Definition Of Social Psychology

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Definition of social psychology Social psychology is a scientific method that is used to understand how individual’s thoughts and behaviors are influenced by the very presence of another human being. Social psychology studies a vast amount of social topics such as social perception, group behavior, leadership, aggression, prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and conformity. When dealing and trying to understand social behavior it is vital to also have an understanding of the social perception and interaction. Social psychology just like any other kind of psychologies wasn’t really acknowledged until the late 1800’s early 1900’s. For social psychology it really got its boost around World War 2 because researches wanted to study the social influence, obedience, and conformity. Social psychology continued to bloom and still is to this day because this research and practice can better help us understand the social behavior and experience. Some of the major topics that is studied by social psychologists is social influence, social interaction, and social perception. So with these three major topics a few other branches come up. Social cognition is concerned with the storage, processing, and application of social information. This branch is closely related to cognitive psychology because these researches are is full of schemas; which is our general ideas about the world, things in it, how things work, and how things are. Schemas are a wonderful thing because their shortcuts in one’s own mind that allows you to continue with your day rather than stopping to interpret everything around. Naturally schemas will develop associations between related schemas which eventually affect social behavior. Attitudes and attitude changes are a major study because of the components of attitudes like how they develop and their changes.
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