The goal of social psychology is
to understand cognition and behavior as they naturally occur in a social context
, but the very act of observing people can influence and alter their behavior. For this reason, many social psychology experiments utilize deception to conceal or distort certain aspects of the study.
Social psychology is concerned with
the study of an individual’s social behavior in his social attitudes
. Social psychology helps people manage their stress, depression and other social issues and improve their decision making and predict accurate future behavior based on the understanding of past behavior.
For example, you are likely to behave much differently when you are around a group of close friends than you would around a group of colleagues or supervisors from work. Social psychology encompasses a wide range of social topics, including: …
Social perception
.
Leadership
.
Social psychologists study how
social influence, social perception and social interaction influence individual and group behavior
. Some social psychologists focus on conducting research on human behavior.
Social psychology is
the study of how individual or group behavior is influenced by the presence and behavior of others
. The major question social psychologists ponder is this: How and why are people’s perceptions and actions influenced by environmental factors, such as social interaction?
Social Thinking, Social Influence, and Social Behavior
. Social psychology focuses on three main areas: social thinking, social influence, and social behavior. Each of these overlapping areas of study is displayed in Figure 1.1.
Normative social influence is usually associated with compliance, where a person changes their public behaviour but not their private beliefs. For example, a
person may feel pressurised to smoke because
the rest of their friends are. … This means any change of behavior is temporary.
Learning more about social psychology can enrich your understanding of yourself and the world around you. By learning more about how
people view others
, how they behave in groups, and how attitudes are formed, you can gain a greater appreciation for how social relationships influence individual functioning.
Social psychology can be used in different areas of our lives such as, our way of thinking, relationships (personal and professional), physical and mental health etc. … At the center of all these, it’s human social cognitive system interacting with everyday situations.
- We Construct Our Social Reality.
- Social Influences Shape Behavior.
- Personal Attitudes and Dispositions Shape Behavior.
In other words, where general psychology is the study of human behavior on an individual level, social psychology is the study of human behavior in a social context. There are four key characteristics of social psychology including
broad scope, cultural mandate, scientific methods, and search for wisdom.
Social psychologists believe that
human behavior is determined by both a person’s characteristics and the social situation
. They also believe that the social situation is frequently a stronger influence on behavior than are a person’s characteristics. Social psychology is largely the study of the social situation.
Applied social psychology can be defined as using
social psychological theories, principles, research findings
, and experimental methods to understand social issues and to offer real-world solutions for a variety of social problems.
There are different social psychology approaches to explain human behavior. Explore the four major perspectives of social psychology –
social cognition, the sociocultural perspective, social learning, and the evolutionary perspective
– and learn how each perspective views human behavior.
3 THREE TYPES OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE. There are three types of influence that a social presence can have on a consumer:
utilitarian, value-expressive, and informational
(Burnkrant & Cousineau, 1975; Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Park & Lessig, 1977).
Any process whereby a person’s attitudes
(1), opinions, beliefs, or behaviour are altered or controlled by some form of social communication. It includes conformity, compliance, group polarization, minority social influence, obedience, persuasion, and the influence of social norms (1).
