Social Psychology

Social Psychology

Introduction

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation.

Social psychology is an interdisciplinary domain that bridges the gap between psychology and sociology. During the years immediately following the Second World War, was a frequent collaboration between psychologists and sociologists. However, the two disciplines have shifted to an attitude increasingly specialized, isolating themselves from each other. In recent years, sociologists have focused on macro variables (e.g. social structure), going to a much greater extent. However, sociological approaches to social psychology become an important counterpart to psychological research in the area (Peters, 2009).

Social Behavior

Basically it is the study of human behavior and the study of social relationships in groups, the formation in those groups, ways of conflicts and ways to resolve them. Figuring out how to shape behavior of members in the social groups is considered essential.

Some types of instinctive human behavior, i.e., congenital, others are formed on the basis of improving their position in a society. Many social interactions are met as a result of learning. Firstly, the child is more attached to his mother and then that child learns to respond to the manifestations of love. Children, long deprived of physical stimulation, parental touch slows development and there is susceptibility to disease. This form of emotional deprivation can have lasting consequences.

Approaches in Social Psychology

Behaviorism: From the behavioral point of view, mainly from the American tradition, this discipline is usually understood as the scientific study of social influence or study of social interaction, this implies the idea of targeting the interest in what happens to the individual (their behavior) with respect to environmental influences or others.

Psychoanalysis: Also from the psychoanalytic tradition means the social psychology as the study of drives and repressions collective influence from within the individual unconscious to the collective and social (Levine, 2008).

Postmodern Psychology: From the perspective of psychology postmodern social psychology is understood as the analysis of the different components that constitute the expression of diversity and plurality and social fragmentation are valid where all forms of analysis of the different stakeholders and subgroups of society.

Concepts of Socialization to Personal Development

The lifelong process of social interaction and learning through which a child learns the intellectual, physical, and social skills needed to function as a member of society. As a lifelong process, socialization takes place in many social settings (e.g., family, school, peer groups, mass media, religion and workplace). Socialization contributes to the formation of personality (i.e., the patterns of behavior and ways of thinking and feeling that are distinctive for each individual) and ultimately a sense of self (a changing but enduring dimension of personality composed of an individual's self awareness and self-image that develops via socialization (Ishaq, 2005).

George Herbert Mead defined self as the individual's active awareness of existing as a distinct object in the midst of society). When homo-sapiens have experiences they learn from these and ...