Historical Influences of Social Psychology



Historical Influences of Social Psychology

Social psychology is a scientific discipline and is older than hundred years. Most of the advancements in this filed happened during the previous five decades. This is what makes social psychology a considerably new area of science. While discussing the history of social psychology, it is important to note that there are two types of social psychologies, one exists in the subject of sociology and the other exists in psychology, and the larger of the two is actually the psychological branch (Tesser, 1995). The main focus of psychological social psychology is the way in which an individual would respond to the social stimuli he is exposed to, while sociological social psychology mainly focuses on societal variables or larger groups, which include socioeconomic status of people, the cultural norms, and social roles of people. Even though the merging of the two social psychologies into one field had been considered, it was realized that they both have orientations that are quite different and that is why it is unclear that the merging would be viable.

Wundt and the beginning of a Scientific Discipline: 1862-1894

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1921) was a German psychologist and is also widely known to be the founding father of psychology. He also played an integral role in the early development of the area of social psychology. In the year 1862, Wundt had stated that there is a need to have two different branches of psychology; social psychology and physiological psychology (Myers, 2006). Even though Wundt had a lot of influence over the shaping of social psychology context in the area of Europe, his ideas exerted little influence on the social scientists of America as his concept of psychology was related to the science of the mind, which was totally incompatible with the ...