What is Social Psychology? And why you should care.
If you think it’s the psychology of people, well, congrats! It’s that, but more. There’s no secret human being is a social animal; imagine your life without family and friends. A horrible thought, if I may suggest. If our lives are so much so affected by people around us, it’s a good idea to study what dictates their behaviour. And ours. So what in the world is social psychology?! (Disclaimer! In this blog, I only touch on what social psychology is; not its theories or ideas, which are far more interesting. Though, I’ll write about them soon.)
What is Social Psychology?
A scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviour, feelings, and thoughts in social situations.* Exactly, even I had to read it like seven times! After distillation, social psychology studies how our thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced by our social environment and vice versa.
So, it’s the branch of psychology that studies all the aspects of our social existence-from loving and helping each other to discrimination, prejudice, and violence. It tries to answer, why a mob ruthlessly kills a person, whereas the consensus of the individual member of the same mob to even hurt an animal is horrendous.
Why do we need Social Psychology?
Isn’t common sense enough? Most of our life is spent interacting with others, making sense of their behaviour, and finding patterns. So, in a way we all are naive social psychologists. Cheers, everybody! The problem with common sense is that it’s not reliable, or consistent for that matter.
Consider these two popular sayings:
Two heads are better than one: When people work together, they output better results. It can be possible due to many reasons like brainstorming, vivid ideas, collective experience, etc.
Too many cooks spoil the broth: People usually end up mixing ideas and hence spoil the final outcome.
Both statements are logical, yet contradictory. So what then our common sense should follow? O Discrepancy, spoiled child of common sense.
Is it an actual science?
Yes. To average people science only revolves around chemistry, biology and physics – like the planets; but there’s Pluto too. (Ah get it?) But in all seriousness, any field belongs to science if: (1) a common set of values can be used to generalise and (2) methods that can be used to verify the above generalisation. Simple, right?
Core values that all fields must adopt to be considered scientific are:
- Accuracy: Gathering and evaluating information, postulating as careful, and precise as possible.
- Objectivity: Keeping the end result free from any biases possible.
- Skepticism: Recognising the results which have been verified again and again.
- Open-Mindedness: A commitment to changing one’s view – even those that are strongly held – if the evidence suggests views to be inaccurate.
And Bingo! Social Psychology checks all the boxes.
How do Social Psychologists test/verify their theory?
Systematic observation: It’s a careful, accurate measurement of a particular behaviour occurring in a natural environment. Suppose that a researcher wanted to find out how many times a person touches his face. It can be done by observing people in different settings like malls, saloons, bars, etc. And no, casually stocking people don’t count as systematic observation! (Even I’m startled.)
Survey Method: If you have filled out a survey you must know, that here the researchers collect responses about attitudes from a large number of people. Ex: Should marijuana be legalised, or what is general consensus about the upcoming election candidates. This method can involve hundreds of thousands of people and is relatively easy to conduct.
Correlation: The tendency of one event to change another event. Social psychologists attempt to determine to what extent different variables are related to each other. Ex: Imagine that a correlation exists between the amount of money people donate to charity (one variable) and how happy they are (another variable). When a correlation exists, it is possible to accurately predict one variable from the information of another.
Experimentation: The correlation method is limited to only establishing a causal relation between two variables. It fails to answer ‘why’ that relationship exists. To answer ‘why’ researchers deploy experimental methods. Ex: To answer do violent games trigger violent behaviour in various ways (verbally, physically, spreading hatred), here is one experiment.
Experiment:
Participants in experiments, at random, were assigned to play a violent game or a non-violent game and hence creating a control group. After the game, they can be told that the study is concerned with taste sensitivity and they can add as much hot sauce as they wish to a glass of water that another person will drink. For reference, they will have to taste a single drop of sauce.
If playing aggressive video games causes aggressive behaviour, then participants will use more spicy sauce to inflict pain on others than compared to those who played non-violence games like a puzzle.
So what were the results? Hate to disclose but researchers have gathered data and in fact, violent game playing can encourage aggressive responses. DARN!
Why you should care about Social Psychology?
If in your job, the majority of time is spent interacting with people, it might give compounding results if one can learn the intricacies of human behaviour, which is exactly what social psychology is all about. Or if you have been, like me, bitten by the bug of curiosity then social psychology has a lot to offer. The researchers with their numerous experiments and theories reveal a staggering amount of truth about human behaviour which is simply opposite to popular beliefs. So embrace yourself to be amazed by this field of psychology.
*Source: Social Psychology (Pearson) by Nyla R. Branscombe