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WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?What is social psychology? There are as many definitions of social psychology as there are social psychologists. Instead of listing some of these definitions, it might be more informative to let the subject matter define the field. The examples presented are all illustrations of sociopsychological situations. As diverse as these situations may be, they do contain one common factor: social influence. The key phrase in the preceding paragraph is .social influence.. And this becomes our working definition of social psychology: the influences that people have upon the beliefs or behavior of others. Using this as our definition, we will attempt to understand many of the phenomena described in the preceding illustrations. How is a person influenced? Why does he accept influence . or, put another way, what.s in it for him? What are the variables that increase or decrease the effectiveness of social influence? Does such influence have a permanent effect, or is it merely transitory? What are the variables that increase or decrease the permanence of the effects of social influence? Can the same principles be applied equally to the attitudes of the high-school teacher in Kent, Ohio, and to the toy preferences of young children? How does one person come to like another person? Is it through these same processes that he comes to like his new sports car or his box of Wheaties? How does a person develop prejudices against an ethnic or racial group? Is it akin to liking . but in reverse . or does it involve an entirely different set of psychological processes? Most people are interested in questions of this sort; in a sense, therefore, most people are social psychologists. Because most of us spend a good deal of our time interacting with other people . being influenced by them, influencing them, being delighted, amused, and angered by them . it is natural that most of us develop hypotheses about social behavior. In his attempt to understand human social behavior, the professional social psychologist has a great advantage over most amateur social psychologists. Although, like the amateur, he usually begins with careful observation, he can go far beyond that. He does not need to wait for things to happen so that he can observe how people respond; he can, in fact, make things happen. That is, he can conduct an experiment in which scores of people are subjected to particular conditions (for example, a severe threat or a mild threat; overhearing nice things or overhearing a combination of nice and nasty things). Moreover, he can do this in situation in which everything can be held constant except for the particular conditions being investigated. He can, therefore, draw conclusions based on data far more precise and numerous than those available to the amateur social psychologist, who must depend upon observations of events that occur randomly and under complex circumstances. Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1527
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