PSYCHOLOGY - on the go: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Showing posts with label SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. Show all posts

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY - IT'S SCOPE

"Social Psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, intentions and goals are constructed within a social context by the actual or imagined interactions with others". (McLeod; 2007)

"The scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviour in social situations". (Baron, Byrne and Suls; 1989)

Social Psychology encompasses social situational influence on psychological phenomena, personal construction of those situations, and the mutual influence of the person or situation interaction. Therefore, the scope is largely defined by the limits of what is a "social situation". This situation could be considered the relative influence of real or imagined others.

Individual Perspective:

The social psychologists are also interested in the problems of learning, perception, motivation, emotions; but they are interested in these processes only in the context of social interaction. They studies the individual behaviour in the social environment in contrast to the general psychologists who studies these processes in the context of the physical environment. So, one of the scope of social psychology is to build up knowledge so that our understanding of individual behaviour in social setting can be improved.

Social Interaction:

Interdependence usually means the degree to which individuals require one another to obtain goods and services which would not be available otherwise. Other human beings, are the most significant and consequential parts of the environment. Other persons respond to us and we respond to them and so on. Such give-and-take among human individuals is the significant aspect of social interaction. Our character, our concerns and our aspirations are in some way or the other affected by interactions with others. This is why social interaction occupies a central place in social psychology. It is by understanding the processes of interaction that we can understand the broader features of social influence, including the effects of cultural, organizational and group effects upon the individual.

Social interaction refers to the reciprocal relationship between two or more individuals whose behaviour is mutually dependent. It involves the communication process that leads to influence upon the actions and outlooks of individuals.

Interactions take place in an interpersonal situation, that is, in face-to-face relationships. But the memory of another person may also influence our behaviour even when there is no face-to-face relationship.

Social Influence:

Another important scope of social psychology is with the processes of social influence. The individual is born in a group, grows up in a group and lives and works in a group. So by necessity man is oriented toward other human beings in the environment. Social influence occurs whenever one individual responds to the actual or potential presence of other human beings.

The three factors resulting into social influence are:- a) Social interaction process, which is basic to human experience right from birth. Man's personality, his beliefs, attitudes and values are all based, in way or another, on social interaction.

b) Influence of the group on individual give rises to problem of conformity, prejudice, leadership and other group phenomenon.

c) Influence of one group on another group may either lead to cooperation or conflict.

The other variables studied under social psychology are attitude, value, group cohesiveness, group norm and many more.

References:

Kuppuswamy, B. (1961). An introduction to social psychology. Asia publishing house.

Singh, A. K. (2019). Social psychology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..

MEASURING ATTITUDE

Attitude has often been defined by psychologists as people's evaluation of almost any aspect of the world.

We often posses either positive or negative responses or actions towards different social stimulus, some of them are quite flexible and can be altered, while some are resistant to alternations; as we hold some attitudes with certainty, while uncertainty prevails towards other social aspects.

Social psychologists have reportedly distinguished two types of attitudes -

1) Explicit Attitudes - They are the conscious or report able forms. The beliefs which we are aware about and can be easily measured.

2) Implicit Attitudes - These type of beliefs are less controllable and not at all conscious or easily accessible to us.

The measurement of explicit attitude are done following varied scaling techniques or tests. The belief or disbelief, favourable or unfavourable form of attitudes are measured with the help of scales, constructed by experts having short statements dealing with several social aspects like - climate change, sexual abuse, pollution, globalization and many more social constructs.

The scales or tests are constructed following a continuum, where the scale ranges from absolute unfavourable to absolute favourable acceptance of belief. Each statement will portray a specific degree of acceptance or rejection of a belief.

The 2 most popular scales for measuring attitudes are:

1) Thurstone's method of equal appearing intervals - The Thurstone's Scale is a quantitative form of measurement of people's attitude, using 'agree - disagree' format. These statements are assigned with potential numerical values, which helps the researcher to determine the strength of the belief which one holds toward the specific social aspect.

This is mainly applied when the researcher wants to know the attitude of individuals about a specific topic and wants to compare it with others. It is also a possible technique of collecting data in a group situation.

2) Likert's method of summated ratings - This technique of measuring attitude is much simpler than that of Thurstone, yet follows a long and elaborate steps for analyzing and elemination of weak items.

The Likert scale follows a 5 - point method, having the range from: strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree to strongly disagree. This method of scaling attitude is much objective in nature and indicates the intensity of the opinion, also in accordance with the direction.

This is also a quantitative technique of measuring attitude, where the response ranges from being agreed upon to disagreement, also having an option of having no belief at all. The responses hold their own values but the interval values are not equal, with the limitation, that individuals can give false responses due to social desirability.

Another technique for measuring attitude is Bogardus Social Distance Scale - following the degrees of social intimacy. This scale was formed keeping in mind the social forms of discrimination which regulates our relationship formation with any stranger.

This scale has been defined, which measures the degree of closeness towards people of other social, religious, ethnic or racial groups.

The characteristics of Bogardus Social Distance Scale are : it is cumulative in nature, a 7 point scale and lastly, it measures social distance.

ATTITUDE - BEHAVIOUR LINK

When someone asks you "What do you feel about chocolates, the political condition of your country"? You will definitely come up with an answer as you cannot feel absolute neutral about these.

Each one of us are constantly evaluating our world around and every stimulus present around us. So, to define Attitude it can be said that - 'Attitude is the process of forming judgements about objects, ideas or people'.

"An attitude denotes an adjustment of the individual towards some selected person, a group or an institution". (Kuppuswamy)

The Attitude posses three vital components:

a) Cognitive Component: The thoughts and beliefs which are formed about any social stimulus.

b) Affective Component: The emotion or the feeling aspects attached to the social stimulus.

c) Behavioral / Conative Component: The tendency to respond or to enact in accordance with the social stimulus.

These 3 components are often put together to form the A-B-C model of Attitude.

How Attitude and Behavior is Related?

The interrelatedness between these two factors are not quite lucid. They share a complex form of linkage - which changes in respect of the stimulus, situation and other variables.

→ When Attitude - Behavior goes hand-in-hand?

Firstly, when we hold a strong attitude about any particular stimulus we tend to behave exactly in accordance with it.

Secondly, times when the individual is aware about his/her own set of beliefs.

Thirdly, times when there is no external or group pressure for behaving in a certain fashion.

Fourthly, he/she is not being observed by others.

Lastly, when he/she expects to have a positive consequence from that particular act.

Here, comes the concept of Predicting Spontaneous Behavior where the response of a person can be successfully predicted in a situation where he/she needs to act spontaneously. The Attitude Accessibility is the key which helps us in the guess work. The intensity of the association between an attitude object and a person's judgement of the same, when measured by the speed with which they claim how they are affected by it. This access to one's attitude or knowing the intensity of the association helps us in predicting the behavior.

The next is Predicting Deliberative Behavior, where the planned actions are guessed. The explanation behind this is easy, the thoughtful actions are often intention specific. So, if the inner thoughts or objectives of a person is known, their actions can also be predicted as well.

→ When Attitude - Behavior are inconsistent?

Sometimes what we say and what we do are dissimilar. For example, we may hate our Boss, say negative things about them to others; but when they are in front of us we show respect and behave cordially.

We often hold a generalized attitude about something, for example; any out-group, other religion; but does not let that reflect in our actions.

Few times our attitude and behavior are at a conflicting state. When we perceive a sense of distress or uneasiness as our thoughts and beliefs are not at par with our actions; we experience Cognitive Dissonance.