Importance of social psychology is being defined in this article.The social psychologist is interested in the effects of the social context on the behavior of the individual. Indeed, many of our behaviors are directly influenced by the presence of “others”. Among the best-known examples is the social comparison – “is my car bigger than my neighbor’s? ” or submission to authority(Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment). The contribution of social psychology is in particular to show the importance of the social group on the attitudes and behaviors of the individual.
First, when we are in a group, we are more likely to engage in extreme behavior. You may know that by the effect of individualization , we tend to be more aggressive when we are in a group. But did you know that in an emergency, such as sudden discomfort, you are less likely to be rescued if there are several witnesses to your difficulties than one? This is called the passer-by effect.
The job of psychologist is not the same depending on whether it is practiced in the health sector, social or medico-social. Indeed, Its role and the scope of its action are directly affected.Psychology brings together many theoretical and practical currents among which clinical psychology, systemic, cognitive, behavioral, developmental or experimental. According to his specialization, the psychologist uses methods of approach and specific care, based on these varied theoretical approaches. The Social psychologist attaches great importance to the individual’s life history and family relationships. Its tools and approach are adapted to the diagnosis and support of neurological disorders.
Professional habits of mind die hard. In the early days of the social sciences the professional practice was to take the reader off to a hypothetical desert island for a scrutiny of social origins. Today the tendency is to metamorphose him into a traveler from Mars, who can view the modern social scene with an impartial objectivity, if a somewhat naive lack of understanding. To the present writers, however, it seems more fitting to reverse the process. Instead of starting at an abstract and generalized level, our study of society can well begin with the social phenomena of everyday life (i). What is the nature of the social world as we see it in our daily activities ? For the moment we can drop our academic preconceptions and turn to the social phenomena which confront the man on the street.
Knowing Importance of Social Psychology Is Important; Because Social Psychologist Can Influence Better Role In Negative Society
The man on the street sees his fellows going to work day after day at the same time in the morning. He witnesses a wedding ceremony today and a funeral procession tomorrow. He beholds employees with the help of armed deputies trying to break through the massed picket line before a shop on strike. He observes the doctor speeding to a patient, restrained by a traffic officer, but released when the physician’s mission is known, while another less fortunate traffic violator is herded off to jail. He hears radio speeches espousing a political cause or a candidate. And somewhere in the fringe of his mind he notices the ubiquitous advertising slogans of the billboard or the neon sign.
But the thousand and one events of everyday life do not present themselves to the man on the street as an unorganized mass of confused impressions. It takes little penetration on his part to group these phenomena into rough categories. The many common routine activities of his fellows fall into one class. He attends them only in passing, since they are so commonplace.
Exceptions to these well nigh universal patterns surprise and startle him. These two classes of social phenomena really involve the comparison of people. The similar routine habits which most people show can be called uniform way the exceptions to these norms, atypical ways. In addition to this general division the man on the street discriminates between social behavior which consists of separate non-con-tenuous acts and social behavior which is sustained interaction between two or more people. In other words, he sees men responding individually to social stimuli, and he sees various forms of group activity.
The first step of the social psychologist is to take these rough groupings of social phenomena from everyday life and give them more precise definition. The second step is to break down these blanket groupings into their distinctive components. A third step is to relate them to other findings of science by fitting them into the generalized descriptions of experimental psychology. The fourth step takes us back again to the level of practical experience. It consists of tying up the facts, observed by the man on the street, to the facts known by other individuals participating in the social drama. The clinician, the social engineer, and the social planner all visualize the world from their respective vantage points. As social psychologists we need to understand and relate the findings of all these active participants in the workaday world.
