The scientific study of social psychology examines how social norms and the actual or perceived presence of other people affect people’s ideas, feelings, and behaviors.(Source: )
Social psychologists often examine the social contexts in which ideas, feelings, and behaviors arise as well as how these factors affect social interactions in order to explain human behavior as a result of the interplay between mental states and social situations.[/2]
History of Social Psychology
19th century
Social psychology started to diverge from psychology as a whole in the 19th century. Many psychologists at the time were focused on creating tangible explanations for the various facets of human nature. Their aim was to identify tangible cause-and-effect connections that may elucidate social interactions.
They did this by applying human behavior to the scientific approach.(5) Norman Triplett’s 1898 experiment on the phenomena of social facilitation was the first study in the topic to be published.(6) Many of the social psychology findings of the 20th century were subsequently built upon the results of these psychological tests.
Early 20th century
Social psychologists’ primary focus during World War II was on propaganda and persuasion tactics used by the American military (see also psychological warfare). Researchers started to focus on a range of societal concerns, such as race and gender discrimination, after the war.
In the years immediately following World War II, sociologists and psychologists frequently worked together. But in recent years, the two fields have grown more specialized and estranged from one another, with psychologists typically concentrating on more in-depth, small-scale investigations of specific human behaviors and sociologists typically concentrating on higher-level, large-scale analyses of society.(7)
Late 20th century and modernity
The 1960s saw a rise in interest in areas like aggressiveness, bystander intervention, and cognitive dissonance. A variety of conceptual challenges to social psychology surfaced in the 1970s regarding matters including whether or not attitudes could reliably predict behavior, whether laboratory testing raised ethical concerns, and the degree to which science could be conducted in a cultural setting.(8) Additionally, situationism—the idea that circumstances influence how people behave—emerged at this time and cast doubt on the value of the self and personality in psychology.In [9]
In terms of theory and methodology, social psychology has produced several answers to these problems by the 1980s and 1990s.In [9] Research is currently governed by ethical standards, and multicultural and pluralistic approaches to the social sciences have become prevalent.
Core theories and concepts
Attitudes
An attitude is defined in social psychology as a learnt, all-encompassing assessment that shapes perception and behavior.In [12][Needs page] Basic statements of acceptance and disapproval, or likes and dislikes, are known as attitudes. Examples of attitudes include liking chocolate ice cream and supporting a specific political party’s principles.13]
General attitudes are not usually reliable indicators of particular conduct since people are impacted by a variety of events in each given situation. For instance, someone who values the environment in general might not recycle a plastic bottle on a given day due to certain reasons.
The difference between standard, self-reported attitudes and implicit, unconscious attitudes has been studied in attitude research.
Social cognition
Social cognition is the study of how individuals perceive, identify, and retain knowledge about one another.19] The premise of much study is that individuals’s perceptions of other people differ from their perceptions of non-social, or non-human, targets.20] The social-cognitive impairments shown by individuals with autism and Williams syndrome provide credence to this claim.21]
Social Cognition
Attribution is a key area of study in social cognition.21] Behavior, whether it be one’s own or that of others, can be explained by attributes.
Attributing the reason of behavior to both internal and external variables is one aspect of attribution. An internal attribution, also known as a dispositional attribution, argues that an action stems from internal characteristics including ability, disposition, personality, and character. An external, or situational, attribution explains how external factors, like the weather, might influence an action.In [23]: 111The second component of attribution assigns stable and unstable elements (i.e., whether the conduct will be repeated or modified under comparable conditions) as the reason of the behavior.
Heuristics
Cognitive short cuts known as heuristics are employed in place of conscious thought when making judgments. The availability heuristic is when people calculate the likelihood of something based on how simple it is to envision it happening. As a result, options that are highly memorable or vivid will be seen as more plausible than those that are more difficult to visualize or comprehend.
A quick way for people to classify something based on how close it is to a known prototype is the representativeness heuristic.[23] –64 Researchers studying social cognition have discovered numerous other biases. A false memory of having foreseen events, or an exaggeration of genuine forecasts, after learning the outcome, is known as hindsight bias. One kind of bias is the confirmation bias.
Schemas
Generalized mental models called schemas help to organize information and direct information processing. They arrange social data and encounters. Schemas frequently function inadvertently and instinctively. Biases in vision and memory result from this. Schemas have the power to create expectations that cause us to perceive the unreal.
According to one experiment, people are more likely to mistakenly think a black man’s handgun for a white man’s.(26] A stereotype is a generalized set of ideas about a certain group of people that is included in this type of schema (and, when inaccurate, represents an ultimate attribution error). Stereotypes are frequently linked to prejudicial or unfavorable attitudes and actions. Scripts are schemas for actions (like doing laundry or going to a restaurant).In [27]
Self-concept
The entirety of a person’s thoughts about themselves makes up their self-concept. Self-schemas are cognitive components of the self-concept; these are ideas about oneself that direct how one processes self-referential information.(28) A student would be oneself, processing information pertinent to a student (taking notes in class, finishing a homework assignment, etc.); an athlete would be the self processing information about things related to being an athlete.
As an example, an athlete at a university would have multiple selves, each processing different information pertinent to each self. These identities comprise these selves, and self-referential information is that which requires processing and response from the proper self.
Numerous ideas exist regarding perception.
Social influence
The broad phrase “social influence” refers to the persuading effects that individuals have on one another. It is regarded as a cornerstone of social psychology theory. Research on it and that on attitudes and persuasion intersect quite a bit. The three primary domains of social influence are obedience, compliance, and conformity. Since most influence effects are strongest when they occur in social groups, social influence and group dynamics research are closely connected fields of study.33]
Conformity is the first significant social impact domain. The inclination to behave or think similarly to other group members is known as conformity. Cohesion, prior commitment, accountability to the group, resemblance, knowledge, and member identity (i.e., status) .
Compliance, which is defined as any modification in behavior brought about by a request or recommendation from another individual, is the second main field of study in social influence research. The foot-in-the-door strategy is a compliance tactic where the persuader asks for a minor favor first, like asking for time, and then follows up with a larger favor, like asking for ten bucks.
A similar tactic is the bait and switch, a deceptive sales technique that involves luring in prospective buyers with ads for inexpensive products that ultimately turn out to be out of stock in order to upsell them on a more costly item.34]
Group dynamics
Social psychologists investigate phenomena that are related to groups, like crowd behavior. Any two or more people who are related to one another socially are considered to be members of a group.36] Groups frequently communicate, impact one another, and have a same identity. They are distinguished from accidental, transient gatherings—referred to as social aggregates—by a number of emerging characteristics:36]
Norms: Unspoken guidelines and standards that members of a group are expected to abide by.
Roles: Unspoken guidelines and standards for particular group members.
Relations: Disparities in status or prestige as well as group likeness patterns.
Individuals in a group are influenced by their shared social identity when it comes to intergroup conduct, or how groups interact and view one another.
The inclination to define oneself in terms of one’s affiliation with a group can result in intergroup discrimination, which entails positive attitudes and actions toward the in-group and negative attitudes and actions toward the out-group.(37)
In committees and juries, for example, groups are commonly depended upon to moderate and enhance decision-making [38]. Productivity and performance are also impacted by groups. For instance, the propensity to work more quickly and intensely while surrounded by people is known as social facilitation.
Deindividuation, a lower level of self-awareness that can be brought on by feelings of anonymity, is another key idea in this field. Deindividuation is linked to impulsive, occasionally harmful behavior.
Interpersonal attraction
Interpersonal attraction, which encompasses all the elements that cause individuals to like one another, form relationships, and (sometimes) fall in love, is a significant field of study on how people relate to one another. Social psychologists have identified a number of general principles of attraction.
The degree to which two individuals are similar to one another is one of the most crucial elements in interpersonal attraction. Two people are more likely to be attracted to one another if their overall attitudes, backgrounds, settings, worldviews, and other characteristics are comparable.(41)(i)
Physical appeal plays a significant role in love relationships, especially in the early going when there is a lot of passion. Later on, people experience different kinds of love, and compatibility and other related traits become increasingly significant.
Research
Methods
Social psychology is an empirical science that uses hypothesis testing to try and provide answers to issues regarding human behavior. In social psychology, it is crucial to pay close attention to research design, sampling, and statistical analysis.
Social psychologists use controlled experiments wherever possible, which calls for adjusting one or more independent variables before examining the impact on a dependent variable. Because they have a high degree of internal validity and are therefore less likely to be influenced by irrelevant or confounding variables, experiments are valuable in the field of social psychology. However, external validity—the extent to which the findings may be extrapolated to a broader population—is usually poor in controlled studies due to the small sample sizes.
Research is typically done on a sample of people from the general community because it is usually not practicable to test everyone. Survey research is a common tool used by social psychologists who want outcomes with a high degree of external validity. Several methods of random sampling are used in surveys to select a sample of respondents who are typical of the population.
Typically, this kind of study is descriptive or correlational in nature as variables are not controlled experimentally. Concerns have been voiced by some psychologists regarding social psychology research that depends excessively on studies done on undergraduate students in academic settings or on people from crowdsourced labor marketplaces like Amazon Mechanical Turk.[46]-(47) More than 70% of trials in a 1986 research by David O. Sears[45] employed undergraduate students from North America.