Social psychology is a very fast growing, and increasingly relevant, explanation of human behaviour . There are a multitude of studies on human behaviour, including looking at areas such as social learning theory, social cognition and attribution theories. Understanding human behaviour in social contexts is a key element of social psychology, and, as Baron, Byrne and Suls (1989) explained, social psychology is ‘the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviour in social situations’ . Social psychologists focus on how individuals interact with others within society. Looking at different interactions between individuals in certain circumstances, psychologists understand in more depth the reasons for …show more content…
The earliest social experiments were conducted by Triplett before the 1900s’, and were a revolutionary idea for new psychologists. It is said that Floyd Allport first founded the basics of social psychology back in the early twentieth century . His fundamental ideas did little to analyse the social problems at the time, and it wasn’t until the late 1930s’ that his work started to expand. Influences such as the Great Depression and the political upheaval were key in the development of social psychology, and enable early psychologists to form a group aimed at progressing with social issues and psychological analysis - the Psychological Study of Social Issues. This group is still alive today, and hopes to educate and encourage young people to learn about social issues. By the 1940s’ social psychology had greatly expanded, and psychologists Kurt Lewin and Leon Festinger had refined the experimentation of sociology on humans . Surprisingly, during the second world war, Adolf Hitler inspired many psychologists to attemot to understand the behaviour of others in greater depth. This is where many known psychologists emerged, such as Milgram who focused on obedience with his classic ‘electric shock experiment’, Asch who studied conformity with his ‘line study’, and finally Zimbardo’s well known ‘Prison Study’. These influential psychologists have defined social psychology today, and so with this …show more content…
Although Asch himself did not conduct different cross-cultural studies of conformity, other researchers like Berry (1967) did conduct very similar experiments. Berry’s experiment was the same however focused on the Temne in Sierra Leone, and the Inuit’s of Canada. This found that different rates of conformity could be found in the differing cultures, as well as expectations on childrearing and lifestyle choices. This research thus extended Asch’s conformity study into an etic approach rather than focusing on an emic design. Therefore, it could be stated that social psychology and the research carried out by specific original psychologists has influenced the way society is interpreted today. The work carried out by Berry supports social psychology as it allows for a wider understanding of society globally, rather than purely focusing on the western civilisations that was the basis of Asch’s work. This study can help measure conformity, and the reasons for conformity, universally rather than an ethnocentric approach as was originally designed in
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 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 each other. 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.
Stanley Milgram was born in New York City in 1933 (Miller 1997). He was the son of Jewish immigrants, Adele and Samuel Milgram, and he had an older sister, Marjorie, as well as a younger brother, Joel (Raver). Milgram graduated in 1950 from James Monroe High School in just three years by taking heavier class loads than other students (Raver), and then went on to receive his bachelor’s degree from Queens College in 1954. After finishing his degree at Queens, Stanley decided to further his education and receive his Ph.D. from Harvard while studying under the guidance of Gordon Allport (Miller). He wrote his dissertation on the cross-cultural comparisons of conformity in both France and Norway from 1957-1959. He used a technique that had been developed by Solomon Asch, who he was later assigned to, to work as his research assistant. During this time, be familiarized himself with Asch’s experiments on conformity and his interest quickly grew. Stanley Milgram received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University in June of 1960. That very fall, he continued on to become an assistant professor at the Ivy League school, Yale University. ...
Social psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods to understand why and how people act and behave the way they do. "To understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings" (Gordon Allport, 1985). Conformity is encouraged by social influence to conform to different social groups and ways, whereas obedience to authority in social influence is where an individual acts the way the person in authority says so. Obedience is usually done through a hierarchy of power; the people at the top do the telling at the people at the bottom do the actions. When researching conformity and obedience it is vital to compare the experiments to real
Another principle at the socio-cultural level of psychological analysis is the idea that humans’ behaviour is influenced by the people around us, whether it be directly or indirectly.
Social Psychology is the study of how we think and relate to other people. These psychologists focused on how the social situation influences others behavior. We see social influences everywhere we go, but might not notice it. Like when watching a movie for fun you do not notice it as much as when you are actually looking for the behaviors, like in the film The Breakfast Club. There are several examples of social psychological behaviors in the film.
Social Psychology is a part of psychology, which studies human behavior in the society. Overall, this section of the science is one of the most useful parts of psychology. People have to know which variables affect their behavior and change them if they are not appropriate. In my essay I discuss three theories of social psychology such as: fundamental attribution error, cognitive dissonance and obedience to authority.
Social psychology is one of the many variations of psychology. By definition, social psychology is how humans influence each other’s way of behaving and thinking. Under social psychology, there are various ways to define human behaviour and understand why we behave in a particular manner. These approaches deal with multiple concepts such as conformity, obedience, and social influences. They help answer questions about our behaviour and actions, while also analyzing our cognitive processes in certain situations. Social experiments conducted throughout history have also led to more understanding in the aforementioned areas. With these understandings of social behaviour, society can benefit and become aware of themselves and their mentalities.
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.
Public Safety Officials have been battling the difficult question of profiling for quite a while. The question is how do they know the suspected individual fit the category associated with an offense? While it has been proven that many profiling cases are somewhat directed to a racial profile, it can be proven that people, given the discretion, are able to identify explanations for a series of behavioral events by identifying what that behavior accredits to. This theory, identified by Frite Heider, “suggested that we have a tendency to give casual explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition,” called the attribution theory. Until recently, a study of the like was considered to be a branch of sociology and not a form of psychology. Social psychology essentially became the focus on the individual rather than the group as a whole. Many thoughtful ideas are collected in response to the studies of social psychology. Human cognition is understood to arise from interacting socially; highlighting the importance of socialization. We use social cognition to develop our explanations and our ideas on why a person’s behavior is/does what it is/does.
Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, conducted an experiment in 1963 about human obedience that was deemed as one of the most controversial social psychology experiments ever (Blass). Ian Parker, a writer for the New Yorker and Human Sciences, and Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, responded to Stanley Milgram’s experiment. These articles represent how the scientific community reviews and scrutinizes each other’s work to authenticate experiment results. Baumrind focuses on the moral and ethical dilemma while, Parker focuses more on the experiment’s actual application.
The Science of Psychology “Psychology is the scientific study of mind, brain and behaviour. Some of what you do learn may seem like ‘common sense’, or at least familiar to you because you are learning about topics in which you can relate to. However some things you may believe is true, but is incorrect. The way we know this is through the application of scientific methods.” Mark Leary suggests that the subject matter of psychology is much more familiar to most people than is the subject matter of physics or biology; we see behaviour all around us.
Social psychology is an in-depth study of socialization. Gordon Allport (1985) defined it a discipline that utilizes scientific methods to understand as well as explain how thoughts, feelings and behaviors of human beings are influenced by the actual, implied or imagined presence of other people (Smith & Mackie, 2000). Cantril (1934) regards it as being the scientific learning o...
The development point of view of social psychology has changed the understanding of human nature in relation to social contexts. Social psychology is the study of how individuals act, think, and feel in relation to the context of society. Furthermore, social psychology concentrates on how other people influence an individual’s behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Basically, social psychology has changed our understanding of human nature as it investigates how an individual’s behavior influences a groups’ behavior or internal mechanisms; attitude or self-concepts. Post-World War 2(WW2), researchers were curious to investigate the reasonings for why people follow orders, despite the potential repercussions of those actions. Furthermore, social experiments are usually applied to demonstrate key
Social Psychologist tend to ask questions when they want to answer a question about people’s behavior. Why do people do the things they do? Social psychologists want to explain this behavior. For example, the questions, “why do we hurt each other? Why does genocide happen?” can be answered by testing a hypothesis formed from their previous knowledge. To approach this question, social psychologist can use what they have observed to create an experiment. There are many influences on aggression, such as: the physical environment, wealth inequality, social rejection, culture, and media. Social psychologists use all this information to conduct their studies to explain why people hurt others and how people can even participate in genocide.