SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social Psychology

Social Psychology

Social psychology is a branch of psychology concerned with the social behavior of human beings, how humans influence and are influenced by each other, and how personal beliefs affect perception and create a subjective reality. It is a field that applies scientific methodology to explain and understand how human behavior is influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other persons (Ogawa, 2005).

On the other hand, Critical psychology draws attention to social factors impacting on people that are sometimes ignored in other approaches. That is, it emphasizes contextual influences shaping a person's experiences and behavior. Social Psychology differs from mainstream psychology, which typically assumes that researchers can be objective or completely independent of the subject they are studying. In contrast critical social psychology suggests research is never completely neutral. An individual researcher cannot be separated from the society they live in, so their research is influenced by social beliefs and values (Ogawa, 2005).

Why most murderers are males?

Gender refers to behavior that “is recognized as masculine or feminine by a social world” (Mackie, 1987, p. 3). Although there has been an increase in violent behavior by women in recent years, violence continues to be associated with and committed by men. It has been claimed that the refusal to concede female contributions to violence radically impedes our ability to recognize dimensions of power that have nothing to do with formal structures of patriarchy (Mackie, 2007). Early studies of family violence focused on the personality characteristics of abusive parents, abused children, and abusive and abused spouses. Because the most likely offenders were men, violence was conceptualized as a problem of individual males.

Crimes that carry a sentence of death in the United States include, but are not limited to, witchcraft, perjury, and murder. The rationale behind the relatively small number of ...