Do you know what social psychology is?
Inside, we could draw a divide between applied psychology and basic psychology, basic psychology studies basic psychological processes, such as perception, attention, memory, language and learning, while applied psychology focuses on studying other related psychology characteristics. problem-solving. In applied psychology, there are different aspects, such as social psychology.
- Social psychology can be defined as the study of the interaction of human beings.
- Especially in social groups and situations.
- And highlights the influence of social situations on human behavior.
- Social psychology focuses specifically on scientific study of what people’s thoughts.
- Feelings and behaviors are like.
- Influenced by the real.
- Imaginary or implicit presence of others (Allport.
- 1985).
Social psychology aims to study social relations (Moscovici and Markova, 2006); experts say that there are social psychological processes that differ from individual psychological processes; social psychology tries to understand the behaviors of groups, as well as the attitudes of each person in their way of reacting or thinking about the social environment.
In other words, social psychology studies the behavior of people within a group, tries to describe and explain human behavior by reducing it to psychological variables, in this way, social psychology seeks to establish theories about human behavior that are used to predict behaviors before. they happen and are able to intervene as well, knowing what factors promote certain behaviors, intervention on these factors can change the final behaviors.
The topic that studies social psychology is broad and varied (Gergen, 1973), by focusing on some of the topics that make up its object of study, we can talk about identity, social identity (Taylor and Moghaddam, 1994) or the extent of which people identify and share characteristics with groups is a widely studied factor in social psychology. Social identity will determine people’s behavior. When a person is very identified with a group, their behavior will be consistent with the standards and values of that group.
Another classic theme of social psychology is that of stereotypes (Amossy and Herschberg Pierrot, 2001). Stereotypes are the image we have of the other group. This is usually a general, simplified image used to evaluate all members of a given 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, think he’s a bum even before they meet him.
Prejudice is intimately linked to stereotype (Dovidio, Hewstone, Glick and Estes, 2010). Prejudice is preconceived attitudes that help us make decisions quickly. These are trials based on incomplete and generally negative information. Many people mistakenly believe that all Muslims are violent and even terrorist. Even with evidence of this error of judgment, many people maintain this belief. Their emotions and behavior towards people who practice this religion are determined to confirm their expectations, however wrong they may be.
Another topic of the study of social psychology is that of values (Ginges and Atran, 2014). Values are a set of guidelines that companies set to be respected. Values generally have a social consensus and vary between cultures. Values are so important to some, people who can become sacred and, despite their irrationality, people will defend them even by making great sacrifices.
Due to the wide variety of topics that social psychology studies, we cannot comment on all of them. Some of those that have not been discussed here are: aggression and violence, socialization, teamwork, leadership, social movements, obedience, conformism, interpersonal and group processes, etc.
Some people have made an important mark in the study of social psychology. Some of them were:
Social psychology focuses on one of our fundamental dimensions: social, social psychology is not so well known and it is the one that most surprises those who decide to study psychology, because many times we underestimate the power that people have directly or indirectly over us. In this sense, we like to think of ourselves as totally independent people and we think that the environment has very little influence on how we act and feel.
As we have seen, studies of social psychology are there to tell us exactly the opposite, so there is so much interest in the richness of knowledge that studies in this field of psychology can bring us their discoveries.