Social Psychology=The scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours or individuals are influenced by the actual imagined, or implied presence of others (Allport, 1935).
·
Understanding how we interact/communicate
·
Understanding how our social environment shapes
our cognitions and judgements/choices
·
Understanding human interaction
·
Understanding how social context, in terms of
actual or implied presence of others, shapes our behaviour.
**SP is different from sociology!
SP intends to answer some questions such as:
-How do we make sense of our decisions and expectations in
the social world?
-How do the choices we make influence our behaviour?
-What effects do our decisions have on others and how do
others’ decisions affect us?
-How does our membership of a group influence the way we
behave?
Important Considerations and Assumptions in SP:
--SPists don’t study animals.
--People don’t behave in a social ‘vacuum’.
--Other people, social contexts, the group we belong to all
affect our decisions and behaviour
--The individual is the unit of analysis.
--Ingenious experiments are used to look at social
phenomena:
>Observable
behaviour
>Non-observable
phenomena (thoughts, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, intentions, goals…)
??Why is it
a science when it studies non-observable reality??
->it deals with real/implied presence
->the non-observable phenomena could be
quantified/measured
Some topics studied in SP:
*Conformity, persuasion, power, group norms, social
influence, obedience
*Prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping
*Crowd behaviour, group identification, social
conflict/harmony, social change
*Decision making, leadership, attitudes, self-presentation
Methodologies in SP: Case studies, field/lab experiments,
surveys…
Theories of SP: Personality, Evolutionary, Cognition/Social
cognition & Behaviourism
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