In this lesson, we will discuss important reasons why one may need to be familiar with social psychology as a discipline.
Because we are social being, we are involved in social psychology analysis in one way or another, consciously or subconsciously.
Some of the few reasons why social psychology is taught in schools includes:
To improve the accuracy in predictions of human behavior
Most of conflicts we encounter when interacting with each other can be reduced when we understand that others behave the way they do because of underlying factors that has affected their lives.
Understanding the theory behind their habits can equip us to better manage each others behavior. As an example, many marriage counselors grapple with problems whose origin can be traced to gross failure in the couple’s inability to predict and understand their behavior and interaction.
Social programs that could result to huge benefits to societies like reducing poverty, crime prevention and conflict resolutions has failed because their originators were inadequate with understanding of the basic principles of social interaction.
Could help reduce the dysfunction results of interactions
Social psychology helps us in understanding social behavior and such knowledge can help us, not only individuals behavior but also in determining ways of interacting with them.
Enables us understand better methods used to influence people
Social psychology enables us to acquire better understanding of the methods used by powerful or knowledgeable individuals and groups to influence others.
By developing a systematic statements of our social psychology knowledge and use of scientific data, we can encourage the wide spread sharing of social skills for the benefit of all.
Study of Social psychology gives structured understanding of one another hence helping us develop clear understanding of how people affect one another.
Be able to tackle mental illness
Most of mental healthy problems can be traced from social interactions with others such as conflicts with the loved ones, death of people close to us, being married, family problems, work or professional relationships, comparing ourselves with neigbours, feeling rejected by other people, trying to fit in a group, people gossiping about us,people’s expectations on us,etc.
Understanding social psychology can help a counselor deal with such issues much easier.
Marketing
Social psychology can be used in social engineering so as to change people’s view on a product being sold. A social psychologist can be useful in a marketing department of an organization in developing of adverts and hence increase productivity of the sales team. Adverts and products can be represented in a way that reflects peoples inherent behavior in a crowd and hence becomes more appealing to them.
Management
Managers opt to understand social psychology so as to create a social environment that can create motivating environment to the team members. Understanding social psychology can help a manager become better leader as it will help them become more empathetic to the employees and maintain better working relationships.
parenting
Parents that understands social psychology will be careful with social environments they create for their children because they understand how such environments can shape the future long life behaviors of the children they are trying to raise. Parents will also be able to detect change of social life of their children from their change of behavior.
Creating and maintaining relationships
Relationships with your spouse, friends and family members can be made better by standing sociology because we will approach each other with understanding.
Social psychology is important to some few areas in which it has direct applications. Such fields includes:
Education Psychology
It is a branch of pyschology concerned with questioning, examining, measuring and analyzing behavior related to learning withing a school or classroom environment. It also deals with child growth and development as we will encounter in future lessons.
clinical Psychology
This is the application of psychological knowledge, methods and techniques in treatment of mental disorders. A clinical psychologist can diagnose mental illness using psychological testing and work closely with psychiatrists who have different roles from that of clinical psychologist.
Social Psychology is built on two key assumptions:
1. All behavior occurs within a social context
It assumes that people are sensitive and always responds to other people’s feelings, thoughts and behavior. For example, you gets irritated with people that behaves badly.
Another example is the study of empathy where we tend to be highly responsive to other people’s pain and before we realize it, we express emotions and other bodily states that drives us to act towards helping them.
Another example is the study of social interactions between strangers. Often, before we even realize it, we have formed an impression of one another often based on superficial qualities. For example men with baby-face are trusted more than people with pointier faces.
2. A major influence on people’s behavior, thoughts and feelings are other people and society.
As social species we are always influenced by those around us and we always in turn influence those around us and this happens in all levels of social interactions.
Individuals have an influence over us through social power and obedience.
Society and groups always demand conformity of it’s norms and beliefs to every person that would have claim to be membership of the group nor the society. Most often, those that would not obey rules of the group are punished by ex-communication or other forms of punishment.
What a society believes in is always considered more power superior as opposed to individuals point of view. Furthermore we usually behaves differently when we are in groups as opposed to when we are alone. For example when we engage in picketing, strike of football hooliganism.
The assumption of the social approach to psychology is that people acts in a way so as to fit in a group mostly because failure to adhere to societal rules is regarded as abnormality and an acceptable especially in collectivist cultures. Thieves, rapists, lunatics, drug addicts and other social misfits are considered abnormal not because of their thoughts and actions, but because what they do does not fit into expected behaviors for the members of their community.
Conclusion
Social psychology is important because human beings are social in nature.You cannot separate human beings from social aspect of life and there are usually many contexts of social interactions
We are born and develped in social environments and we shapes our behaviors to fit into those social environment into which we find ourselves in.Individual’s behavior is majorly dependent on their social environments.
The way we see others, and the way we think they see us, can have a big impact on our thoughts, feelings, behaviours and decisions. Study of social psychology helps us understand how these factors can influence us as individuals or as a group.
Related Topics
Introduction to social psychology
References:
Sociology for healthy sciences, Zerihun Doda, M.A. Debub University.
sociology, RAJIV Gandthi University Arunachal Pradesh, India.