4 Empirical methods

Social psychology involves the empirical study of social behavior and psychological processes associated with social cognition, social behavior, and groups.

It makes use of many methods, including surveys, naturalistic observationNaturalistic observation is a method of observation, commonly used by psychologists and behavioral scientists, that involves observing subjects in their natural habitats. Researchers take great care in avoiding interfering with the behaviour they are obse, participant observation, content analyses, controlled experiments, mathematical models, and meta-analyses.

Many researchers emphasize the importance of a multimethodological approach to social research.

5 Perspectives in social psychology

• Reinforcement theory - understands social actions to follow largely out of direct rewards and punishments.
  • 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 emphasizes the place of observation and mimicry in learning.

• 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.
  • Symbolic interactionism - a version of cognitive theory that demands that mental events be put in the context of social interaction.
  • Role theory - considers most social action in everyday life to be the fulfillment of a certain kind of schema called roles.
  • Game theory
  • Psychosocial theory - explores and emphasizes the role of unconscious mental events on human social thought and behavior. Its psychological foundation is psychodynamic theory.

• Sociobiology - attempts to explain all of the theories mentioned in terms of biology and physiology.
  • 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.

5.1 Models of social behavior

5.1.1 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:

• 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.

5.1.2 Psychosocial theory

Erik Erikson created the notion of sociodynamics from the tradition of Freudian psychodynamics. The model is meant to be used to explain the most important variables in bodily development, and how they might relate to socialization. It includes:

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

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

5.1.3 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:

• 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.

5.1.4 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 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.

5.1.5 Other models and explanations

• Relevant social philosophy
  • Agency
  • Ethics
  • Epistemology

• Relevant psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
    • Cognitive dissonance
    • Balance theory
    • Attribution theory
    • Heuristics

• 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
  • 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 entrepreneur s
  • 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
  • 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 labelling 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

6 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.
• the Asch conformity experiments from the late 1950s, a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups on the perceptions and cognitions 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

7 Related topics

• Behavioral economics
• groupthink
• herd behavior
• Industrial psychology
• Mind control
• Point of no return
• Designated patient
• List of social psychologists
• Important publications in social psychology

8 External links

• Social Psychology Network
• Current Research in Social Psychology
• Social Psychology - brief introduction
• Social Psychology basics
• University of Iowa
• Portalpsicologia.org

9 Citations

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

Social philosophy Social psychology Social sciences Sociology

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