Advance Course in Social Psychology

Lecture-1
Introduction to Social Psychology: Part-I
Prof. Pooja Garg
Associate Professor
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

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 Module-1
Introduction to Social Psychology

It is the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior and thoughts
in social situations.
✓ The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all psychological variables that are measurable in a
human being.
✓ Social psychology typically explains human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and
immediate social situations.
✓ Social psychology is concerned with the way feelings, thoughts,
beliefs, intentions, and goals are constructed, and how such psychological
factors, in turn, influence our interactions with others.

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Some definitions of Social Psychology:

✓According to Gordon Allport (1954) social psychology is best defined as, “the discipline that uses
scientific methods in an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behavior of
individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings.”

✓Myers and Spencer (2006) define social psychology as, “ the scientific study of how people think about,
influence, and relate to one another.”

✓Barron and Byrne (2007) defined social psychology as, “the scientific field that seeks to understand the
nature and cause of individual behaviour and thought in social situations.”

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 Historical Background
The scientific discipline of social psychology formally began in the late 19th to early 20th century.

19th century: In the 19th century, social psychology began to emerge as a larger field of psychology. At the
time, many psychologists were concerned with developing concrete explanations for the different aspects
of human nature. They attempted to discover concrete cause-and-effect relationships that explained social
interactions.

The first published study in the field was Norman Triplett's 1898 experiment on the phenomenon of social
facilitation.

Social facilitation is a social phenomenon in which being in the presence of

others improves individual task performance. That is, people do better on
tasks when they are with other people rather than when they are doing the
task alone.

Situations that elicit social facilitation include coaction, performing for

an audience, and appears to depend on task complexity.
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Some other developments include the study by Zajonc(1965), some tasks are easier to learn and perform than
others because they require dominant responses. Dominant responses are behavioral responses at the top of an
organism's behavioral repertoire, making them more readily available, or 'dominant,’ above all other responses.
Tasks that elicit dominant responses are typically simpler, less effortful, and easier to perform compared to tasks
eliciting non-dominant responses.
✓ Non-dominant responses are harder to carry out. In sum, simple tasks require dominant responses, whereas
complex tasks require non-dominant responses. When performing tasks in groups then, simple tasks will be
associated with social facilitation.
✓ However, complex tasks will not because the presence of others becomes distracting when attempting to
elicit non-dominant responses that require more effort to use.

#The Yerkes-Dodson law,(1908) when applied to social facilitation, states that “the
mere presence of other people will enhance the performance in speed and
accuracy of well-practiced tasks, but will degrade in the performance of less
familiar tasks.”

Compared to their performance when alone, when in the presence of others,

they tend to perform better on simple or well-rehearsed tasks and worse on
complex or new ones.

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➢Early 20th century: During World War II, social psychologists were mostly concerned with studies of
persuasion and propaganda for the U.S. military.
Following the war, researchers became interested in a variety of social problems, including issues of
gender and racial prejudice.

➢Late 20th century and modernity: In the 1960s, there was growing interest in topics such as cognitive
dissonance, bystander intervention, and aggression. In the 1970s, a number of conceptual challenges to
social psychology emerged over issues such as ethical concerns about laboratory experimentation,
whether attitudes could accurately predict behavior, and to what extent science could be done in a
cultural context. It was also in this period that situationism—the theory that human behavior changes
based on situational factors—emerged and challenged the relevance of self and personality in psychology.

Social psychologists are, in addition, concerned with applied psychology,

contributing towards applications of social psychology in health, education,
law, and the workplace.

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 Historical Development of Social Psychology Periods Major Trends
Periods Major Trends
The Early Social behaviour stems from innate tendencies or A Maturing Field: Rapid pace of change of the last decade
years: 1908 – instincts. Floyd Allport (1924) emphasized the value of 1970s and 1980s accelerated. New topics and perspectives
1939 experimentation based on the Social Facilitation Effect; emerged, such as attribution (How to infer
McDougall Sherif (1935) focused on social norms and conformity. the causes of other’s behaviors), gender
(1908): Kurt Lewin et al (1939) emphasized on leadership and differences and environmental psychology,
group processes. the growing influence of cognitive
perspective, and growing emphasis on
Social There was expansion of scope: every aspect of social application (personal health, legal
Psychology: behavior was included in the research. In 1948,a processes, work settings, education and
The Youth: revolution got underway favoring the concept of population studies)
1940s – human behavior as thoughtful and purposive rather 1990s and beyond Two major trends from the past decade
1960s than guided by instincts. Kurt Lewin’s experimental continued, namely, the growing influence of
works put social psychology as a science in a more cognitive perspective and increasing interest in
advantageous position in 1960 and fully came off age. the application. The study of affective states in
The study of the influence of groups and group determining social behavior gained impetus;
membership on individual behavior, relation between Multicultural perspective: the study of
personality traits and social behavior became the universal andcultural social behaviors.
scope of social psychology. Leon Festinger’s (1957)
theory of cognitive dissonance came into existence. Current Trends Evolutionary social psychology, the changing
world, technology and human social behavior,
Neurocognitive perspective and social
behavior.
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 Scope of Social Psychology
(1) Attitudes: In simple words, attitude can be defined as the evaluation of various aspects of the social
world. Attitudes are defined as learned, global evaluations of a person, object, place, or issue that
influence thought and action. Attitudes are the basic expressions of approval or disapproval,
favorableness or unfavorableness, or likes and dislikes. For example: liking chocolate, ice-cream, being
against abortion, or endorsing the values of a particular political party.

Social psychologists have studied attitude formation(social learning and conditioning)and

measurement. Attitudes are also involved in several other areas of the discipline, such as
conformity(adjusting one’s behavior to align with the norms of the group),interpersonal
attraction(one’s attitude toward another person. Such interpersonal evaluation falls along a
dimension that ranges from like to dislike and starts with initial contacts and is concerned with
emotional responses, similarities,
and pleasant interactions), social perception(the process through which
we seek to know and understand other persons), discrimination,
stereotypes, and prejudice (an attitude (usually negative) toward the
members of some group, based solely on their membership in that group).

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(2) Interpersonal relationships: Social psychologists are interested in the question of why people
sometimes act in a prosocial way (helping, liking, or loving others). Researchers often look at why people
help others, as well as why they sometimes refuse to help or cooperate. The bystander effect and
reciprocal altruism are related topics of social phenomenon in the subject area of prosocial behavior.
It also focuses on aggression and violence, which can be defined as any behavior that is intended to
harm another human being.

(3) Interpersonal attraction: A major area in the study of people's relations to each other is interpersonal
attraction. This refers to all forces that lead people to like each other, establish relationships, and (in
some cases) fall in love. Social psychologists focus on areas as physical attraction, love
(intimacy, passion, and commitment) and social exchanges.

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Thank You

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