Social Psychology

Description

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The scientific method is a relatively formalized way of formulating and stating a research question, selecting a research approach and designing a study, collecting data, analysing the data and drawing conclusions, and sharing the results. Attitude is a mental position relative to a way of thinking, behaving or leaning toward that which you believe. It is the way a person thinks about somebody or something and the way she behaves toward someone. It is her personal view or opinion of something. Social psychology is usually considered as subfields of psychology or sociology, which concentrate on the relative importance of individual or social influences and effects respectively. Some of the differences are organizational (e.g., psychological and sociological social psychologists tend to publish in different journals) whilst other differences include the type of processes emphasized by the respective disciplines. Social psychologists therefore deal with the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the presence of others, and look at the conditions under which certain behavior/actions and feelings occur. Social psychology is to do with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions and goals are constructed and how such psychological factors, in turn, influence our interactions with others. The present effort to present students of this branch of sociology, that is, social psychology, contains a clear text and methodological analyses of the vital aspects.