Do you know what social psychology is and why it is so important?

Within psychology we could draw a division between applied psychology and basic psychology. Basic psychology studies psychological processes such as perception, attention, memory, language and learning. On the other hand, Applied psychology is focused on the study of other characteristics of psychology more related to problem solving.. Within applied psychology there are different aspects, social psychology being one of these.

Social psychology could be defined as the study of the interaction of human beings, especially in groups and social situations, and highlights the influence of social situations on human behavior. More specifically, Social psychology focuses on the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real, imagined, or implied presence of other people. (Allport, 1985).

What does social psychology look for?

Social psychology aims to study social relationships (Moscovici and Markova, 2006). It is argued that There are social psychological processes that differ from individual psychological processes.. Social psychology attempts to understand the behaviors of groups as well as the attitudes of each person regarding their way of reacting or thinking in the social environment.

In other words, social psychology studies the behavior of people at the group level. It tries to describe and explain human behaviors by reducing them to psychological variables. In this way, social psychology seeks to establish theories about human behaviors that serve to predict behaviors before they occur and be able to intervene. Thus, knowing what factors promote certain behaviors, intervention in those factors could change the final behaviors.

Topics within social psychology

The subject matter studied by social psychology is broad and varied (Gergen, 1973). By focusing on some of the topics that constitute its object of study, we can name identity. The social identity (Taylor and Moghaddam, 1994) The degree to which people identify and share characteristics with groups is a factor widely studied by social psychology.

Social identity will determine people’s behaviors. Specifically, when a person identifies strongly with a group, his or her behaviors will correspond to the norms and values ​​of that group.

Another classic topic in social psychology is stereotypes (Amossy and Herschberg, 2001). Stereotypes are the image we have of another group. It is usually a simplified and general image that serves to value all members of a specific group equally. For example, a common stereotype in Europe is that Spaniards are lazy. People who have this stereotype of Spaniards, when they interact with a Spaniard, will think that he is lazy, even before meeting him.

Prejudices appear closely related to the stereotype (Dovidio, Hewstone, Glick & Esses, 2010). Prejudices are preconceived attitudes that help make decisions quickly. They are judgments that are made based on incomplete information and are usually negative.

Today, many people mistakenly believe that all Muslims are violent and even terrorists. Even with evidence against this erroneous judgment, many people maintain it and their emotions and behaviors with people who practice this religion are determined to confirm their beliefs, no matter how erroneous they may be.

Another topic of study in social psychology is values ​​(Ginges and Atran, 2014). Values ​​are a set of guidelines that societies establish to be followed. They usually have a social consensus and vary between cultures. Values ​​are so important to some people that they can become sacred and, despite their irrationality, people will defend them even by making great sacrifices.

Given the great variety of topics that are studied from social psychology, we cannot comment on all of them. Some of those that have not been discussed are aggression and violence, socialization, teamwork, leadership, social movements, obedience, conformism, interpersonal and group processes, etc.

Concepts, theories and experiments of social psychology

Social facilitation

Allport introduced the notion that the presence of other people can facilitate certain behaviors. It was found that an audience would improve actors’ performance on well-learned/easy tasks, but leads to a decrease in performance on newly learned tasks due to social inhibition.

Social learning theory

Bandura argued that behavior could be modeled in the social world. Three groups of children watched a video in which an adult was aggressive with a “silly doll” while he was rewarded or punished by another adult. It was found that children who had seen the rewarded adult were more likely to copy that behavior.

Cognitive dissonance

Festinger proposed that when we have beliefs, attitudes, or cognitions that are different, we experience dissonance: an inconsistency that causes discomfort. We are motivated to reduce this by changing one of our thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes or by paying selective attention to information that supports one of our beliefs.

Social identity theory

When a group of children were asked to assign points to others who were part of their own group or the outgroup, they showed a strong preference for the ingroup. That is, they assigned more points on the set task to children who they believed were in the same group as them. This can be explained by social identity theory, which states that Individuals need to maintain a positive sense of personal and social identity: this is achieved in part by emphasizing the desirability of one’s own group.

Attribution theory

Weiner was interested in the attributions made for experiences of success and failure and introduced the idea that we seek explanations of behavior in the social world. He believed that these were made based on three areas: locus, which could be internal or external; stability, which is whether the cause is stable or changes over time; and controllability.

Stanford prison experiment

A group of volunteers participated in a simulation in which they were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard and taken to a converted university basement that resembled a prison environment. There was a basic loss of rights for prisoners, who were arrested unexpectedly, given a uniform and an identification number.

The study showed that conformity to social roles occurred as part of social interaction, as both groups showed more negative emotions and hostility and dehumanization became evident. The prisoners became passive, while the guards took on an active, brutal and dominant role.

Important people within social psychology

Within the study of social psychology there have been people who have left an important mark. Some of these people are the following:

Floyd Allport: He is known for being the founder of social psychology as a scientific discipline.Muzafer Sheriff: known for carrying out the “thieves’ cave” experiment where they divided a group of boy scout into two groups in order to explore prejudice in social groups. As a result of the experiment, the theory of realistic group conflict appeared.Solomon Ash: He dedicated himself to the study of social influence. His studies on conformity stand out, in which he used line drawings of different sizes to check how participants gave erroneous answers…, and they did so, not because they thought that the answers they gave were true, but to agree with the answers. of others.Kurt Lewin: He is known as the founder of modern social psychology. He made contributions to Gestalt theory, studied the concept of social distance and formulated field theory, according to which it is impossible to know human behavior outside of its environment.Ignacio Martín-Baró: In addition to being a psychologist, he was a Jesuit priest. He proposed that psychology should be related to the social and historical conditions of the territory where it develops and, likewise, to the aspirations of the people who reside there. He is the creator of the social psychology of liberation

Stanley Milgram: He carried out experiments of dubious ethics. The best known is his experiment on obedience to authority. In it, one participant applied electric shocks to another in the presence of an authority figure. He also authored the small world experiment, also known as the six degrees of separation.Serge Moskovici: studied social representations, the way knowledge is reformulated as groups take control of it, distorting it from its original form. He is also known for his studies on the influence of minorities.Philip Zimbardo: Mostly known for conducting the Stanford prison experiment where he divided students into guards and prisoners and placed them in a simulated prison in the basement of the university. The conclusion was that it was the situation that caused the participants’ behaviors and not their personality.Albert BanduraTo demonstrate that the violence of the media directs the aggressive behavior of viewers, an experiment was carried out where a model performed aggressive behaviors on a doll, which was imitated by children, it is known as the Bobo doll experiment. He is the creator of the theory of self-efficacy.

As we see, social psychology focuses on one of our basic dimensions: the social. From the outside it is a great unknown and one of those that causes the most surprise to the person who decides to study psychology.. This is because we often underestimate the power that others have directly or indirectly over us. In this sense we like to see ourselves as fully independent people and with a way of acting and feeling that the environment has very little influence on.

As we have seen, precisely studies in social psychology come to tell us precisely the opposite, hence their extraordinary interest and also hence the richness that this branch of psychology can bring us with its discoveries.

Community social psychology

Community psychology is an area of ​​social psychology whose objective is promote actions aimed at improving people’s living conditions, by strengthening their community. Generally, it is a discipline of application and intervention, rather than theory.

In other words, this branch of psychology seeks to develop, from…