Critically Discuss Some of the Main Features of Mainstream Social Psychology and Critical Approaches to Social Psychology.

Critically Discuss Some of the Main Features of Mainstream Social Psychology and Critical Approaches to Social Psychology.

  • Submitted By: Lolac
  • Date Submitted: 11/16/2008 11:32 AM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 1120
  • Page: 5
  • Views: 1

Critically discuss some of the main features of mainstream social psychology and critical approaches to social psychology.

The most widely recognised definition of social psychology is an effort “to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others” (Allport).

One of the first modern social psychology was an experiment conducted by Norman Triplett on social facilitation. This experiment was based on ‘social developments of the invention of the bicycle was increasing popularity of competitive sport' (pg 151).What Triplett noticed was that the observers of sport made assumptions that those competing alone had a better chance of winning than competing with others. To test this assumption Triplett devised an analogue of the situation using ‘school children winding fishing reels, jumping and counting’ (Pg25) he noticed that children did better when in an competitive environment. What made this experiment remarkable was not the results but the fact that he had taken a real life situation and had made an analogue of it. Tripletts experiments was the beginning of the use of experimental social psychology. The second landmark was the first social Psychology books by in 1908 by Ross and McDougal. The final landmark was during world war 11 and Hitler was European Psychologists fled the Nazi regime and brought with them a gestalt perspective to social psychology. Also during that period social psychologists began too look at issues that reflected the zeitgeist of the time. These issues were mass immigration to North America from Europe, they were looking at the attitudes within the ethnic minorities that had migrated. Bogardus (1925) for example developed a scale which looked at people’s social attitude towards ethnic minorities. Katz and Braly (1933) did a study on stereotypes in which they looked and analysed the impressions that Princeton students held of people of...

Similar Essays