What is Social Psychology?

                From the preceding discussion, the reader should be developing some conception of the field of social psychology. Essentially, it is the study of the ways in which people (or groups of people) affect others and are in turn affected by them. More specifically, we may resort to a definition suggested by Gordon Allport (1968) and which is quite generally accepted, in one form or another, by most people who identify themselves as social psychologists:

                Social psychology is a discipline in which people attempt to understand, explain, and predict how the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals are influenced by the perceived, imagined, or implied thoughts, feelings, and actions of others.

                A social psychologist might take problems such as those we cited above and attempt to study them systematically. She or he would apply available theoretical tools to learn how and why such events happen. Basically, he or she would analyze how the opinions, beliefs, attitudes, or emotions of the individuals involved were influenced by those of others. The test of the social psychologist’s understanding would be the ability to predict what would happen in a subsequent situation. Allport’s definition acknowledges that when we are affected by others, our perceptions of them may not be accurate. Members of the People’s Temple and civil rights demonstrators clearly operated on the basis of what they felt, believed, or imagined about their respective leaders. In some cases, these perceptions were probably inaccurate; nevertheless, it was these perceptions—rather than the leaders’ actual nature or behavior—that were instrumental in determining the behavior of group members.

(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. 1983. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: United States of America. 2nd Edition)

× 『rui@96yR』【butterflyuu】 ×