What is social psychology?

Social psychology can be seen, in principle, as a discipline that brings together knowledge from psychology (individual) and sociology (the social or society). In this sense, social psychology is located in the middle between the two academic disciplines, being an interdisciplinary field of knowledge (between disciplines) or transdisciplinary (beyond psychology and sociology disciplines), as some would like.

According to psychologist Gordon Allport, social psychology is the discipline that uses scientific methods to “understand and explain how the thinking, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the real, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings.”

With this definition, we can better understand what I said above. Social psychology brings together the individual and the social: both the way in which the individual is influenced by the social environment in which he lives (even when he is alone) and the way in which the individual can influence the society around him.

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For example, the AA group (Alcoholics Anonymous) is a group that influences the behavior of the individual with alcohol abuse, helping him to live sober with the motto “just for today” and the 12 steps.

During the Faculty of Psychology I did a work of observation of this group for the discipline Social Psychology.

As everyone knows, AA is the most efficient form of recovery. That’s why he gave rise to NA (Narcotics Anonymous), which extends treatment to other drugs.

In this way, Social Psychology is interested in research that questions the insertion of the individual in groups. There are many forms of groups. AA is one example among many others that we could remember right now.

Yesterday I received the invitation to Google Plus – the new social network that will probably replace orkut. Google Plus divides the people we have relationships with into Groups (Circles)

The Groups, or Circles, are as follows:

Family

Friends

acquaintances

followers

In an attempt to reproduce life as it is, outside the internet, Google proposes this form of division. It is also possible to create other personal groups such as work friends, college friends, etc.

From the perspective of Google Plus, the individual relates to groups in a specific way. So Google assumes that what you’d like to talk about with your Friends shouldn’t be the same as what you’d like to talk about with your boss or people you don’t know well.

Another research that interests Social Psychology is leadership: the way in which, in a group, the figure of a leader always appears (and, in opposition, the scapegoat – the one who disagrees with the leader).

There are several types of leaders: authoritarian, demagogic, laissez-faire (the one who lets things happen by themselves)…

But the group-individual and individual-group relationship is not the only source of research in the area. We also found questions about how the individual perceives himself in the interaction with the group, self-perception and social perception.

Therefore, we can see that Social Psychology is an area of ​​research within Psychology whose main interest lies in the individual-society, individual-group interaction.

There are several approaches within Social Psychology, each of them looking at a question concerning the individual in his relationship with the social.

References Allport, GW The historical background of social psychology.

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