Social Psychology and Multicultural Psychology Paper
i. Define social psychology.
Social psychology is the science that aims to determine how people think about, relate to, feel about, and influence one another. Social psychology is a branch of study on social influence, how individuals have an influence on one another. Social influence is noted to affect trivial behaviours, such as making paper airplanes in class, as well as important behaviour, such as giving in to majority opinion over one’s judgement. It is an attempt to understand and lay down how thought, behaviour, feeling of a person is affected by the actual, implied, imagined, presence of other people.
For example, the social influence of social psychology can be demonstrated with an instance involving Kim, ken, and their friend’s
…show more content…
For example, a person bending to the majority people’s decision over one’s judgment on an issue is a social influence by the presence of others. Second, the phrase actual presence of others implies a physical appearance in the place to influence thought or feelings. Imagined presence makes people regulate their behaviour according to the reactions that they imagine people will give about the behaviour. The implied presence is demonstrated by the people automatically obeying social artefacts, such as streetlights, or other objects such as a black, may imply the presence of a person.
ii. Describe the primary research strategies used in social psychology and give an example of each. There are three different types of primary research strategies that can be used with social psychology. They are descriptive, experimental, and correlation research methods. The research methods differ in the kind of hypothesis each investigates, and the issues it raise.
Descriptive
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.
“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)
According to our text, social psychology is a science that studies the impact of our
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).
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
There are ten fascinating staff in the Psychology Department. There is Dr. Jocelyn Tuner-Muds and Dr. Robert Smith who specialize in Social Psychology. Social Psychology is the study of how people act, think, and feel around different groups of people. One’s behavior changes when around different groups or people. For example, a child would behave different around his parents than he would around his friends. Social Psychology looks at the influences, perceptions, and interactions to understand social behavior. It is fascinating to observe how other people react differently in front of different types of groups.
Our decision-making might change as a consequence of interacting with a single individual or a group of people. We tend to have same opinion with others when we are in a group. An experiment about the effect of social influence was conducted. 563 participants were asked to recall how many medals Australia got in Sydney Olympics 2000. Participants were given ¡¥Low¡¦ (50%), ¡¥Accurate¡¦ or ¡¥High¡¦ (150%) examples. Result shows that participants tend to be influenced by examples given to them. Participants who were given ¡¥Low¡¦ examples had lower answers than those given ¡¥Accurate¡¦ examples while participants given ¡¥High¡¦ examples had higher answers than those given
Within this chapter the book talks about social behaviors. Social psychology is a branch of psychology that deals with social interactions, including their origins and their effects on the individual. To introduce the section, we are constantly interacting with people and engaging in person perception, which is forming impressions of others. (pg634) Awareness of others are often swayed by people's appearance, especially if their looks are alluring. Looks are important because it is referred to those who are good looking are seen more often as more sociable, friendly, poised, warm and well adjusted.
Social psychology studies scientifically how people take action feel and sense in the context of society. That is, how people's behaviors, opinion, and approach change because of other people.
Social psychology is the study of the way that social interactions affect the behavior of an individual (Spielman, 2007). Social psychology seeks to explain the ways in which the behavior of others can impact an individual’s thinking, personality, attitudes or other mental processes (Spielman, 2007). In a broad sense, social psychology is a discipline which attempts to navigate the variances between an individual’s behavior in solitude and in various social settings. Often, this discipline is used today to explain curious behaviors in humans such as the Bystander Effect (which is the tendency towards humans to push responsibility to act onto others if there are multiple who witness a situation in need of rectifying) and instances of
Social psychology is the scientific process of studying a group of people’s behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that are true and identifiable or imagined within social context (McLeod, 2007). When we use the three terms mentioned we are using words that are psychological variables that can be measured within an individual. When we discuss identifiable or imagined we do so because socially we can be influenced by society or other outlets like television or radio. When studying social psychology we would
Social psychology tells us that daily behaviors and attitudes stem from the influences of social factors on the individual. In other words, all of our daily actions are fueled from social influences in our daily lives. Social psychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how social phenomena influence us and how people interact with others. There are some basic aspects of social behavior that play a large role in our actions and how we see ourselves. There have been many different theorists who have attempted to explain and understand this idea. After studying and learning about most the theories and ideas, I have come to the conclusion along with the author Kenneth Allan that George Herbert Mead is the only true social
Social psychology is a science that study social thinking (how we perceive ourselves and others, judgement we make and our attitudes); social influence (such as pressure to conform, group of people) and social relations such as aggression and helping (David G. Myers, 2008).
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 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