Question

Discuss how social psychology can be applied to social work

Answer 1

Psychologists have defined behaviour in terms of bodily processes and social psychology defines it in terms of people's interactions. For example Skinner (1953) believes that behaviour modification is based on operant conditioning and it is a way of assisting someone to change their unacceptable behaviour by offering a reward or punishment. From my observation in (Appendix week1), Child A, cries whenever she needs any item from Child B, she is aware of the attention gained whenever she cries and this will result in her getting what she wants. However, this behaviour could have negative consequences as well. Skinner will relate Child A's behaviour as an operant conditioning, as Child A continues to cry for her older brother's toys, having known that her behaviour leads to a particular consequences. She behaves this way as she receives attention from her brother by always getting back the toys she wanted, which is reinforcement with reward, a behaviourist perspective.

On the other hand, the study of behaviour by Bandura (1977) a Social perspective would disagree with Skinner, as Skinner would say that Child A's behaviour is observational based on learning imitation. Child A may have seen someone at her school or a social gathering displaying such behaviour and so copies the same behaviour. Bandura (1971) suggested that learning moral rules by the individual is not in response to their exposure to punishment or reward, but by observing the behaviour of other people (Nicolson et al 2006: 23).This relates to Child A's behaviour in (Appendix week1) and shows how the end result may not be as significant as the behaviourist perspective would have believed.

As a professional social worker, working with people from different backgrounds it is important to have knowledge of psychological theories as it's a vital tool that can be used to understand and interpret behaviour in social work practice. Also social workers need to have a wide knowledge of different cultures and be sure when they are applying psychological perspectives they have an objective mind taking into account individual differences such as ethical, cultural and religious.