PSYCHOLOGY

psychology

psychology

Social psychology has had a significant impact on education, particularly educational leadership and administration. Teacher perceptions of specific instructional practices, the nature of the postevaluative conference, and leadership effectiveness all have their foundation in social psychology research. Administrator methods for managing personnel, resolving organizational conflict, selecting new faculty, and designing school organizations are also tied to this research (Kassin, Kiechel, 2006).

Social psychology has allowed professional educators to extend their study and understanding beyond observable and measurable behaviors into the subjective areas of feelings, perceptions, values, and attitudes. In essence, social psychology has allowed educators to examine and address those salient features of schools and schooling that relate to persons as both individuals and group members. Social psychology currently seems to be evolving in a macrosubjectivist, humanistic direction. Basically, contemporary social psychology focuses on the connections that make up our interrelated social fabric. It is becoming a blend between psychology and sociology in which the impact of events, institutions, culture, community, social class, race, and gender on thought, perception, and behavior is the primary focus. This position supports a developing perspective among social psychologists that human behavior is significantly rooted in individual factors and less deterministic than previously thought (Jonsen, 2005).

Social psychology has long been an integral part of the field of education. Its new direction is more in line with emerging postmodern and humanistic trends in educational leadership and administration. Given this feature, the field of social psychology is likely to exert a greater influence on schools and schooling in the coming century (Fisher, 2003).

To do the best research and to give the best service to the community and to the profession, investigators need to behave ethically. Much has been written about the ethics of research in the behavioral sciences. For research in psychology specifically, the guidelines are set forth clearly in Section 8, Research and Publication, of the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Childress, Meslin, Shapiro, 2005). It was specifically designed to meet “ethical challenges in the new millennium” (Fisher, 2003, p. xxv). Childress, Meslin, and Shapiro (2005) call the APA Ethics Code the best-known ethics code for the conduct of behavioral and social research (p. 265). Although it can be supplemented by other documents, the Ethics Code is the foundation for this chapter on the ethics of psychological research (Capron, 1989).

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 (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of (Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978).

Unlike behaviorism, which is rooted in the microobjectivist, functionalist paradigm, social psychology finds its foundation in the interpretivist, subjectivist model. Group dynamics, conflict resolution, causal attributions, cognitive dissonance, interpersonal relationships, nonconformity, organizational environments, attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudice ...