Social Psychology
According to Gordon Allport , “social psychology is an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals is influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.” (Allport, 1954)
There are two differing branches when referring to social psychology:
1. The sociological aspect of social psychology, which was mainly developed in Europe as a subdivision of sociology.
2. The psychological aspect of social psychology, which was developed in the US
The differences between the two divisions are, that the sociological way of viewing social psychology focusses more on group interaction, group processes, while the psychological aspects of social psychology focusses more on the individual and how the individual is influenced and/or behaves in social settings.
Sociological social psychology is very theory intensive and constructs itself out of “geisteswissenschaften” (sciences of the spirit) and social sciences. Corresponding approaches are i.e. critical theories, which also include psychoanalytical ideas. Some of the more notable sociological psychologists include Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich.
Coming back to the psychological branch of social psychology, we see its intentions lies in “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, The Person in Psychology, 1968) Quantitative
Sample answer:Sociology is the study of human society and its components, including sports, religion, music, and medicine. In addition, it examines populations of people across time and geographic distances. History focuses on the uniqueness of past events as opposed to the sociological focus on finding commonalities. Psychology focuses on individuals to determine why they do the things they do, whereas sociology is more concerned with the larger picture of group influences and interactions.
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.
Walter Bowers Pillsbury (1911) described psychology as 'the science of human behaviour '. This indicates a significant similarity between psychology and sociology. However, sociology focuses on group dynamics and the collective behaviour of society, whereas psychology mainly focuses on the behaviour of people as individuals. Psychologists aim to gain understanding of the mind, and the affect the mind has on individual behaviour. Sociologists research topics such as social stratification, hate crimes, addictions, and injustice, always focusing on the issues of society as a whole. Psychologists, on the other hand, research the cognitive processes behind the issues. They explore emotions, dreams and memories, and seek explanations for these in order to improve the mental well-being of an individual.
“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)
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
To understand social cognition, a reaction based on internal and automatic thought processes, you must first understand the deeper function behind the reaction. This practice is called social psychology. In this field, psychologists typically explain human behavior as being a result of mental interferences, mental states, and immediate social situations. Human behavior is certainly less complex than the general population may believe. There are only so many reactions that a human will typically choose in response to activities and situations, and almost all do. To discover what these reactions are and what they have been, a scientist or psychologist needs to put the test subject under existential experiments. In
In life people will come in contact with others, who are from a different background, culture, lifestyle or ethnicity as them, yet still every individual is equal, they’re all humans. As humans, people have the tendency to have their own unique perspectives on the world around them and everything it encounters. Psychologist Gordon Allport (1985), one of the founding fathers of personality psychology, defined social psychology as a discipline in which scientific methods are used in order “to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings” (Cherry).Social psychology involves
Introduction: In sociology we can learn about the society. Sociology is a social science which also study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies. It helps us to create a behavior which is accepted by the society. For reviewing on sociological concepts The Boy in The Striped Pajamas is a good movie. There are four sociological concepts we can relate with this movie which are Cultural Shock, Ethnocentrism, Culture and Gender Inquality.
One sociological perspective is the Functionalist theory. Functionalism is one of the earliest sociological theories. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was a professor and was interested in how society was possible and how society remains stable. This theory focuses on the macro-level of social structure rather than micro-level of everyday life. Functionalism sees society in parts which form a system, the parts depend on each other. Functionalist theory looks at the parts of society such as
The sociological perspective was defined by Peter Berger as seeing the general in particular. What this means is that by using the sociological perspective, sociologists can observe trends by looking at how individuals within groups act. Sociologists use the sociological perspective to observe how society impacts individuals, whereas psychologists observe individuals and how their own experiences influence their lives and choices. Someone using a political perspective would think about how the political world can influence individuals, and someone with a religious perspective would think about how the presence or lack of religion would affect an individual.
Both critical and experimental social psychology form the modern social psychology, due to their important historical context. Experimental-social psychology is argued to have been derived from the American tradition, and a critical-social psychology is argued to have been derived from the European tradition. Although this has formed two distinct approaches in the use of methodology within psychology, there are still on-going debates over psychology as a science or not.
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
Social psychology, the study of how we think about, influence, and relate to another, can be used to explain many situations and phenomena that happen in the world. For instance, it can be used to explain why and how people react the way they do when they perform poorly in an act that they’re usually good at, also known as self-serving bias. It is blaming external factors when bad things happen, but contributing internal factors to the reason why good things happen.
There may be a way of differentiating sociology. We could suggest that whereas Psychology studies human interaction of individuals; sociology studies the interaction that occurs within and between social groups. In this sense sociology would be described as a subject that places individuals in their social context as members of social groups, communities and as members of social institutions such as work or their place within a family or again their position within an educational institution. Psychology on the other hand appears to examine individuals as solitary and somewhat isolated beings. Indeed one might formalise the differences of approach by suggesting that psychology takes as its starting point the individual whereas sociology begins with the idea of the wider social networks and societies within which individuals are to be found.
Social psychology is a subfield of Psychology and Sociology that is interested in how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals and social groups are influenced by the presence of others such as families, work groups, and organisations. Indeed, Robbins (2003) states that many theories originally developed within Social Psychology have directly influenced the concepts and theories found in organisational behaviour concerning communication processes, decision-making, conflict management and politics and in turn have led to the development of many techniques used in these areas.