Psychology
Uploaded by rickardo32194 on Apr 28, 2013
Social psychology and cultural psychology has been around for thousands of years since the ancient Greece. Social psychology is the study of human behaviors and interactions with other people, and how we are affected by thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors. Social cognition is a major part of social psychology and its studies shows how people retain information about others and what their view is. Social psychologists study people and how they perceive occurrences, either alone or with a group. People perceive other individuals differently and social psychology tries to explain how and why.
The most popular experiment of social psychology would be Asch’s conformity experiment, and it dealt with how people conformed with other people in the experiment in order to avoid social rejection. Many people consider Karl Marx the father of social psychology due to his theory of how society consists of a dominant group and a subordinate group underneath, and other contributions For example the government has total control and everyone else under the power of the government. But in our world today every society can’t fall under this categorization. That is why I believe the true father of social psychology in actuality Kurt Lewin, he pioneered the use of theory in social psychology. His most known theory that was actually tested was the theory of change (freeze, change, and refreeze). Where freeze is when people are getting ready to something new, then change is the transition of getting used to it, and refreeze is the beginning of the foundation of accustoming this new transition. This is a theory where I believe truly explains the relationships observed in social psychology.
Social psychology was first looked into by psychologists in the late 1800’s with the study of social facilitation, which is how people perform in the presence of other certain people. Social psychology was put into use during the war by studying persuasion and propaganda in order to recruit Americans to join the army. Social psychologists usually base the research on behaviors observed in individuals or groups in different situations. Studying an individual’s attitude or even a group’s attitude gives social psychologist information to conclude behaviors, thoughts, and feelings; but attitudes aren’t always affirmative predictors of a specific behavior. Social influence is how people affect other people’s behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. In today’s society social influence is a big factor of how we act. Teenagers especially are found to...