Question

Book: The Story of Psychology

Discussion: I find Social Psychology extremely fascinating. Virtually everything we do, feel, or think is related in some way to the social side of life. Our relations with other people are so central to our lives and happiness that it is hard to imagine existing without them, and it is this basic fact that makes social psychology so fascinating and essential. A lot of social psychological research involves surprising or shocking results that required extreme experimental situations. Some of these research practices have now been determined unethical.

Discussion Questions: Please discuss at least one piece of social psychological evidence you find important enough to merit the potential danger to participants and at least one that you believe was not worth the risk to participants and should not have been conducted. Also, what do you think of Social Psychology?

Answer 1

Social psychology is basically about knowing and understanding behavior of people in their own social context. They also study about human mind and social behaviour relationship. It also take consideration about individuals feelings, thought, beliefs etc.,. When a social psychologists conduct research on participants, they can encounter many types of risks such as physical risk, psychological risk, legal risk etc., The classical study on "LITTLE ALBERT" is one of the well known experiment where the child is induced with fear. In this experiment the child is made to fear furry and white things or objects through making loud noice whenever the child view those objects, it is conducted inorder to find whether fear is innate or conditioned response. It is unethical to make a child fear of objects. These kind of experiment are more risk taking because it causes great effect in futur behavior on the participants. These kind of experiment are not worth of participating leaving the participant with danger.