mix with or live among different kinds of people. Many physical, social, and environmental factors influence human behaviour in this context. Reflecting on the above facts, social psychology can be comprehensively defined as the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of an individual’s behavior and thoughts in social situations Baron and Byrne (2006). However, the annals of the history of social psychology also bring the following definitions: Social psychology is an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others (Allport, 1985)
Social Psychology Seeks to Understand the Causes of Social Behavior and Thought
Social psychologists are primarily interested in understanding the many factors and conditions that shape individuals’ social behaviour and thoughts. They are mainly interested in how individuals form ideas relating to the actions, feelings, beliefs, memories, and inferences concerning other persons. A huge number of different factors play a role in this regard. The factors affecting social interaction fall into five major categories: the actions and characteristics of others, basic cognitive processes, ecological variables, cultural context, and biological factors.
The Actions and Characteristics of Others
There is a direct correlation between the actions and emotions of one individual and the behaviour and characteristics of another individual. For example, suppose you are standing on the railway reservation line. If a stranger goes to the counter straight away without standing in line, it will definitely create different types of feelings and actions from the people who are already waiting in line. The actions of others affect everyone. The behaviours of other persons often exert potent effects on every individual’s behaviours and social thoughts. For example, when many people attend a concert in a theatre and a person seated nearby receives a call on his cell phone and begins a loud conversation about private topics, what happens to the people around him? The next idea in this line is that the behaviour of a person is often affected by others appearance. For example, people normally feel uneasy in the presence of a person with a physical disability. People behave differently towards beautiful people than toward less attractive people.
The Cognitive Processes
Cognitive processes such as perception, memory, and inferences play a key role in the understanding and behaviour of every individual in society. Reactions to a certain situation by an individual strongly depend on the memories of others past behaviours and the inferences an individual formed about these ehaviors. If anybody wants to clearly understand the causes of others behaviour in a social situation, it is a must that one understand what went on in the thinking pattern and understanding process of those people when they behaved in a particular social situation. For example, if your friend fixes an appointment with you at a particular time.
You are waiting for him at a particular point in a particular time; if he comes late, what would be your reaction? In such situations, the cognitive process plays a crucial role in the social behaviour and social thoughts of every individual. A study of how people perceive, think about, and remember information about others contributes to human social behavior. Social cognition is a growing area of social psychology.
The Environmental Factors
The weather and the climate a person experiences have a say in his/her behavior. The findings of research indicate the physical environment necessarily influences the feelings, thoughts, and behaviour of everyone. The climatic conditions make a person either happy or sad. For example, if continuous rain occurs for a few days, most people’s daily lives get disturbed. Another example is that people become more irritable and aggressive when the weather is hot and steamy than when it is cool and comfortable. Environmental factors have different impacts on the perceived experiences of individuals. Individuals’ cognitive, affective, interpretive, and evaluative responses change drastically.
Further, if a person is exposed to a particular environment for a long time, he or she will adapt to that environment and feel habituated. Environmental stimulations facilitate physical and psychological arousals. The increased arousals will either improve or impair individual performances. Hence, the role of environment on the social behaviour of individuals has become one of the very important factors of study in social psychology.
The Cultural Context
People live in different cultural settings. Each culture comes out with its own rules and norms to be systematically followed in different facets of the human life cycle. The practices followed in one culture will be different than the other cultures. If a person is hailing from a particular culture, he/she has to adapt appropriately to the behaviour patterns accepted by his/her culture. In all these processes, an individual is continuously influenced by the culture from which he/she is hailing. Social behaviour and social thoughts are often strongly affected by cultural norms and factors. For example, there are culturally specific behaviour patterns that exist for the birth of a newborn, the age attainment ceremony, the marriage ceremony, and finally, the funeral ceremony. These are some of the specific cultural behaviours expressed by every culture. The cultural ideas also get changed by the passage of time. For example, previously, love marriages were viewed in negative terms as drastic action, but now the cultural beliefs and values about it have changed greatly. But, whatever the changes take place in a culture, a person living in any of the cultures is expected to follow the practices of that culture.
The Biological/Evolutionary Factors
This is a new branch of social psychology that seeks to investigate the potential role of genetic factors in various aspects of human behavior. It is also called genetic factors. According to this view, as with any other species, human beings also have a process of biological evolution throughout history. This evolutionary process takes three basic components. They are of the view that man is getting emancipated as the generation processed by. Every time man is getting a new height in all his endeavors. This has led to possible differences in body shapes and structures, improved inheritance qualities, and better selection of passing the genetic variation to the coming generations. Since individuals evolutionarily differ in their biological structures, their social interactions will also vary. The biological inheritance usually affects preferences, behaviours, emotions, and attitudes. For example, hair colour, skin colour, and body structure get changed from person to person in the long run.
Social Psychology in the New Millennium
As social psychology tries to understand the individuals thoughts and behaviours in social settings, the subject matter of social psychology changes as the years pass by. Due to the tremendous changes happening in fields, present-day human beings are advanced in every sphere. The speedy growth found in every area of human life, the present-day subject matter of social psychology, found to incorporate the latest developments into its subject matter. This has led to the changing and formulating of new perspectives in social psychology. Mainly, cognitive, application, multicultural, and evolutionary perspectives have become the focus of research on social psychology.
Cognitive Perspective
Social psychology is the field that studies both social behaviour and social thought. The definition reflects the fact that both social psychologists have always been interested in how individuals think about other people and about social situations. The cognitive side of social psychology has grown dramatically in importance. Most social psychologists believe that how people act in various situations is strongly decided by their thoughts. The cognitive perspective is recollected in social psychological research in many ways, but two are most important. First, social psychologists have attended to apply basic knowledge about memory, reasoning, and decision-making to various aspects of social thought and behaviour.
For instance, within this context, researchers have sought to determine whether prejudice stems, at least in part from our tending to remember only information consistent with stereotypes of various groups, or tendencies to process information about one’s own social group differently from interaction about other social groups; secondly, there has been growing interest in the question of how one processes social information.
Multicultural Perspective
As recognition of the importance of cultural, ethnic, and gender differences has grown, social psychology has adopted an increasingly multicultural perspective. This approach pays careful attention to the culture and human diversity rate as factors that influence social behaviour and social thought.
Evolutionary Perspective
An important trend in modern social psychology is the increasing influence of a biological or evolutionary perspective (Buss, 1999). Evidence suggests that biological and genetic factors affect many forms of social behavior. Mueller and Mazur (1996) predicted that men who looked dominant would attain higher military rank in their careers than men who did not. In general, studies conducted from the evolutionary perspective suggest that biological and genetic factors play some role in many aspects of social behaviour.
Application Perspective
A major theme in social psychology today is growing concern with applying the knowledge gathered by social psychology. An increasing number of social psychologists have turned their attention to questions concerning personal health, the legal process, social behaviour in work settings, environmental issues, and the study of entrepreneurship.
FAQ’s
What is an example of social psychology in real life?
An example of social psychology in real life is the bystander effect, which explains how individuals are less likely to help someone in need when others are present. This phenomenon was famously demonstrated in the case of Kitty Genovese in 1964, where multiple witnesses reportedly failed to intervene during her attack.
In practical terms, this might happen in a crowded subway station where someone collapses. If everyone assumes “someone else will help,” no one may step forward. Understanding this phenomenon through social psychology has helped shape public awareness campaigns and emergency response training, encouraging individuals to take action rather than assuming others will.
What are the three main areas of social psychology?
Social psychology encompasses three main areas:
This area examines how people perceive, interpret, and remember information about others and themselves. It includes concepts like attitudes, attributions, and stereotyping. For example, how we attribute someone’s success to their hard work versus external luck.
Social Influence:
This focuses on how others shape people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Topics include conformity, obedience, and persuasion. For instance, Solomon Asch’s classic experiments on conformity revealed how people align their opinions with a group, even when they know the group is wrong.
Social Relationships:
This area studies individual interactions, covering concepts like aggression, attraction, helping behaviour, and conflict resolution. For example, examining what factors lead to long-lasting friendships or romantic relationships
How is social psychology different from sociology?
While both fields study human behaviour, their scope and focus differ:
Focus of Study:
Social Psychology: Concentrates on individual behaviour in social contexts. It examines how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the presence or imagined presence of others.
Sociology: Focuses on larger social systems and structures, such as communities, institutions, and entire societies, analysing how these shape and are shaped by collective behaviour.
Research Approach:
Social Psychology: Primarily experimental, using controlled settings to study specific phenomena like prejudice, group dynamics, or decision-making.
Sociology: Often observational, survey-based, or theoretical, studying trends, societal norms, and cultural patterns.
Level of Analysis:
Social Psychology: Micro-level, zooming in on individuals or small groups.
Sociology: macro-level, focusing on societal-level phenomena.
For example, social psychology might explore why an individual conforms to a group, while sociology would analyse how conformity trends vary across cultures.
What are the goals of social psychology?
The primary goals of social psychology include:
Understanding Social Behaviour:
To uncover the psychological processes behind how people think, influence, and relate to one another. For example, understanding why people are more likely to help someone in a positive mood.
Predicting social outcomes:
To anticipate how people will behave in various social situations. For instance, predicting how groupthink might lead to poor decision-making in high-pressure environments.
Improving social interactions:
To apply research findings to improve communication, relationships, and societal harmony. For example, fostering inclusive practices to reduce workplace discrimination.
Addressing social issues:
Use psychological insights to tackle real-world problems such as prejudice, bullying, or environmental conservation. For instance, design interventions that encourage individuals to adopt sustainable behaviours.
Social psychology bridges the gap between understanding and action, equipping individuals and communities to navigate the complexities of human interactions more effectively.