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Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. As the mind is the axis around which social behavior pivots, social psychologists tend to study the relationship between mind(s) and social behaviors. In early-modern social science theory, John Stuart Mill, Comte, and others, laid the foundation for social psychology by asserting that human social cognition and behavior could and should be studied scientifically like any other natural science. Jump to: navigation, search Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior, mind and thought and the neurological bases of behavior. ... NIH image of human brain Source: http://lbc. ... The history of psychology consists of a prescientific and a scientific epoch. ... A psychologist is a social scientist who studies psychology, the study of the human mind, thought and human behaviour. ... The basic premise of applied psychology is the use of psychological principles and theories to overcome practical problems in other fields, such as business management, product design, ergonomics, nutrition or clinical medicine. ... It has been suggested that psychobiology be merged into this article or section. ... Clinical psychology is the application of psychology within a clinical (health) setting. ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... Jump to: navigation, search Developmental psychology is the scientific study of age related behavioral changes which occur as a child grows up. ... Evolutionary psychology (or EP) proposes that human and primate cognition and behavior can be better understood in light of human and primate evolutionary history. ... Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Gestalt effect. ... Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. ... Personality psychology is a branch of psychology which studies personality and individual difference processes - that which makes us into a person. ... This list includes famous psychologists and contributors to psychology; some of them may not have thought of themselves primarily as psychologists but are included here because of their important contributions to the discipline. ... Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy Principles of Psychology William James Principles of Psychology, 1890. ... Jump to: navigation, search This page aims to list articles related to psychology. ... The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectivel // holaMedia:Example. ... Jump to: navigation, search John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873), an English philosopher and political economist, was an influential classical liberal thinker of the 19th century. ... Auguste Comte Auguste Comte (full name Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte) (January 17 (recorded January 19), 1798 - September 5, 1857) was a positivist thinker and came up with the term of sociology to name the new science made by Saint-Simon. ...

Social psychology can be said to have two different schools, European and American. European social psychology is more interested in qualitative methods.

SP's three angles of research

Social psychology attempts to understand the relationship between minds, groups, and behaviors in three general ways. Image File history File links Soc-psy_diagram. ...

First, it tries to see how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other(s) (Allport 3). This includes social perception, social interaction, and the many kinds of social influence (like trust, power, and persuasion). Gaining insight into the social psychology of persons involves looking at the influences that individuals have on the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of other individuals, as well as the influence that groups have on individuals. This aspect of social psychology asks questions like:

• How do small group dynamics impact cognition and emotional states?
• How do social groups control or contribute to behavior, emotion, or attitudes of the individual members?
• How does the group impact the individual?
• How does the individual operate within the social group?

Second, it tries to understand the influence that individual perceptions and behaviors have upon the behavior of groups. This includes looking at things like group productivity in the workplace and group decision making. It looks at questions like:

• How does persuasion work to change group behavior, emotion or attitudes?
• What are the reasons behind conformity, diversity, and deviance?

Third, and finally, social psychology tries to understand groups themselves as behavioral entities, and the relationships and influences that one group has upon another group (Michener 5). It asks questions like:

• What makes some groups hostile to one another, and others neutral or civil?
• Do groups behave in a different way than an individual outside the group?

In European textbooks there is also fourth level called the "ideological" level. It studies the societal forces that influence the human psyche.

Relation to other fields

Social psychology has close ties with the other social sciences, especially sociology and psychology. Jump to: navigation, search Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Jump to: navigation, search Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior, mind and thought and the neurological bases of behavior. ...

• Sociology is the study of group behavior and human societies, with emphasis on the structures of societies and the processes of social influence.
• Psychology is the study of the underlying psychological processes that make all behaviors and experiences possible. Some examples of the things it seeks to explain are: the attribution of mental states to others, the notion of a unitary 'self', sight and perception, personality and identity, warfare and violence, being hungry, waking up, love, etc.

On the one hand, Social psychology can be said to try to bridge the gap between disciplines. It can be said to be co-disciplinary with sociology and psychology, providing overlapping theories and research methods in order to form a clearer and more robust picture of social life.

However, social psychologists have different perspectives on what ought to be emphasized in the field. Social psychological work can be approached with the interests and the emphases of both psychology and sociology in mind. As a result, the discipline can be split in three general subfields, which concentrate on the relative importance of some subjects over others.

• As sociological social psychology, which looks at the social behavior of humans in terms of associations and relationships that they have. This type leans toward sociology. One offshoot of this perspective is the Personality and Social Structure Perspective, which emphasizes the links between individual personality and identity, and how it relates to social structures.
• As psychological social psychology, which looks at social behavior of humans in terms of the mental states of the individuals. Psychological Social Psychology is very similar to personality psychology because personality psychology looks at how the personality in people is developed, and how our attitudes and values are influenced and affected.
• As symbolic interactionism, one of the major perspectives of sociology, which looks at social behavior in terms of the subjective meanings that give rise to human actions.

The concerns of social psychology

Some of the basic topics of interest in social psychology are:

• Socialization (investigates the learning of standards, rules, attitudes, roles, values, and beliefs; and the agents, processes, and outcomes of learning) and Sociobiology (looks at the native faculties of human systems, including genetics, and their effect upon temperament, attitudes, learning skills, and so on)
  • Gender roles - the effects of role schemas on the perceived makeup of gender and the sexes
  • Personal development and life course - the general facets of life in various societies, including personal careers, identities, biological development, and shifts in roles
  • Intelligence
• Communication - delves into the learning and processing of verbal and non-verbal language, and the effects of social structures and societies on the use of both
  • Social influence - looks at the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful persuasion, as well as compliance, obedience, and resistance to authority
  • Impression management and Dramaturgy - investigates the use of self-presentation, along with tactical impression management, deception, and failed identities
  • Sociolinguistics and sociology of language - looks at how societies affect language use, and vice-versa (respectively)
  • Pragmatics - analyzes the rules used when forming meaning within a discussion

• Social perception and social cognition - looks specifically at the types of schemas that people have; the ways they develop impressions of one another; and the ways that they attribute the causes of social behavior
  • Self and Identity - the schemas that individuals have about themselves and about groups; the impacts that those ideas have on behaviors; the different kinds of identities that people tend to have.
  • Attitudes - delves into the nature, types, and functions of attitudes, and their effects on behavior
  • Attribution - the ways that people attribute causes and responsibilities to persons or situations

This Article discusses the learning process called socialization. ... Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ... A bagpiper in military uniform. ... Personal development (also known as self-development or personal growth) comprises the development of the self. ... Intelligence is usually said to involve mental capabilities such as the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ... Jump to: navigation, search Communication is the process of exchanging information usually via a common system of symbols. ... Social influence is when the actions or thoughts of individual(s) are changed by other individual(s). ... See also: Persuasion the last completed novel by Jane Austen. ... In social psychology, impression management is the process through which people try to control the impressions other people form of them. ... Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the latters focus is on the languages effect on the society. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... PSYCHOLOGY In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. ... Social cognition is the name for both a branch of psychology that studies the cognitive processes involved in social interaction, and an umbrella term for the processes themselves. ... Jump to: navigation, search Self might refer to various different things: Look up self on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... // Computer programming In object-oriented programming, object identity is a mechanism for distinguishing different objects from each other. ... This article is about the psychological term attitude. ... ...

Empirical methods

Social psychology involves the empirical study of social behavior and psychological processes associated with social cognition, social behavior, and groups. In sociology, social behaviour means a behaviour directed at other people, but one that is not designed to induce any responce. ...

It makes use of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Among the quantitative includes surveys, controlled experiments, and mathematical modelling. Qualitative methods include naturalistic observation / field research, participant observation, content analysis, discourse analysis, ethnomethodology and etogenia. There is also meta-analysis, which can be either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative is an important qualifier in the following subject titles: Qualitative identity Qualitative marketing research Qualitative method Qualitative research THE BIG J This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... A quantitative property can be measured in a way that doesnt depend on the observer or the mechanism used to take the measure, and this measure can be expressed with a number and units of measure; properties which arent quantitative are called qualitative. ... There are several uses of the word survey. ... Jump to: navigation, search From Latin ex- + -periri (akin to periculum attempt). ... Naturalistic observation is a method of observation, commonly used by psychologists and social/behavioral scientists, that involves observing subjects in their natural habitats. ... Participant observation emerged as the principal approach to ethnographic research by anthropologists in the twentieth century. ... Content analysis (also called: textual analysis) is a standard methodology in the social sciences on the subject of communication content. ... Discourse analysis is a number of approaches to analysing language use above the sentence or clause level. ... Ethnomethodology (literally, the study of peoples methods) is a sociological discipline which focuses on the way people make sense of the world and display their understandings of it. ... A meta-analysis is a statistical practice of combining the results of a number of studies. ...

Many researchers emphasize the importance of a multimethodological approach to social research, drawing from both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Multimethodology, or mixed methods research, is an approach to professional research in the social sciences. ...

Perspectives in social psychology

• Reinforcement theory - understands social actions to follow largely out of direct rewards and punishments, called conditioning. In radical form, it presumes that all social cognition starts out blank and is created by conditioning.
• Cognitive Theory - places the thoughts, choices, and mental events at the core of human social action, emphasizing in particular the impact of schemas on personal behavior and worldviews. It looks especially at an information processing view of the mind, asserting that the mind is composed of many functional input/output sytems and relationships that can be fruitfully understood to underlie all of our more 'emergent' experiences and social phenomena.
  • Game theory
  • Discursive psychology - also described as the second cognitive revolution. Its main idea states that there is no "cognite level" as such, and that discursive phenomena like cognition should be studied only by observable methods like brain scanning and a careful analysis of everyday use of language.
  • Role theory - considers most social action in everyday life to be the fulfillment of a certain kind of schema called roles.
  • Social exchange theory - emphasizes the idea that, in relatively free societies, social action is the result of personal choice between optimal benefits and costs. See also rational choice theory.
  • Social learning theory - in contrast to reinforcement theory, social learning theory attempts to explain all of human behavior by observation and mimicry.
  • Symbolic interactionism - a version of cognitive theory that posits that mental events cannot be understood except in the context of social interaction.
  • Psychosocial theory - explores and emphasizes the role of unconscious mental events on human social thought and behavior. Its psychological foundation is psychodynamic theory.
• Evolutionary theory - attempts to explain the biology and physiology of persons, as well as their effects on social action, in the context of gene transmission across generations. In evolutionary psychology, it may take the cognitive perspective and form hypotheses about function and design by acknowleding the evolutionary causal process that built these cognitive mechanisms.
• Sociobiology - attempts to explain all of the theories mentioned in terms of biology and physiology.

Jump to: navigation, search John B. Watson was one of the important influences on the development of behaviorism. ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that studies strategic situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns. ... Discursive psychology is a school of psychology developed in the 1990s by Jonathan Potter and Derek Edwards at Loughborough University. ... Role theory is a perspective in social psychology that considers most of everyday activity to be living up to the roles, or expectations, of others. ... Social exchange theory is a social psychological perspective that explains social change and stability as a process of negotiated exchanges between parties. ... Rational choice theory is a way of looking at deliberations between a number of potential courses of action, in which rationality of one form or another is used either to decide which course of action would be the best to take, or to predict which course of action actually will... Observational learning or social learning refers to learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behaviour observed in others. ... Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective which examines how individuals and groups interact, focusing on the creation of personal identity through interaction with others. ... Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. ... Jump to: navigation, search Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods within the field of psychotherapy that seeks to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. ... This article is about biological evolution. ... Evolutionary psychology (or EP) proposes that human and primate cognition and behavior can be better understood in light of human and primate evolutionary history. ... Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ...

Models of social behavior

Hedonistic theory of action

Finding its roots explicitly from the philosophy of Epicurus, followed by philosophers like John Locke and Ludwig von Mises (among many others). The hedonistic theory of action (or psychological hedonism) states that human action occurs when: Jump to: navigation, search Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. ... Jump to: navigation, search Epicurus (Epikouros or Eπίκουρος in Greek) (born Samos 341 BC–died Athens, 270 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher who was the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of Hellenistic Philosophy. ... Jump to: navigation, search John Locke John Locke (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was a 17th-century English philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. ... Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (September 29, 1881 - October 10, 1973), was a notable economist and social philosopher. ... Psychological hedonism is the theory that all human choice is motivated by a desire for pleasure (or an aversion to pain). ...

• The actor is compelled to increase their pleasure by achieving a goal, or
• The actor is compelled to relieve the burden of uneasiness by achieving a goal.

Psychological hedonism has a fundamental place in most theories of action, most notably behaviorism, praxeology, and psychosocial theory.

Psychological hedonism helps to explain the motivations behind all social action.

Jump to: navigation, search John B. Watson was one of the important influences on the development of behaviorism. ... Praxeology is the science of human action. ...

Psychosocial theory

Erik Erikson conceived of a psychosocial developmental theory as an extension of Freudian psychodynamic developmental theory. The psychosocial model is meant to be used to explain the most important variables in bodily development, and how they might relate to socialization. It includes: Jump to: navigation, search Erik Homburger Erikson (June 15, 1902 - May 12, 1994) was a developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings, and for coining the phrase identity crisis. // Biography Eriksons heritage is somewhat mysterious. ...

• The erogenous zones on the body which provide stimulation. For example, the oral, anal, and phallic zones. Can also be expanded to non-erogenous zones of the body, including cerebral-cortical, loco-motor, sensory-motor, respiratory, muscular, and kinesthetic
• The psychosexual mode, or the actions associated with each zone. For example, retention and elimination for the anal zone
• The psychosocial modality, or the social analogy that can be associated with each respective mode. For example, "anal-retentiveness"

To which, Erikson added:

• The meaning, or preferred external objects associated with each mode and zone

With this addition, Erikson made steps towards a developmental theory that was both psychological and sociological.

Psychosocial theory helps to explain what kinds of goals the social actor may develop.

The "unit act"

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons created a model of human social action which stressed that the most basic interesting event to recognize is goal-directed social action. It was further refined by his student Robert K. Merton. In this model, social actions are made up of and involve: [[Talcott Parsons]] was the best-known sociologist in the United States, and one of the best-known in the world for many years. ... This article is about the sociologist. ...

• The actor or agent performing an action
• The (immediate) goal, or a future state of affairs that is desired
• The situation in which action is located, including both:
  • The conditions of action (the things about a situation that the actor cannot influence or change). This includes such things as the normative background (or the relevant norms), and the human ecology of the setting
  • The means of action (which the actor has some degree of control over)

• And to this, we can also include:
  • the actual consequences of the action
  • the motives of the actor
  • the end-goal, or the broader state of affairs that the actor is trying to reach by means of the immediate goal

This model can be used as a basis for the explanations of anomie theory and realistic group conflict theory. It also overlaps significantly with the semantic tool of thematic roles.

Human ecology is an academic discipline that deals with the relationship between humans and their (natural) environment. ... Thematic role is the semantic relationship between a predicate (e. ...

Theories of context

1. Objective Factors in Context

In attempting to understand the objective factors that are in play when people influence one another, the communication-persuasion paradigm begins with this model.

• The source is the person who is trying to influence another person. What makes a good persuader are how credible, trustworthy, attractive, and competent they are
• The message is what the source is trying to convince the target of. Relevant factors include how far the message departs from the target's ideas, whether or not there is an appeal to emotion, and whether or not there is a balance of perspectives
• The target is the person who the source is trying to convince of something. Important to them are the relevance of message to person, their personal desire for cognition, and amount of distractions present
• The channel is the venu that the message is delivered
• The impact is the reaction from the target. This may include an attitude change, a rejection of the message, a counterargument, a suspense of judgment, and/or an attack on the source

Trying to explain the conditions where any particular message will have social influence, Latane, Jackson, and Sedikides emphasized the importance of three characteristics of the sources in their social impact theory.

• Social Strength of the actors involved, for example power and social status
• Immediacy, or the physical / psychological distance between actors
• Number of Sources Present

For functionalism, the achievement of goals relative to the normative background is important. To the extent that a) an action is beneficial towards the achievement of a goal, and b) the goal and/or means fit the normative background of some group or society, the act is considered functional in that respect / relative to that goal. Conversely, to the extent that a) the act is an obstacle to achieving a desired goal, and b) the goal fits the normative background of some group or society, the act is considered dysfunctional in that respect.

2. Subjective Factors in Context

Symbolic interactionism stresses the importance of the way the actor subjectively perceives persons in the world.

• the generalized other - the actor's notion of the normal expectations of others
• the opinions of significant others - the actor's idea of the expectations of special persons; ie, parents, children, spouse, friends

Theories of context help to explain the normative and situational backgrounds within a social action.

The generalized other is a concept used in the social sciences, especially in a field called symbolic interactionism. ... Significant Other is the second album by Limp Bizkit. ...

Other models and explanations

• Relevant social philosophy
  • Agency
  • Ethics
  • Epistemology
  • Social constructionism
  • Deconstructionism
  • Situationism

• Relevant psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
    • Cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger
    • Balance theory
    • Heuristics
    • Script theory by Abel and Schank

• • Social Cognition
    • Social Identity Theory or SIT by Henry Tajfel
    • Theory of Social Comparsion by Leon Festinger
    • Attribution theory
    • Stereotypes

• Evolutionary psychology

• Social neuroscience

• Psychological social psychology
  • Personality psychology and social identity
    • implicit personality theory
    • the looking-glass self - the idea the actor has of their selves, as seen through the judgments of others (impacts self-esteem and the self-concept)
    • the ideal self - the person that an actor aspires to be (sometimes influenced by role models)
  • Helping - the effects that norms, motives, situations, and psychology of actors have on helping and altruism
    • Arousal/cost reward model - an explanation of helping behavior that claims a decision to aid is based on a weighing of the costs and rewards involved, both for oneself and others
    • Empathy-altruism model - explains helping behavior through the emotions of distress and empathy
  • Interpersonal attraction and relationships - investigates the way that norms, propinquity, familiarity, availability, sameness, attractiveness, trust, and dependence have on friendly relationships.
    • The matching hypothesis
  • Aggression - the reasons and motives behind acts of hostility initiated by one person on another
    • The frustration-aggression hypothesis - a highly controversial hypothesis that states that all aggression stems from frustration and vice-versa
  • Power - the ability to cause a person to behave or think in a way despite resistance
    • Authority and the authoritarian personality
  • Social Dominance Orientation and the related concept of Right Wing Authoritarianism
  • Dependency (sociology) - perceived or actual social dependency of person(s) upon other(s)
  • Trust (sociology) - a belief in the competence and/or benevolence of another actor. In social cognition, it is important to understand how trust impacts how actors behave and think based on the behaviors and words of others.
  • Persuasion - to change one's thoughts or behaviors based on the charismatic and/or reasoned input of others
    • The elaboration likelihood model
  • Indifference - apathy, especially to the suffering of oneself and others, or to norms
  • Anomie, Alienation, Fatalism, and Depression
  • Suicide

• Relevant sociology
  • Societies
  • Moral entrepreneurs
  • Ideology
  • The Division of Labor
  • Cultural norms, mores, and folkways

• Sociological social psychology
  • Group cohesion and conformity - looks at the use of roles, an understanding of group structure, and the expectations of all actors involved.
    • Hegemony is a related issue
  • Consensus, Group structure, work performance, and decision making - looks at the effects of leadership styles, group size, group goals, communicative interaction, reward distributions, and decision making on the stability or polarization of groups
    • Expectation states theory - proposes that status characteristics cause group members to form expectations over the expected results of a group task
  • Collective behavior, Social movements, and aggregate behavior - the causes, meanings, functions, types, and structures of societies
    • Bystander effect
    • Drive Theory - looks at the effect of a passive audience on performance of a task
  • Intergroup behavior
    • Social identity theory of intergroup behavior
  • Social structure, population density and personality - the co-influence of health, alienation, status, and values on one's position in various group structures
  • Dissent, Deviance and reactions to deviance - the role of habitual mindsets and social functions on the existence of norms, as well as the impact of labeling and social controls on deviance
    • Anomie theory - considers some deviance to be a result of persons trying to achieve a cultural goal but lacking the appropriate resources or means
    • Strain theory
    • Differential association theory - understands deviance to occur when the definitions and meanings that support deviant acts are learned
    • Control theory (sociology) - explains deviant behavior as influenced by ties to other persons
    • J-curve theory - predicts social revolutionary change to occur when an intolerable gap develops between people's expected satisfaction of needs and their actual satisfaction of needs
    • Labeling theory - believes that the reaction that people have to rule violations can have a compelling effect on deviants
    • Routine activities perspective - considers how deviance occurs out of the routines of everyday life
  • Intergroup conflict - the reasons and motives behind hostility between groups
    • Realistic group conflict theory - sees group conflict as a conflict of goals
    • Intergroup contact hypothesis - stresses the notion that group conflict could be defused if both groups had more contact with one another

Social philosophy is the philosophical study of interesting questions about social behavior (typically, of humans). ... Look up Agency in Wiktionary, the free dictionary In philosophy, law, and other fields, agency is the status of an agent. ... Jump to: navigation, search Ethics is the branch of axiology – one of the four major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and logic – which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. ... Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ... Jump to: navigation, search Social constructionism is a school of thought introduced into sociology by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann with their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality. ... The term deconstruction is often used in a loose way as a synonym of critical analysis, especially the kind of uncooperative critical analysis that subjects a work or a text to close scrutiny in order to expose contradictions, poor logic or unwelcome affinities with other works or cultural objects. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... Cognitive dissonance is a condition first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956, relating to his hypothesis of cognitive consistency. ... Balance Theory is a motivational theory of attitude change proposed by Fritz Heider, which conceptualizes the consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance. ... For heuristics in computer science, see heuristic (computer science) Heuristic is the art and science of discovery and invention. ... Attribution theory is a field of social psychology, which was born out of the theoritical models of Fritz Heider, Harold Kelley, Edward E. Jones, and Lee Ross. ... In modern usage, a stereotype is a simplified mental picture of an individual or group of people who share a certain characteristic (or stereotypical) qualities. ... Evolutionary psychology (or EP) proposes that human and primate cognition and behavior can be better understood in light of human and primate evolutionary history. ... Personality psychology is a branch of psychology which studies personality and individual difference processes - that which makes us into a person. ... Jump to: navigation, search Social identity is a theory formed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner to understand the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. ... Interpersonal attraction is the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships. ... See: relational model personal relationship mathematical relationship, including: inverse relationship direct relationship relation (mathematics). ... In social psychology, propinquity is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. ... When used with people, this term is often synonymous with sexual desirability, but can also simply mean whether or not someone is considered appealing to look at. ... The matching hypothesis is a popular psychological theory proposed by Walster et al. ... Jump to: navigation, search Aggression is sometimes used for beneficial purposes, for instance, by inducing intimidation and coercion during extremely rigorous physical training. ... Sociologists usually define power as the ability to impose ones Will on others, even if those others resist in some way. ... In politics, authority generally refers to the ability to make laws, independent of the power to enforce them, or the ability to permit something. ... The concept of authoritarian personality denotes a number of qualities, which according to the theories of Theodor Adorno predict ones potential for fascist and antidemocratic leanings and behaviors. ... Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), is a personality variable which predicts social and political attitudes. ... Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is a psychological personality variable or ideological attitude. High scorers on the RWA scale tend to have a rigid, often fundamentally religious view of morality tending towards as homophobic and patriarchial beliefs. ... Trust in sociology is a relationship between people. ... See also: Persuasion the last completed novel by Jane Austen. ... Apathy is the complete lack of emotion or motivation. ... Anomie, in contemporary English, means the absence of any kind of rule, law, principle or order. ... Alienation is estrangement or splitting apart. ... Fatalism is, roughly, the view that the future is predetermined and therefore, human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, ., things are the way they are. ... In everyday language depression refers to any downturn in mood, which may be relatively transitory and perhaps due to something as trivial as your team losing. ... Jump to: navigation, search Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life; it is sometimes a noun for one who has committed or attempted the act. ... A society is a group of people living or working together. ... Jump to: navigation, search An ideology is a collection of ideas. ... Division of labour is the breakdown of labour into specific, circumscribed tasks for maximum efficiency of output in the context of manufacturing. ... The word norm coming from the latin word norma which means angle measure or (lawlike) rule, has a number of meanings: A social or sociological norm; see norm (sociology). ... The term mores (pronounced mor-ayz) as used in Sociology is a plural noun. ... Folkways as described by sociologist William Graham Sumner are the patterns of conventional behavior in a society. ... Conformity is the act of maintaining a certain degree of similarity (in clothing, manners, etc. ... Hegemony is the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. ... For other uses, see Consensus (disambiguation). ... Decision making is the cognitive process of selecting a course of action from among multiple alternatives. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... American Civil Rights Movement is one of the most famous social movements of the 20th century. ... Jump to: navigation, search The bystander effect (also known as bystander apathy) is a psychological phenomenon where persons are less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when others are present than when they are alone. ... Drive Theory was first suggested by Robert Zajonc in 1965 as an explanation of the audience effect. ... Social structure (also referred to as a social system) is a system of social relations. ... It has been suggested that Personality psychology be merged into this article or section. ... Dissent is the sentiment of non-agreement with the majority, or the leader, of a group to which the dissenter is supposed to belong or to obey. ... Jump to: navigation, search DEViANCE ASCII logo by Strick9. ... The sociology of deviance is the sociological study of deviant behavior, the recognized violation of cultural norms, and the creation and enforcement of cultural norms. ... The control theory is a set of psychological stages in which each stage states a crisis that must be accomplished. ... Labeling Theory is a sociological approach to explaining how criminal behavior is perpetuated by the police and other labelers. The theory hypothesizes that the labels applied to individuals influence their behavior, particularly that the application of negative labels (such as criminal or felon) promote deviant behavior. ...

Well-known cases, studies, and related works

Famous experiments in social psychology include:

• the Milgram experiment, which studied how far people would go to avoid dissenting against authority even when the suffering of others was at stake. (At the time a poll of psychiatrists showed a belief that only 1% of the populace would be capable of continuing to cause pain to an extreme point.) Coming soon after World War II, it suggested that people are more susceptible to control by authority than was then assumed in the Western democratic world.

• the Asch conformity experiments from the late 1950s, a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups on the perceptions/cognitions and behaviors of individuals.

• the Stanford prison experiment, where a role-playing exercise between students went out of control.

• The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno - looked at the attitudes, values, and mental habits of what he called the "authoritarian" personality

• The Open and Closed Mind by Milton Rokeach - a followup on the authoritarian personality that clarified cognitive differences

• The Kitty Genovese case - looks at aggregate group behavior in a time of crisis — the bystander effect, showing the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility.

• Amal and Kamal - indian children who had no human contact.

• Bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura

The experimenter (E) persuades the participant (S) to give what the participant believes are painful electric shocks to another participant (A), who is actually an actor. ... In politics, authority generally refers to the ability to make laws, independent of the power to enforce them, or the ability to permit something. ... Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that... The Asch conformity experiments were a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. ... In psychology, conformity is the degree to which members of a group will change their behavior, views and attitudes to fit the views of the group. ... The Stanford prison experiment was a landmark psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life. ... In role-playing, participants adopt characters, or parts, that have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. ... The concept of authoritarian personality denotes a number of qualities, which according to the theories of Theodor Adorno predict ones potential for fascist and antidemocratic leanings and behaviors. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer. ... Milton Rokeach (1918-1988) was a psychologist and served as Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University for many years. ... Kitty Genovese, picture from the New York Times article Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didnt Call the Police . Catherine Genovese (1935 - March 13, 1964), commonly known as Kitty Genovese, was a New York City woman who was stabbed to death near her home in the Kew Gardens section of... Jump to: navigation, search The bystander effect (also known as bystander apathy) is a psychological phenomenon where persons are less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when others are present than when they are alone. ... Diffusion of responsibility is a social phenomenon which tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. ... The Bobo doll experiment was conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 to study aggressive patterns of behavior. ...

Related topics

• Behavioural genetics
• Behavioral economics
• Community
• Computational sociology
• Designated patient
• Frankfurt School
• Groupthink
• Herd behavior
• Industrial psychology
• Mind control
• Point of no return
• Social constructionism
• Tragedy of the Commons

Behavioural genetics is the field of biology that studies the role of genetics in animal behaviour. ... Nobel Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman, was an important figure in the development of behavioral finance and economics and continues to write extensively in the field. ... A community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. ... Computational sociology is a recently developed branch of sociology that uses computation to analyze social phenomena. ... In social psychology, the designated patient is a person socially constructed as mentally ill, regardless of the existence of real and measurable symptoms. ... The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy. ... Groupthink is a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in 1972 to describe a process by which a group can make bad or irrational decisions. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Group behaviour. ... Industrial psychology is the psychology that deals with the workplace, focusing on both the workers and the organizations that employ them. ... Mind control (or thought control) has the premise that an outside source can control an individuals thinking, behavior or consciousness (either directly or more subtly). ... The point of no return or the Rubicon is the point at which someone, or some group of people, must continue on their current course of action. ... Jump to: navigation, search Social constructionism is a school of thought introduced into sociology by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann with their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality. ... Jump to: navigation, search The tragedy of the commons is an analogy used to illustrate the conflict for resources between individual interests and the common good. ...

Related lists

• List of social psychologists
• Important publications in social psychology

Famous Social Psychologists: Gordon Allport Michael Argyle Elliot Aronson Solomon Asch Alex Bavelas Howard Becker Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi Daryl Bem Gustav Le Bon Vivien Burr Marilynn Brewer Hadley Cantril Merrill Carlsmith Robert Cialdini Derek Edwards Erik Erikson Russell Fazio Leon Festinger Dennis Fox Sigmund Freud Erich Fromm Thomas Gilovich Kenneth... Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy Principles of Psychology William James Principles of Psychology, 1890. ...

See Also

• Political psychology

Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field dedicated to the study of the psychology behind political behavior by voters, lawmakers, local and national governments and administrations, international organizations, political parties and associations. ...

External links

• Social Psychology Network
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology
• Society of Experimental Social Psychology
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• Current Research in Social Psychology
• Social Psychology - brief introduction
• Social Psychology basics
• Social Psychology forum
• Portalpsicologia.org

Citations

• Allport 1968, p. 3 [orig. 1954]
• Michener, H. Andrew. (2004). Social Psychology. Wadsworth: Toronto.