Social Psychology Definition Essay

Social Psychology Definition
Heather de Leur
PSYC/400
April 9, 2012
Robert Irizarry

Social Psychology Definition
What is Social Psychology? Social Psychology is defined as a discipline that uses scientific methods "to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings (Allport, 1985). So learning about Social Psychology we know that it looks at huge variety of social topics. Some of the topics that it does touch base on are topics like group behavior, leadership, social perception, aggression, prejudice, and nonverbal behavior. But one must be aware of is that it also touches base on Social perception as well as social interaction in understanding the meaning behind Social Psychology (Cherry, 2012).
Social psychology is different from other psychology, such as clinical psychology, general psychology, and sociology in different ways. Clinical psychology is the field where the branch of psychology is concerned with the assessment and treatment of mental illness. This area merges the science of psychology with the treatment of complex human problems, making it an interesting career choice for people who are looking for a challenging as well as a rewarding field (Cherry, 2012).
In general psychology is the scientific study of human behavior. Many individuals over time defined Psychology differently it was not until 1990 that Feldman came up with the definition for it. Feldman used the scientific method to understand why and how a person behaves in a certain manner that they are in (Viklund, 2012).
In Sociology it is defined as the study of human social behavior. So looking at three of the meanings behind it all we can only assume that all three are alike in many ways but only slightly different. So we know that with Clinical its main purpose is the treatment or assessment with a person that has a mental illness (Cherry, 2012). With general psychology...