Unit 1 Notes for Social Psychology

Humans are social beings who live with others such that their actions, thoughts and feelings

are affected by and affect others.

Human beings influence the behaviour of each other. To understand human beings, a discipline

called social psychology was born. Different authors define social psychology differently as

below:

a. Gordon Allport defines social psychology as a discipline that uses scientific methods

in an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of

individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human

beings.

b. Meyers & Spencer look at social psychology as the scientific study of how people

think about, influence and relate to one another.

c. Barron, Kassin & Fein define social psychology as a scientific study of how human

beings think, feel and behave regarding to other people and how individual thoughts,

feelings and behaviours are affected by other people.

Social psychology is concerned with the effect of other people on others thoughts, feelings and

behaviour.

Three building blocks of social psychology (ABC)

A=Affect: this is how people feel inside. It is concerned with how people feel about themselves

(self-esteem), how they feel about others (prejudice) and how they feel about various issues

(attitudes).
B=Behaviour: looks at what people do, their actions. It is concerned with various behaviours

displayed by people, for example; joining groups, helping others, hurting others, loving and

hating others.

C=Cognition: it is concerned with what people think about. It focuses on what people think

about themselves (self-concept), what they think about others, (stereotype) and what they

think about various problems and issues in the social world.

Social psychologies focus on two folds:

1. Understanding individual behaviour (understanding the self)

2. Understanding the behaviour of others (understanding others)

In understanding the self, social thoughts and actions of an individual might be influenced by

the society although the thoughts and actions may be of the individual and not the group. Thus,

social psychology focuses on understanding the behaviour of an individual. It also tries to

understand the environmental influences on the individual’s social thought and actions. Such

environments could be culture and social norms.

In understanding others, social psychologists understand that human behaviour is caused by

many things; context and actions of others. Individual behaviour is affected by the actions of

other individuals. Also, certain characteristics of people influence others behaviour. Your

actions affect the behaviour of others.

Relationship of social psychology with other social sciences

a. Anthropology and social psychology: anthropology studies human culture which

consists of shared values, beliefs and practices. Humans are both social and cultural

beings. To understand human behaviour, one must understand the cultural context in

which that behaviour occurs.

consumption of goods and services. The Social Exchange Theory (SET) looks at how

people commit themselves in a relationship considers economic concepts in trying to

understand such human behaviour by considering a number of factors that influence it,

such factors include cost and rewards. Human beings will look at the cost and rewards

of getting into a relationship.

c. History and Social Psychology: history studies past events. Progression of human

beings requires an understanding of past events and learn from them. A common saying

that the past shapes the future attests to this.

d. Political science and Social Psychology: political science studies political

organisations and institutions. Social psychologists conduct research on political

behaviour such as voting, party identification, political ideologies among others.

e. Sociology and social psychology: sociology looks at human societies and groups that

form them. Although both look at how people behave in a community (society and

groups), social psychologists focus on individual members that make up those societies

while sociology looks at the group as a single social unit. Social psychologists are also

interested in how groups affect individuals or how individuals affect the group.

f. Social work and social psychology: social workers are interested in problems like

destitute children, crime and material breakdown, social psychologists are interested in

factors affecting individual behaviour in such problems.

g. Social psychology within psychology: basically, psychology studies human behaviour.

It has a number of branches of which social psychology is one.

• Personality psychology and social psychology: personality psychology is

interested in private internal functioning and has special concern for differences

between individuals in traits like self-esteem, aggressiveness, introvert or

how they view and affect one another. In short personality psychology looks

inside the person while social psychology looks at the outside situation.

• Educational psychology and social psychology: educational psychology in

concerned with how people learn and how best they can be taught. Social

psychology looks at how success or failure in learning affects the learner and

vice versa.

• Cognitive psychology and social psychology: cognitive psychology studies

mental processes like thinking, remembering, learning and reasoning, social

psychology looks at same processes but with respect to social information and

how these processes are relevant to social behaviour. In cognitive psychology

social psychologists will look at how people think about their social lives,

thinking about other people, thinking about solving problems of the social

world.

• Clinical psychology and social psychology: clinical psychology seeks to

understand and treat people with psychological challenges or disorders, social

psychologists focus on the ways in which these individuals think, feel, behave

and influence one another. But both can look at how people cope up with anxiety

and pressure in social settings

• Developmental psychology and social psychology: developmental

psychology looks at how people change from conception to death. They look at

what age does a person do a, b or c? social psychologists are interested in such

things lek self-regulation, emotions, gender differences, helping behaviour and

anti-social behaviour and how these patterns of behaviour develop.

Why should we people study social psychology?

social psychology helps us come to know each other better. Through social psychology

we are able to know what triggers prejudice, hatred, discrimination and genocides.

• Making the world better is another reason. Social psychologists desire to make the

world a better place for everyone (Humaneering mission). To do so, they need to

understand the human nature. This will help direct social changes to make the world a

better place to live. For this reason, social psychologists are concerned about injustices,

violence, poverty and suffering of some groups of people and so want to understand the

causes of such problems and find ways to fix them.

• Some study social psychology for fun. The process of finding solutions to the

challenges facing humankind is challenging, intriguing and enjoyable. To some it is

self-fulfilling.

Why should teachers study social psychology?

Cognitive effects: teachers create changes in the way students think about themselves and how

they think about others. This is done through teaching, interaction and group dynamics. Such

processes influence cognitive changes at different levels.

Attitude effects: teachers influence attitude formation and change in several ways. Learners

look up to teachers for guidance and consider their teachers as role models. Apart from this,

teacher's attitudes also influence student's attitudes. This happens through direct teaching and

imitation. It should be noted also that teacher’s attitudes are influenced by learners.

Behaviour effects: teachers are instrumental in shaping learner behaviour through imitation,

(social learning) or direct teaching. Somehow the behaviour of our learners mirrors the

behaviour of the teacher.

may have long-lasting effects on the learners. Emotional issues like love, hatred and prejudice

are at the core of social psychology.

Group processes: understanding group and attribution processes helps the teacher to

effectively organise their teaching to promote learning. Teachers will be able to apply

attribution processes to achieve success or failure in the learning process.

How do social psychologists study issues?

They use science to understand the human behaviour. Although a god number of us look at

science as meaning chemistry, physics, biology and others, social psychology uses scientific

processes and procedures to arrive at conclusions. It should be noted that science is not a label

for some fields but it is a set of values and methodology. Accuracy, objectivity, scepticism

and open mindedness are values of science. The data collection, analysis and inferences

drawn are mostly error-free because of the scientific processes and procedures. The collection

and interpretation of data is as free as possible from human biases.

What is science? Many people seem to believe that this term refers only to fields such as

chemistry, physics, and biology—ones that use the kind of equipment or apparatus. If you share

that view, you may find our suggestion that social psychology is a scientific discipline

somewhat puzzling. How can a field that seeks to study the nature of love, the causes of

aggression, and everything in between be scientific in the same sense as chemistry, physics, or

computer science? The answer is surprisingly simple. In reality, the term science does not refer

to a special group of highly advanced fields. Rather, it refers to two things: (1) a set of values

and (2) several methods that can be used to study a wide range of topics. In deciding whether

a given field is or is not scientific, therefore, the critical question is, does it adopt these values

and methods? To the extent it does, it is scientific in nature. To the extent it does not, it falls
outside the realm of science. We examine the procedures used by social psychologists in their

research in detail in a later section, so here we focus on the core values that all fields must

adopt to be considered scientific in nature. Four of these are most important:

Accuracy: A commitment to gathering and evaluating information about the world (including

social behaviour and thought) in as careful, precise, and error-free a manner as possible.

Objectivity: A commitment to obtaining and evaluating such information in a manner that is

as free from bias as humanly possible.

Scepticism: A commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent they have been

verified over and over again.

Open-mindedness: A commitment to changing one’s views—even views that are strongly

held—if existing evidence suggests that these views are inaccurate