1.1 Introductory topics Flashcards
What is social psychology?
Scientific study of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that are influenced by the presence of others (actual or implied).
Macro-level study
Broader society. Social structures, institutions, culture.
Meso-level study
Social context. Social groups, specific others.
Micro-level study
Individual psychology. Personality, emotions, cognition.
Social thinking
The self, social beliefs and judgements, attitudes and behaviours.
Social influence
Persuasion, conformity and obedience.
Social relations
Aggression, attraction and intimacy, helping.
Groups and identities
Small group processes, social categorisation and social identity, prejudice, intergroup relations and conflict.
The (first) crisis in psychology
- Overreliance on experimental methods, at the expense of naturalistic approaches.
- Excessive emphasis on individuals, but don’t see them in their wider context.
Tajfel
Social identity theory, used experiments to investigate how identity and behaviour are influenced by the social groups to which one belongs.
Moscovici
Examined the role of everyday language in constructing and communicating human beings’ collective ways of understanding the social world, as embodied in the social representations theory.
Critical social psychology
A movement promoting a social psychology that recognises its own political, social, and historical situatedness, and that of its researchers and participants, and that pursues social change and reform.
Social constructionism
An approach to how our understanding of reality is formed and structured, which argues that all cognitive functions originate in social interactions, and must therefore be explained as the products of social interactions.
Discursive psychology
Proposes a view of language as ‘social action’, as speakers construct the social world and their position within it through talk and text. It examines how cognitive entities and psychological phenomena are constructed in discourse.
