Social Psychology (sociology)
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sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
, social psychology (also known as sociological social psychology) studies the relationship between the individual and society. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field of psychology, sociological social psychology places relatively more emphasis on the influence of
social structure In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rel ...
and
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
on individual outcomes, such as
personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, ...
,
behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as we ...
, and one's position in social hierarchies. Researchers broadly focus on higher levels of analysis, directing attention mainly to groups and the arrangement of relationships among people. This subfield of sociology is broadly recognized as having three major perspectives: Symbolic interactionism, social structure and personality, and structural social psychology. Some of the major topics in this field include
social status Social status is the level of social value a person is considered to possess. More specifically, it refers to the relative level of respect, honour, assumed competence, and deference accorded to people, groups, and organizations in a society. St ...
, structural power, sociocultural change,
social inequality Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It posses and creates gender c ...
and
prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
,
leadership Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets v ...
and intra-group behavior, social exchange,
group conflict Group conflict, or hostilities between different groups, is a feature common to all forms of human social organization (e.g., sports teams, ethnic groups, nations, religions, gangs), and also occurs in social animals. Although group conflict is on ...
,
impression formation Impression formation in social psychology refers to the processes by which different pieces of knowledge about another are combined into a global or summary impression. Social psychologist Solomon Asch is credited with the seminal research on impr ...
and
management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...
, conversation structures,
socialization In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cul ...
,
social constructionism Social constructionism is a theory in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory which proposes that certain ideas about physical reality arise from collaborative consensus, instead of pure observation of said reality. The theor ...
, social norms and deviance,
identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), an ...
and roles, and emotional labor. The primary methods of data collection are sample surveys, field observations, vignette studies, field experiments, and controlled experiments.


History

Sociological social psychology is understood to have emerged in 1902 with a landmark study by sociologist
Charles Cooley Charles Horton Cooley (August 17, 1864 – May 7, 1929) was an American sociologist and the son of Michigan Supreme Court Judge Thomas M. Cooley. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, was a foundi ...
, entitled ''Human Nature and the Social Order'', in which he introduces the concept of the ''
looking-glass self The term ''looking-glass self'' was created by American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902, and introduced into his work ''Human Nature and the Social Order''. It is described as our reflection of how we think we appear to others. Cooley ...
''. Sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross would subsequently publish the first sociological textbook in social psychology, known as ''Social Psychology,'' in 1908. Following a few decades later,
Jacob L. Moreno Jacob Levy Moreno (born Iacob Levy; May 18, 1889 – May 14, 1974) was a Romanian-American psychiatrist, psychosociologist, and educator, the founder of psychodrama, and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy. During his lifetime, he was rec ...
would go on to found the field's major
academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
in 1937, entitled ''Sociometry''—though its name would change in 1978 to ''Social Psychology'' and to its current title, '' Social Psychology Quarterly'', the year after.


Foundational concepts


Symbolic interactionism

In the 1920s,
William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
and Dorothy Thomas introduced what would become not only a basic tenet of sociological social psychology, but of sociology in general. In 1923, the two proposed the concept of '' definition of the situation'', followed in 1928 by the ''
Thomas theorem The Thomas theorem is a theory of sociology which was formulated in 1928 by William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas: In other words, the interpretation of a situation causes the action. This interpretation is not objective. Actions are a ...
'' (or ''Thomas axiom''):'' Chandler, Daniel, and Rod Munday, eds. 2011.
Thomas theorem
(Thomas axiom)" eference In ''A Dictionary of Media and Communication'' (1st ed.). Oxford:
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
. – via Oxford Reference.
'' This ''subjective'' definition of situation by social actors,
groups A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
, or subcultures would be interpreted by
Robert K. Merton Robert King Merton (born Meyer Robert Schkolnick; July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003) was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He served as th ...
as a '
self-fulfilling prophecy A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. T ...
' (re ‘ mind over matter’), becoming a core concept of what would form the theory of
symbolic interactionism Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence ...
.'''' Generally credited as the founder of symbolic interactionism is
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead, whose work greatly influences the area of social psychology in general. However, it would be sociologist
Herbert Blumer Herbert George Blumer (March 7, 1900 – April 13, 1987) was an American sociologist whose main scholarly interests were symbolic interactionism and methods of social research. Believing that individuals create social reality through collective ...
, Mead's colleague and disciple at Chicago, who coined the name of the framework in 1937.


Action theory

At
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, sociologist
Talcott Parsons Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in soci ...
began developing a cybernetic theory of action in 1927, which would subsequently be adapted to small group research by Parsons' student and colleague, Robert Freed Bales. Using Bales' behavior coding scheme, ''interaction process analysis'', would result in a body of observational studies in social interactions in groups. During his 41-year tenure at Harvard, Bales mentored a distinguished group of sociological social psychologists concerned with group processes and other topics in sociological social psychology.


Major frameworks


Symbolic interactionism

The contemporary notion of symbolic interactionism originates from the work of George Herbert Mead and
Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas p ...
. In this circular framework, social interactions are considered to be the basis from which ''meanings'' are constructed; meanings that then influence the process of social interaction itself. Many symbolic interactionists see '' the self'' as a core meaning that is both ''constructed through'' and ''influential in'' social relations. The structural school of symbolic interactionism uses shared social knowledge from a macro-level
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
,
natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
, social institution, or
organization An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived f ...
to explain relatively enduring patterns of social interaction and
psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
at the micro-level, typically investigating these matters with
quantitative methods Quantitative research is a research strategy that focuses on quantifying the collection and analysis of data. It is formed from a deductive approach where emphasis is placed on the testing of theory, shaped by empiricist and positivist philoso ...
. The Iowa School, along with ''identity theory'' and ''
affect control theory In control theory, affect control theory proposes that individuals maintain affective meanings through their actions and interpretations of events. The activity of social institutions occurs through maintenance of culturally based affective meaning ...
'',MacKinnon, N. J. 1994. ''Symbolic Interactionism as Affect Control''. Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by ...
.
are major programs of research in this tradition. The latter two theories, in particular, focus on the ways in which actions control mental states, which demonstrates the underlying '' cybernetic'' nature of the approach that is also evident in Mead's writings. Moreover, ''affect control theory'' provides a
mathematical model A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, ...
of
role theory Role theory is a concept in sociology and in social psychology that considers most of everyday activity to be the acting-out of socially defined categories (e.g., mother, manager, teacher). Each role is a set of rights, duties, expectations, nor ...
and of labeling theory. Stemming from the Chicago School, process symbolic interactionism considers the meanings that underlie social interactions to be situated, creative, fluid, and often contested. As such, researchers in this tradition frequently use qualitative and
ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...
methods. ''
Symbolic Interaction Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
'', an academic journal founded by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, emerged in 1977 as a central outlet for the empirical research and conceptual studies produced by scholars in this area.
Postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
symbolic interactionism, which understands the notion of ''self and identity'' as increasingly fragmented and illusory, considers attempts at theory to be meta-narrative with no more authority than other conversations. The approach is presented in detail by ''The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research''.


Social structure and personality

This research perspective deals with relationships between large-scale social systems and individual behaviors and mental states including feelings, attitudes and values, and mental faculties. Some researchers focus on issues of health and how social networks bring useful social support to the ill. Another line of research deals with how education, occupation, and other components of social class impact values. Some studies assess emotional variations, especially in happiness versus alienation and anger, among individuals in different structural positions.


Structural social psychology

Structural social psychology diverges from the other two dominant approaches to sociological social psychology in that its theories seek to explain the emergence and maintenance of social structures by actors (whether people, groups, or organizations), generally assuming greater stability in social structure (especially compared to symbolic interactionism), and most notably assuming minimal differences between individual actors. Whereas the other two approaches to social psychology attempt to model social reality closely, structural social psychology strives for
parsimony Parsimony refers to the quality of economy or frugality in the use of resources. Parsimony may also refer to * The Law of Parsimony, or Occam's razor, a problem-solving principle ** Maximum parsimony (phylogenetics), an optimality criterion in p ...
, aiming to explain the widest range of phenomena possible, while making the fewest assumptions possible. Structural social psychology makes greater use of formal theories with explicitly stated propositions and scope conditions, to specify the intended range of application.


Social exchange

Social exchange theory Social exchange theory is a sociological and psychological theory that studies the social behavior in the interaction of two parties that implement a cost-benefit analysis to determine risks and benefits. The theory also involves economic relation ...
emphasizes the notion that social action is the result of ''personal choices'' that are made in order to maximize benefit while minimizing cost. A key component of this theory is the postulation of the ''"comparison level of alternatives''": an actor's sense of the best possible alternative in a given situation (i.e. the choice with the highest net benefits or lowest net costs; similar to the concept of a " cost-benefit analysis"). Theories of social exchange share many essential features with classical economic theories, such as
rational choice theory Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. The theory postula ...
. However, social exchange theories differ from classical economics in that social exchange makes predictions about the relationships between persons, rather than just the evaluation of goods. For example, social exchange theories have been used to predict human behavior in romantic relationships by taking into account each actor's ''subjective'' sense of cost (e.g., financial dependence), benefit (e.g. attraction,
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
, attachment), and comparison level of alternatives (e.g. whether or not there are any viable alternative mates available).


Expectation states and Status characteristics

Expectation states theory—as well as its popular sub-theory, ''status characteristics theory''—proposes that individuals use available social information to form expectations for themselves and others. Group members, for instance, use stereotypes about competence in attempting to determine who will be comparatively more skilled in a given task, which then indicates one's authority and status in the group. In order to determine everyone else's relative ability and assign rank accordingly, such members use one's membership in social categories (e.g. race, gender, age, education, etc.); their known ability on immediate tasks; and their observed dominant behaviors (e.g. glares, rate of speech, interruptions, etc.). Although exhibiting dominant behaviors and, for example, belonging to a certain race has no ''direct'' connection to actual ability, implicit cultural beliefs about ''who'' possesses ''how much'' social value will drive group members to "act as if" they believe some people have more useful contributions than others. As such, the theory has been used to explain the rise, persistence, and enactment of status hierarchies.


Substantive topics


Social influence

Social influence is a factor in every individual's life. Social influence takes place when one's thoughts, actions and feelings are affected by other people. It is a way of interaction that affects individual behavior and can occur within groups and between groups. It is a fundamental process that affects ways of socialization, conformity, leadership and social change.


Dramaturgy

Another aspect of microsociology aims to focus on individual behavior in social settings. One specific researcher in the field,
Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century". In 2007 '' The Times Higher Ed ...
, claims that humans tend to believe that they are actors on a stage, which he explains in the book ''The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life''. He argues that as a result, individuals will further proceed with their actions based on the response of that individual's 'audience' or in other words, the people to whom he is speaking. Much like a play, Goffman believes that rules of conversing and communication exist: to display confidence, display sincerity, and avoid infractions which are otherwise known as embarrassing situations. Breaches of such rules are what make social situations awkward.


Group dynamics (group processes)

From a sociological perspective, group dynamics refers to the ways in which Power (social and political), power, status, justice, and legitimacy (political), legitimacy impact the structure and interactions that take place within
groups A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
. A particular area of study, in which scholars examine how group size affects the type and quality of interactions that take place between group members, was introduced by the work of German social theorist, Georg Simmel. Those who study group processes also study interactions between groups, such as in the case of Muzafer Sherif's Realistic conflict theory#Robbers cave study, Robbers Cave Experiment.Rohall, David E., Melissa A. Milkie, and Jeffrey W. Lucas. 2014. ''Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives'' (3rd ed.). Pearson Education. . Initially, groups can be characterized as either Dyad (sociology), dyads (two people) or Triad (sociology), triads (three people), where the essential difference is that, if one person were to leave a dyad, that group would dissolve completely, while the same is not true of a triad. What this difference indicates is the fundamental nature of group size: every additional member of a group ''increases the group's stability'' while ''decreasing the possible amount of intimacy'' or interactions between any two members. A group can also be Types of Social Groups, distinguished in terms of how and why its members know each other. In this sense, individual group members belong to one of the following: * Primary group: Consists of close friends and family who are held together by ''expressive'' ties; * Secondary group: Consists of coworkers, colleagues, classmates, and so on, who are held together by ''instrumental'' ties; or * Reference group: Consists of people who do not necessarily know or interact with each other, but who use each other for standards of comparison for appropriate behaviors.


See also

* Behavioral economics * List of social psychologists * Political psychology * Social psychology (psychology), Social psychology (discipline within psychology) * Socialization * Sociobiology * Sociology * Socionics


References


External links


Social Psychology Network

Society for Personality and Social Psychology

Society of Experimental Social Psychology









Social Psychology forum





PsychWiki
{{Sociology2 Social philosophy Interdisciplinary subfields of sociology Behavioural sciences Social constructionism