Question

• Expand on your discussion by providing a more in-depth analysis of social cognition, attitude and aggression, and social identity and group behavior. Add examples on how each topic relates to and develops one’s understanding of social psychology.
• Evaluate and discuss the historical progression of social psychology. Provide examples of how social psychology has evolved.

Answer 1

The impact of prejudice and persuasion within a social context.

Research on attitudes and attitude phenomena occupies a central place in social psychology, but tends to focus mainly on cognitive, intra-individual, and interpersonal dimensions. The normative, group membership, and identity dimensions of attitudes tend to attract less attention. This article approaches attitudes from the perspective of research on group processes, intergroup relations, and social identity, and conceptualises attitudes and attitude phenomena in terms of their group normative properties and dynamics. Our perspective is explicitly framed and focused by contemporary social identity theory a theory that has a great deal to contribute to attitude research, but often does not talk directly about attitudes. We discuss attitudinal influence and change, how people perceive normative attitudes, and how attitudes relate to action. A major research topic in social cognition is attribution. Attributions are the explanations we make for people's behavior, either our own behavior or the behavior of others. One element of attribution ascribes the locus of a behavior to either internal or external factors. An internal, or dispositional, attribution assigns behavior to causes related to inner traits such as personality, disposition, character or ability. An external, or situational, attribution involves situational elements, such as the weather. A second element of attribution ascribes the cause of behavior to either stable or unstable factors (whether the behavior will be repeated or changed under similar circumstances). Finally, we also attribute causes of behavior to either controllable or uncontrollable factors: how much control one has over the situation at hand.

How do the emotions, beliefs, and attitudes of an individual influence his or her social behavior?

Although it might not have surprised you to hear that we can often predict people’s behaviors if we know their thoughts and their feelings about the attitude object, you might be surprised to find that our actions also have an influence on our thoughts and feelings. It makes sense that if I like strawberry jam, I’ll buy it, because my thoughts and feelings about a product influence my behavior. But will my attitudes toward orange marmalade become more positive if I decide for whatever reason to buy it instead of jam? It turns out that if we engage in a behavior, and particularly one that we had not expected that we would have, our thoughts and feelings toward that behavior are likely to change. This might not seem intuitive, but it represents another example of how the principles of social psychology in this case, the principle of attitude consistency lead us to make predictions that wouldn’t otherwise be that obvious.

People have an avid interest in understanding the causes of behavior, both theirs and others, and doing so helps us meet the important goals of other-concern and self-concern. If we can better understand how and why the other people around us act the way they do, then we will have a better chance of avoiding harm from others and a better chance of getting those other people to cooperate with and like us. And if we have a better idea of understanding the causes of our own behavior, we can better work to keep that behavior in line with our preferred plans and goals.

Situational and Dispositional Influences on Behavior

Behavior is a product of both the situation (e.g., cultural influences, social roles, and the presence of bystanders) and of the person (e.g., personality characteristics). Subfields of psychology tend to focus on one influence or behavior over others. Situationism is the view that our behavior and actions are determined by our immediate environment and surroundings. In contrast, dispositionism holds that our behavior is determined by internal factors (Heider, 1958). An internal factor is an attribute of a person and includes personality traits and temperament. Social psychologists have tended to take the situationist perspective, whereas personality psychologists have promoted the dispositionist perspective. Modern approaches to social psychology, however, take both the situation and the individual into account when studying human behavior (Fiske, Gilbert, & Lindzey, 2010). In fact, the field of social-personality psychology has emerged to study the complex interaction of internal and situational factors that affect human behavior (Mischel, 1977; Richard, Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003).