Origins and Purpose of Analyzing Human Behavior
From a Social Perspective
(Social Psychology Assessment)
Joe Correa
Eastern Oregon University
SOC 306, Fall 2013
Nelda Nix-McCray
Origins and Purpose of Analyzing Human Behavior
From a Social Perspective
Social psychology is the scientific study of how the thoughts, behaviors, and feelings of people are influenced by others. (Kenrick, Pg 5). It is the study of how people are influenced by others. It also looks at why people influence one another. This is done through careful observation and development of theories that organize and connect these observation.
The history of social psychology began in America. In 1898 Norman Triplett published a study on social facilitation while at Indiana University. (Meyers, 2007) Social facilitation is the tendency for people to do better on simple tasks when in the presence of other people. Gestalt psychologists further studied this during the 1930s.
During the latter part of the thirties and into mid 1940s, interest in this field grew. This liberal thinking created the organization, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). It was during this time that Kurt Lewin helped establish the SPSSI. The studies being done focused on how attitudes were formed, or changed and measured. (McCleod, 2013) One of the most famous of the experiments would be the “electric shock” study on obedience by Stanley Milgram. Key figures that followed would be Henri Tajfel on social identity theory, Haney, Banks, Zimbardo in a Prison Study, and B. Wiener, who studied the attribution theory.
The purpose of social psychology is to create a connection between individual and collective levels of explanation. It tries to explain what event led to what outcome (causality). Social psychology, therefore, tries to create methods to test, evaluate or experiment to try to explain why a person acts or...