Here is an essay on ‘Social Psychology’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Social Psychology’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay # 1. Concept of Social Psychology:
Social psychology is concerned with the interactions between individuals or between individuals and groups. Thus, it is a study of the behaviour of persons in social situations. It is a study of the way in which an individual influences other individuals and the way in which he himself is influenced by other individuals.
The social interaction can take place in a face-to-face situation as when two friends or a parent and a child are interacting with each other. The traffic signals on the road also constitute a social situation.
When you want to cross the road, but see a red lamp burning ahead, you will immediately stop. You are now reacting to the red signal which is a communication to you “Stop! Don’t cross.” The person who has lost a dear person starts feeling sad when he sees some object belonging to the dead person. Thus, objects remind us of persons and make us react to them. In short, a social situation need not necessarily involve you and other persons; they may involve you and other objects which are signs of some previous experiences.
Interaction, thus, refers to a set of observable behaviours which take place in two or more persons. There is a sequence of behaviour; for example, as you are walking on the road you recognize the person coming from the opposite side. You immediately say “Good morning” and smile. The other person responds to you, smiles and says “Good morning.” When this sequence takes place one can say that there is interaction. Supposing he is absent-minded and does not see you or hear your greeting, obviously there is no interaction.
When a person responds to the other person there is “interpersonal influence;” he is influenced by the other person. It is a familiar fact that when you are walking on the road and there is a wrist watch on you which is visible, a stranger may ask you “What is the time?”
Though he is a stranger, you are influenced by his question and look at your watch and tell him the time.
When you are in a lecture hall and the lecturer makes some interesting remark, the audience responds with clapping. You spontaneously join in clapping. This is an illustration of imitation which was looked upon as the explanation of many forms of social or interpersonal behaviour by early social psychologists like Ross and McDougall. The concept of imitation is descriptive; it describes the interpersonal influence.
But it was assumed to be an explanatory concept. The child imitates his parents. When he goes to school he may imitate the teachers. As an adolescent, he imitates the peers or probably the film-stars.
Miller and Dollard (1941) try to “explain” the imitative behaviour by using the concept of “models.” Models tend to be superior to imitators in age, social status, intelligence or some other kind of competence. As Newcomb et al (1965) describe, imitative behaviour is an outcome of at least two psychological processes wanting something and perceiving that another person shows the way to get what is wanted.
Another kind of interpersonal influence is that in which there are simultaneous effects of two or more persons on each other, that is, where there are reciprocal effects. Long ago, the French sociologist, Gustave Le Bon (1896) wrote a book on the way in which groups of people influence one another and often thought, felt and acted in extreme ways which none of them would have done when they were alone.
At about the same time an American psychologist, Triplett (1897) reported one of the first experiments in social psychology on this problem. He took up forty children of ten to twelve years of age and asked them to wind fishing reels as fast as possible. He asked each child to work alone and also to work in a small group. He found that twenty children worked faster in a group than when they worked alone; ten of them worked slower when in a group than when alone; the remaining ten worked just as fast whether they worked alone or in a group.
Later on Allport (1924) and Dashiell (1930) conducted more carefully planned studies on the problem and obtained similar results. Allport called this phenomenon of reciprocal effects of interpersonal influence “social facilitation.” He attributed such energizing effects to “the sight and sound of others doing the same thing.”
The most striking instance of the reciprocal effects of sight and sound of others doing the same thing are to be seen in the “spiraling” excitement when a crowed of students on strike throw stones at policemen, break the windows of the college building or set fire to buses.
Instances of the same reciprocal effects with opposite effects were witnessed when large groups of students behaved in the most disciplined manner in the “Quit India” movement of 1942, when they were pledged to non-violence.
Competition introduces a further complexity to this phenomenon of social facilitation. Dashiell (1930) found that energizing effects were very great when the competitive attitudes were the strongest; they were weak when there was no competitive attitude. This study showed that the reciprocal effects cannot be attributed merely to increased stimulation arising out of sights and sounds.
These studies show the important part played by “attitudes” in social behaviour; the attitude of satyagraha inhibits crowd behaviour and enhances reciprocal control and promotes discipline and orderliness; the attitude of competition increases the reciprocal effects.
Interaction and Communication:
Human interaction is based on communication. The behaviour of one person, the messages that he sends by speaking are received by the other person and he responds to that message by another message which the first person receives and so on. The simplest everyday instance of such communication and interaction is the way in which two illiterate rustic persons interact with one another when they are angry.
It is sometimes seen in the shop when there are angry exchanges between the shop-man and the customer. Yet another illustration of such interaction is the mother-child behaviour. The child of ten to twelve months will get stimulated and will stimulate the mother in innumerable ways. We not only communicate our emotions to the other person, we also communicate information.
In fact, it is communication of the information that is most vital for the survival and promotion of culture. Sharing of information will make information the common property of the whole group, and thus enhances the cultural life of the group. It increases the store of information in each member of the group. Since one’s attitude toward anything depends on one’s store of information about it, sharing of information also enables the sharing of attitudes, though, of course, this is not always inevitable.
The Individual and the Group:
A group consists of many individuals, whether it is a family group, neighbourhood group, a functional group or a national group. One of the striking features of the various groups is their diversity. So it is always an interesting matter to determine the causes for such diversity in group characteristics and the relation of the characteristics of the individuals to the characteristics of the group.
The same individuals may be members of different groups, as for instance, two brothers or sisters are not only members of the same family, they may also be members of the same play group and of the same school group. Still, their behaviour as individuals will vary according to the difference in the groups.
The boy may endure any amount of physical pain as a member of the play group, but he will start shouting at the slightest pam in the house. One of the chief tasks of social psychology is to find put the reasons why groups differ in their characteristics and how individuals respond in one way when they are members of one group and in another way when they are members of another group.
The student who is quiet and mild as a member of the class may become very aggressive and turbulent as a member of the striker’s group outside the classroom.
A general idea of the interaction situation may be obtained from the following figure:
This figure suggests that the individual has his own motives and attitudes when he enters into the interaction process (arrow 1); each group has its own shared rules or norms which affect the interaction process (arrow 3). As a result of the interaction, the motives and attitudes of the individual may be affected and some change brought about in him (arrow 2).
The changes in the individuals who are interacting may bring about changes in the characteristics of the group (arrow 4). In brief, this is a simple way of depicting the complicated social situation where the groups influence the members through interaction and how the individuals can influence the group characteristics. This may be illustrated from the historical fact that Gandhi was able to bring about great changes in the Indian National Congress and in the nation as a whole during the eventful years from 1917 to 1920.
But it must also be borne in mind that he was greatly changed by the group characteristics. His methods of work in India at that period were quite different from his methods of work when he was carrying on the satyagraha campaigns in South Africa at an earlier period.
One of the central problems of social psychology, as noted above, is to study and understand the interaction processes between individuals, between individuals and groups and finally, between the groups themselves. But it must always be borne in mind that the group consists of individuals and our interest is in the study of the individuals who form the group.
Group Mind Concept is not Necessary:
Before we proceed further, a brief reference may be made to the hypothesis posited by earlier psychologists that there is a “group mind,” that the group is not a mere sum of the individual minds, but that a group has certain characteristics of its own and influences the individuals who are the members of the group.
Social Psychology is concerned not only with the behaviour of groups and with social situations but also with collective behaviour of groups. Many earlier thinkers who were concerned with collective behaviour postulated the concepts of “general will,” “collective consciousness,” “group mind” and so on.
Thinkers like Hegel (1770-1831), Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and Karl Marx (1818-1883) had stressed the fact that social structure determines the individual’s beliefs, attitudes etc. Some of them also stressed the fact that social groups have a continuity and unity and that each group manifests certain uniformities of behaviour through their customs and institutional practices.
McDougall (1920) used the term “group mind” and suggested that the concept is based on the following factors:
(1) Continuity, the members of the group must be aware of the origin of their group and its various characteristics;
(2) Self-consciousness, every member must feel that he is a part of the group;
(3) Interaction, there must be free exchange of ideas between the members of the group and there must be a common body of thought; and
(4) Tradition, the group must have certain traditions which are shared by each member.
He showed that each group like the nation or the army or the church has characteristics of its own based on the fact of organization. He held that the group mind can be viewed as an organization of the needs and purposes of individuals. He also asserted that a group has a mental life of its own which is not a mere sum of the mental lives of the individual members; he even went to the extent of asserting that the group mind has its own laws.
The danger in this hypothesis is that it is mystical, it assumes a super-mind over and above the individual minds. There is no basis for this assumption. It is true that an individual, as a member of a certain group, may behave in a particular way. But such behaviour can be explained without positing a mysterious “group mind” which compels people to behave in certain ways.
The concept of interaction helps us to understand the problem. There is no need to assume such a mystical concept as group mind to explain the phenomena.
Essay # 2. Relation of Social Psychology to Other Sciences:
The scope of social psychology may be clarified further by a brief description of its relation to other allied branches of study.
(a) Social Psychology and General Psychology:
Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour. The aim of general psychology is to study the behaviour of individuals in order to find out the laws which govern behaviour. It uses scientific methods to collect data in order to study behaviour. By using such methods a large body of knowledge concerning the processes of perception, memory, learning, imagination, thinking, intelligence, personality, has now been obtained.
But the individual lives and grows up in a group. In fact, man cannot live without other people. Men live in families, in groups, in communities and nations. It is the other people in the family who not only bring up the child but also give him the language he uses, the standards of his conduct and teach him the roles he has to play in life, by rewarding him when he does well and by punishing him when he does not.
The study of individual in his interactions with others is the task of social psychology. It is interested in the study of the formation of groups, how the groups come into conflict and how such conflicts are resolved. It is interested in the study of the way in which the group shapes the behaviour of the individuals and of how the behaviour and characteristics of that group itself are changed. The field of social psychology is primarily devoted to the understanding and the explanation of the basic psychological processes- thinking, striving, perceiving and learning as they occur in a social environment.
Thus, the main difference between general psychology and social psychology is that while the former studies behaviour of an individual in isolation, the latter studies behaviour of an individual in the social situation. Thus, the two studies are complementary. Just as the biologist studies the individual animal and just as the physiologist studies the body of the individual human being, the general psychologist also can study the behaviour of the individual irrespective of the group in which he has been brought up.
But social psychology extends our knowledge of the individual by studying his behaviour in the group situation, how he interacts with others and how he is influenced by the other people. From this point of view, social psychology is related more to other social sciences like sociology and cultural anthropology than to the biological sciences, while general psychology is related more to the biological sciences than to the social sciences.
For example, while general psychology is interested in the development of personality as such, social psychology is interested in the study of how personality is influenced by the social environment and the social processes.
Social psychology is interested in the study of how the innate needs of man are modified by the social and cultural influences, how social learning takes place and how an individual becomes a typical member of a group so that he not only speaks the particular language of the group in which he has been brought up but also develops attitudes prevailing in the group and cherishes the values of that group; how he acquires the prejudices of the group and develops hostility to the other groups.
(b) Social Psychology and Sociology:
The aim of sociology is to study society and social organization, how human beings create and recreate an organization which guides and controls their behaviour. Its main concern is to study how society is organized, how it changes and how really fundamental changes in society are resisted.
Sociology studies how society as an organization liberates as well as limits the activities of its members, how it sets up standards which the members must follow and maintain. It studies society as a system of usages and procedures, of authority and mutual aid, and how it controls human behaviour.
Sociology studies social relationships, and how social relationships change, and how the individual depends on the society for his protection, comfort, education, equipment and opportunity. Human beings live in groups, in communities or nations. In fact, it is possible for a person to find all satisfactions in the tribe or the village or the city; he can find all his social relationships and satisfactions within the community.
But modern civilization has released forces which have broken down the self-containedness of the communities. The task of sociology is to study how in the tribal and other forms of group relationships, groups are self-contained and how technological changes in modern times have affected such relationships.
Thus, the main difference between sociology and social psychology lies in this approach; while sociology is interested in the social relationships themselves, social psychology is interested in the individuals who enter into social relationships. The difference thus lies in the focus. The focus of social psychology is on the attitudes, the subjective reactions of individuals to institutions, while the focus of sociology is in the institutions them-selves like the family, the community, the caste, the social class etc.
Every social relationship involves attitudes on the part of the individuals who enter into such a relationship. Two persons may be friendly in their attitude to each other or indifferent or hostile. Thus, the relationship between the two persons is obviously influenced by the attitude which each has towards the other.
Similarly, the group as a whole may develop attitudes towards the other groups. When there is a border dispute between two states in India, one group becomes hostile to the other group and social tensions and social conflicts arise. Whether the groups are kinship groups, village groups, linguistic groups, communal groups or national groups, they develop attitudes of friendliness or indifference or hostility towards other such groups.
Inter-tribal conflicts, inter-village conflicts or international conflicts arise out of such hostile attitudes. Similarly friendly attitudes within the group or between groups promote group cooperation. The task of social psychology is to study such attitudes, how they arise, how they change or how they may resist any kind of change. On the other hand, sociology is more interested in the social relationships and social institutions. It is obvious that both the sciences help in understanding social reality.
(c) Social Psychology and Cultural Anthropology:
The cultural anthropologists are interested in the social institutions, the mores and beliefs of tribal societies. According to the anthropologist, all that a group of people have created, whether it is an artifact or a taboo, an implement to work or a mode of worship, in short, whether they are physical objects, or social and religious ideas or relationships, they all form “a culture.”
Thus, for the anthropologist, culture signifies the total social heritage of mankind. In their study of tribal groups, the anthropologists have become acutely aware of the intimate relation between the individuals and the culture itself. They have come to realize that the understanding of the personality of the individual belonging to a culture as well as the culture complex of which the individual is a part demands a careful analysis of the ways in which the two are interrelated.
In other words, the cultural anthropologists have shown that personality and culture are not only interrelated but are interdependent. Thus, we see the resemblances and differences between social psychology and cultural anthropology. Studies in cultural anthropology have shown how the perceptions and learning’s of an individual are closely determined by the cultural background.
Thus, the factual data collected by the anthropologists are of immense help in understanding how the individual behaviour and personality are determined by the social and cultural influences. On the other hand, social psychology helps in understanding some of the cultural problems like superstitious beliefs, magic, etc.
(d) Social Sciences and Behavioural Sciences:
The term social science is relatively old. It includes six disciplines: history, economics, political science, anthropology, psychology and sociology. History is also a part of humanities like philosophy. Psychology is also a biological science. Anthropology is both a biological science and a social science. Economics though a social science is linked with the professional subjects like commerce and business administration.
Similarly though political science is a social science, it is linked on the one side with history and on the other with professional subjects like public administration and law. Because of these varied interrelations between the six disciplines which constitute the social sciences, with humanities on the one hand, and professional schools on the other, the term behavioural sciences came into usage to distinguish those social sciences which are concerned with observable human behaviour and which can be studied by the use of objective scientific methods from the other social sciences which cannot be so studied.
As a result, cultural anthropology, sociology, and social psychology are now looked upon as three behavioural sciences. All these three sciences, though social, are based on observable human behaviour and can be studied by using objective scientific methods. The aim of behavioural sciences is to establish generalizations about human behaviour which are supported by empirical evidence, collected in an impersonal and objective way.
The evidence must be capable of verification by other scientists; the procedures must be completely open to review and replication. The ultimate end of the behavioural sciences is to understand, explain and predict human behaviour in the same way in which physical forces and biological entities are explained and predicted.
The distinction between behavioural sciences and social sciences is that the behavioural sciences are devoted to the collection of original data based on direct observation of behaviour of individuals or groups, while the social sciences are based on indirect and documentary evidence.
Historically, the behaviouristic approach in psychology started in 1913 when the American psychologist Watson initiated his vigorous propaganda against introspection and the concepts of mind, consciousness, etc. He believed that by studying objectively the behaviour of animals and men it is possible to build up the science of psychology in the same way as the other physical, chemical and biological sciences which use only objective methods in their studies.
In a broad way it may be said that it was Floyd Allport who used the behaviouristic methods in Social Psychology in 1924. It was he who established experimentally how individuals are stimulated to greater productivity when working at the same task in close proximity to others.
During the Second World War many contributions to the understanding of group behaviour were made by objective studies of behaviour, by Kurt Lewin, Stouffer of “American Soldier” Studies and others. It may be said that the term behavioural sciences came into vogue during and after the Second World War. An outstanding event was the establishment of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences near the Stanford University in California in 1952, by the Ford Foundation.
Essay # 3. Methods of Study Used in Social Psychology:
As noted above Social Psychology collects its facts by observation and experiment. Considerable attention is being given to the collection of data by conducting surveys as well as by conducting experiments using design of experiments. Further, attempts are being made to measure the various aspects of social behaviour and to use statistical methods in the analysis of the data collected.
1. Observation:
Observation of individuals in their interactions with each other suggests hypotheses to be tested. Observation also yields data. Many methods and techniques have been devised to observe the social behaviour of children when they are at play. In order to make the data from observation quantitative the “rating” method is used.
For example, a five-point scale may be used to determine the aggressiveness of a child when he is playing with other children. If he is not aggressive at all, the score ‘one’ may be given and if he is highly aggressive the score ‘five’ may be given. In order to make the data derived from observation more objective a team of two or three observers may be trained and asked to observe the same group independent of each other and then the results are pooled and scores in aggressiveness.
Further, time samples may be taken; that is, the same group of children may be observed on, let us say, ten occasions, for ten minutes each time. Like this the method of simple observation could be refined in many ways to give reliable data.
2. Interview:
The interview is a face-to-face meeting in which the opinions, beliefs, etc., may be collected. The primary object of the interview is to obtain verbal expressions from the person in reply to some well-framed questions. To yield data of value the interview has to be very carefully planned and conducted in a standardized manner.
The questions have to be drawn up in advance and they must be tried out on a few persons to find out if they can elicit the required information. The value of the interview also depends upon the qualifications and the training of the interviewer. He should be a dependable person so that the person interviewed has confidence in him and express his opinions freely and frankly.
The Questionnaire is a written form of interview. The questions can be framed in advance and pretexted. Later on the questions can be printed and information can be obtained on a group of persons at the same time. Thus, the questionnaire is less time-consuming than the interview.
Further, the answers to each question are written down by the subjects themselves. Each method has got its own advantages and disadvantages. Questionnaires may be used to study interests, opinions and so on. The defect of this method is that further probing into the responses is not possible. This is why the questionnaire survey is generally supplemented by interview of some cases.
3. Methods of Survey:
Surveys involve the construction of questionnaires which are administered by interviewers to representative samples of the public. The industrialists spend considerable amounts of money on what is called “market research,” which involves survey techniques. Their aim is to find out the potential market for their goods and the acceptability of their product.
Similarly, newspapers conduct opinion polls in order to find out the views of people regarding the various issues before the public. Newspapers may also conduct readership surveys in order to find out what age-group and income-group of people read their paper; what is the education level of their readers; what are the items of the paper people generally read and so on.
The ratio authorities conduct surveys to find out the time at which, most people listen to the radio, what programmes they listen, how long they will listen, and so on. In recent years All India Radio has introduced the commercials in the Vividh Bharati programme. The charges for the commercials depend not only on the duration of the programme but also on the time at which the announcements are made.
The cost will depend on the surveys regarding listenership. Surveys are also conducted for theoretical research. Many illustrations will be given later on. The important aspects of the survey research technique are sampling, questionnaire design, and interviewing technique.
There are two principal methods of getting a sample of respondents:
(a) The probability method; all geographical units in the population are put on punch cards and a sample of such communities are drawn at random, mechanically; all the households in each area of the city, for example, are listed; just a few of these households are selected at random for interview.
Since the selection of the households is at random and unbiased, this procedure guarantees that each household in the population will have an equal chance of being included in the sample. This method is indeed very good; but it involves considerable work. The National Sample Survey of India is a huge organization that has been set up in order to conduct surveys regarding many problems of vital interest to the society like unemployment, consumer expenditure savings, etc.
The national census operation conducted once in ten years is also a survey technique, but it does not use the sampling technique; it enumerates each household in the country. Statistical studies show that sampling techniques give as much information, probably with greater exactitude, than the complete enumeration technique.
(b) The second method of sampling frequently used is called “quota sampling.” Neighbourhoods are’ chosen at random, but the selection of the household in each area is left to the discretion of the interviewer himself; but he is given a pre-assigned proportion of males and females, old and young, rich and poor, educated and illiterate and so on. This method is cheaper and quicker than the probability method.
The design of the questionnaire, as noted above, is an art; similarly the interviewing is also an art. The questions have to be pretested and the interviewers have to be trained thoroughly.
4. Measurement:
While observation depends on seeing and recording and survey techniques depend on interviewing and recording, measurement goes a step further and assigns numbers to the events in accordance with certain rules. Measurement implies the mapping of observations into a number system; when this is done the resulting values can be added, multiplied, and so on.
As an illustration of measurement, a brief description of Vineland Social Maturity scale developed by Doll may be given. He tried to develop a scale to measure the social development of children. The instrument consists of a series of rating scales arranged in a developmental sequence, grouped according to the age at which they appear typically. With the help of this scale it is possible to compute the child’s “social age” and find out whether the child of a given chronological age is at the average level, above it, or below it in social development.
A second illustration of measurement may be given from the field of attitude measurement. One of the simplest ways of measuring attitude is that developed by Bogardus. In 1925 he devised the “social distance scale.”
He asked each person tested whether he would admit a member of a given group to the most intimate social relationship, namely, kinship by marriage, or to more distant social relationships like being a neighbour on the same street or being a citizen of the country or exclude him even from visiting the country. (For example, South Africans are refused visas to enter India.) There are many other methods of measuring attitudes toward “conservatism radicalism” and so on.
A third illustration is Moreno’s sociometric test which attempts to measure popularity. It is well known that work will be efficient when the work is done in a group by people who like each other. If they do not like each other, the group will be riddled with tensions and quarrels. Moreno devised the test for schoolroom situation.
He asked each boy in the class to name three boys with whom he would like to play some game, or go out for a picnic, and so on. On the basis of the choices it is possible to construct what is called a “sociogram.” This will indicate the boy who is most popular in the class room by receiving the highest number of choices and the boy who is neglected or rejected. This technique is now being used in work situations also.
5. Experimental Method:
An experiment is observation under controlled conditions. The essence of an experiment is that it can be repeated at will and that it enables the observation being made under varying conditions. In an experiment the investigator arranges the situation in a way that certain factors are kept constant and certain others are varied. Every situation is made up of a number of conditions which are called ‘variables.’
When the experimenter is in a position to introduce a variable, or vary it in intensity, etc., he has a perfect control of the whole situation. It is true that the subject of study of social psychology is highly complex and that the conditions of social interaction are very complicated. To overcome these difficulties the social psychologist uses the “control group” technique.
The procedure is to take one group and divide it into two groups so that in as many variables as possible the two groups are similar. For example, one class of students in one school may be divided into two groups using the variables of, let us say, class marks, intelligence, etc. Let us assume that the task is to reduce prejudice towards Harijans or Muslims. An attitude test is first given and the class is divided into two similar groups.
One groups, called the ‘experimental’ group, is asked to discuss the problem of social equality. The other group does not have any such experience. After some sessions the two groups are again given the attitude test.
If the experimental group shows a lower measure of prejudice against the Harijans than the control group and if the data submitted to statistical calculation show that the difference is quite significant, then it is possible to say that discussion of a problem, the dependent variable, reduces the prejudice, the independent variable. Attention may be drawn to the experiment conducted long ago to study the effect of group situation upon the performance of some tasks noted earlier.