Social Psychology

Max Weber is well known within sociology as one of the founding fathers. He believes that over-generalisation should be avoided as much as possible and we should understand human action, hence ‘social action theory’. Weber contributed four ideal types that should be used to study

Social psychology is a subfield discipline of psychology that concentrates on how an individual or group of individuals feel, react and think based on certain conditions or situations they are involved in. It is an empirical science which main objective is to interpret and rationalize the relationship between the thoughts, attitudes and emotions of a person or group of people which can be predisposed by the indirect, illusionary or be mere presence of other person or group of person through evaluating and endeavoring to validate such hypotheses. Social psychologists do not rely on folk wisdom which can be influenced by skewed interpretations as well as subjective thoughts and opinions. Instead, social psychologists

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.

Sociology studies and defines the diverse aspects of some of the most basic human behaviour, particularly focusing on the purpose and the value that human behaviour holds. Max Weber, the highly influential philosopher (born 1864 – died 1920), documented and observed human behaviour, focusing primarily in his text, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, on social action. Weber determines that social action is the behaviour or action of an individual, or actor, in the presence of another individual. The specific role of social action is to monitor the influence of another on an individual’s work output and how their behaviour changes and the direction of their actions determined. Weber claimed that “a correct causal interpretation of concrete course of action, is arrived at when the overt action and the motives have both been correctly apprehended and at the same time their relation has become meaningfully comprehensible.”

Beilharz, Peter. 1992a. "Marx", in Social Theory: A Guide to Central Thinkers. Peter Beilharz (ed.). St Leonards: Allen and Unwin.

Time allowed  1 hour 30 minutes Instructions  Use black ink or black ball-point pen.  Fill in the boxes at the top of this page.  Answer all questions.  You must answer the questions in the spaces provided. Do not write outside the box around each page or on blank pages.  Do all rough work in this book. Cross

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

In order to bring clarity on the subject, Weber identified and classified four different types of ‘social action’: ‘Traditional’, ‘Affective’, ‘Value-rational’ and finally ‘Instrumental-rational’. The traditional can be characterized by force of habit; an individual performs acts that

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.

Differentiate between Freud and Erikson's approach to psychoanalytic theory in this lesson. You will examine and compare developmental stages side by side and have the opportunity to test your knowledge with a quiz at the end.

Social action described by Weber is: the actions people uphold in response to others. Moreover, there is an emphasis on the forces that motivate people to act. According to Weber there are four motives for any social action: traditional, affectional, value-rational, instrumental rational motives. The traditional motive explains that people pursue a goal because of the past (Ferrante 17). Furthermore, Weber states that people continue to pursue goals in a certain way because that is the way people have pursued the goal before (Ferrante 17).

Sociology and psychology is the study of the mind and the environment around us which makes us who we are. These theories assist us to understand behaviour from individual and societal levels.

In the future, I ultimately intend to be a psychologist. With being a psychologist, I am taking on the responsibility on how to lead people into having an overall better life and promote positive change for them. Psychologists often specialize in studying and examining the brain and human behavior. That being said, psychology is a very important branch of science that attempts to help us stay sane!

Weber begins his book “Economy and Society” with a definition of sociology. In this discipline, he states, we study social action. What makes any action a social action is that it has a subjective meaning and it is directed towards the behavior of other people. According to Weber, a man who tries to cover his head during the pouring rain is not engaged in social action. However, two people on the sidewalk who try not to bump into each other are involved in some kind of social action, at least they take each other into account (3). The sociologist tries to interpret social action, and he or she tries to causally explain social action. On the one hand, we try to understand why certain individuals or social groups act in a certain way under specific circumstances (interpretive approach), and on the other hand, we try to discern chains of cause and effect, for example, what led us from feudalism to capitalism. Weber 's approach goes against separating the quantitative from the qualitative style of analysis.

Throughout the early 1900s, Max Weber was considered as one of the three founders of sociology, because he had acquired many ideas that profoundly influenced social theory and social research. For sociology as a whole, Weber’s study of sociology is theoretical-historical, because he had the idea of rationalization based on his observations from the Protestant Work Ethic and other societies to analyze modern societies. This led to the development of one of the main theoretical perspectives, known as interactionism; Weber had supported the view of symbolic interactionism, because his earlier ideas mainly focused on the individual’s viewpoint and experience and how that person would relate to society. Weber had changed the way sociologists view individuals within this theoretical perspective, based on his contributing ideas.