Social Psychology – What Is It And Why Is It Important?

In the field of psychology, we could make a division between applied psychology and basic psychology. Basic psychology examines simple psychological processes such as perception, concentration, memory, language, and learning. On the other hand, applied psychology focuses on the study of psychological characteristics that are more related to problem solving. There are different aspects to applied psychology and Social Psychology is one of these.

Social psychology could be defined as the study of human interactions, especially in social groups and situations, emphasizing the impact of social situations on human behavior. More specifically, Social Psychology focuses on the scientific study of how the actual, imagined, or implicit presence of other people affects people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior ( Allport, 1985 ).

What does Social Psychology study?

The goal of social psychology is to study social relationships ( Moscovici and Markova, 2006 ). It is argued that social psychological processes differ from individual psychological processes. Social psychology attempts to understand the impact of both group and individual behavior on responding to or thinking about the social environment.

Social psychology primarily seeks to study people’s behavior at the group level. It seeks to describe and explain human behavior by narrowing it down to psychological variables. In this way, social psychology seeks to create theories of human behavior that help anticipate patterns of behavior before they occur and thus address the issue. Once you know which factors contribute to certain patterns of behavior, they can be addressed and these patterns can be changed in some way.

Topics in social psychology

The themes addressed by social psychology are broad and varied ( Gergen, 1973 ). By focusing on its key themes, we can define its identity. Social identity ( Taylor and Moghaddam, 1994 ), or  the extent to which people recognize and share group characteristics, is a topic often studied by social psychology. Social identity often determines people’s behavior. For example, when a person strongly identifies with a group, his or her behavior conforms to the norms and values ​​of that group.

Another classic theme in social psychology is stereotypes ( Amossy and Herschberg Pierrot, 2001 ). Stereotypes are the image we maintain of the second group. This is usually a simplified and generalized concept designed to classify all members of a particular group. For example, according to the general stereotype in Europe, Spaniards are lazy. People with this stereotype always think that when they interact with a Spaniard, and even before they get to know each other, this is lazy.

Social psychology and prejudice

Prejudices are closely related to stereotypes ( Dovidio, Hewstone, Glick, and Esses, 2010 ). Prejudices are preconceptions and attitudes that make us make quick decisions about a person or situation. They are judgments based on incomplete information, and are usually negative.

Today, many people mistakenly believe that all Muslims are violent and even sympathetic to terrorism. Even when faced with clear evidence of this erroneous judgment, they may want to believe it. These beliefs affect their feelings and behavior towards people who practice this religion.

Another area of ​​research in social psychology is values ​​( Ginges and Atran, 2014 ). Values ​​are a set of guidelines created by society that must be followed. Values ​​tend to have a social consensus and vary between different cultures. Values ​​are so important that for some people they become sacred. Despite the irrationality of some values, people defend them to the extremes and even make great sacrifices for them.

Because there are many topics studied in social psychology, we cannot take a position on all of them. Some of the unaddressed topics are aggression and violence, socialization, teamwork, leadership, social movements, obedience, conformism, and interpersonal and group processes.

Important people in the world of social psychology

There are many people who have made a big impact in the field of social psychology. Here are a few of them:

• Floyd Allport : Best known for establishing social psychology as his own scientific field.
• Muzafer Sherif : Known for his “cave of thieves” experiment, in which a group of scout boys were divided into two groups to find out the prejudices of different social groups. The experiment gave rise to  a theory of realistic conflict.

• Solomon Asch : Dedicated his life to studying the social impact. His best-known works are his experiments in conformity, in which he used throats of varying lengths to see if participants gave false answers. Indeed, they gave the wrong answers, not because they thought the answers were correct, but simply to agree with other people who gave the answer .
• Kurt Lewin : Known as the founder of the modern social psychologist. He influenced Gestalt theory, studied the concept of social distance, and formulated field theory . The latter shows that it is impossible to know the real behavior of people if they are outside their own environment.
• Ignacio Martín-Baró : In addition to working as a psychologist, he was also a Jesuit priest. According to him, psychology should be related to the social and historical conditions of the region in which it develops. It should also be related to the efforts of the people who live there. He is the creator of the social psychology of liberation .

Other important characters

• Stanley Milgram : Performed ethically questionable tests. The best known is his experiment in obedience to authority. In it, one participant delivered electric shocks to another in the presence of authority. The experiment of the small world is also his; this is also called the six distinguishing steps .
• Serge Moskovici : Studied social representations. This is the way information is reconstructed when groups adopt it, distorting it from its original form. Serge is also known for his research on the effects of minorities.
• Philip Zimbardo : Best known for leading the Stanford Prison Experiment . In this experiment, he divided the students into two groups – prison guards and prisoners. He then placed them in a model prison in the university basement. It was concluded from the experiment that the situation influenced the participants’ behavior instead of their own personality.

• Albert Bandura : Demonstrated that violence in the media encourages aggressive behavior in those who view it. She conducted an experiment in which the model performed aggressive behavior on a doll that the children, in turn, mimicked. This is called the Bobo Doll Test. Bandura is also the creator of the theory of self-efficacy .

Summary

As we can see, Social Psychology focuses on our social behavior. This is a great unknown to outsiders, and is one of the most surprising things to those who choose to study psychology. This is because we often underestimate other people’s direct or indirect power over us. In this sense, we want to see ourselves as fully independent, able to function and feel the way we want without our environment affecting us too much.

But these studies of social psychology have shown us that this is not true at all. That’s why they’re so interesting, and that’s why this field of psychology can enrich us so much with its discoveries.

Sources

Allport, GW (1985). The Historical Background of Social Psychology.

G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.). The Handbook of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill.

Amossy, R., Herschberg Pierrot, A. (2001). Stereotypes and Clichés. Buenos Aires.

Eudeba. Dovidio, JF, Hewstone, M., Glick, P. and Esses, VM (2010) «Prejudice, Stereotyping and Siscrimination: Theoretical and Empirical overview».

Dovidio, JF, Hewstone, M., Glick, P., and Esses, VM (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Gergen, KJ (1973). Social Psychology as history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 309-320.

Ginges, J. and Atran, S. (2014) “Sacred values ​​and Cultural conflict”,

Gelfand, MJ, Chiu, CY, and Hong, YY (eds.) Advances in Culture and Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 273-301.

Moscovici, S. & Markova, I. (2006). The making of modern social Psychology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Taylor, D., Moghaddam, F. (1994). «Social Identity Theory». Theories of Intergroup Relations: International Social Psychological Perspectives (2nd edition). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. pp. 80-91.