Lecture 13 min.
Social psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the patterns of behavior and activity of people that are determined by their inclusion in social groups, as well as the psychological characteristics of the groups themselves.
Social psychology (SP) is a branch of psychology that studies the patterns of behavior and activity of people that are determined by their membership in social groups, including the psychological characteristics of the groups themselves. For a long time, social-psychological views were studied within various philosophical doctrines. Parts of social psychology took shape within different sciences — sociology, anthropology, psychology, ethnography, and others. In the second half of the 19th century, attempts were made to develop an independent social-psychological branch.
SP emerged as an independent discipline in 1908. At that time, works by the American sociologist E. Ross and the English psychologist W. McDougall appeared simultaneously, both using the term "SP" in their content. The main problems of modern SP are: general questions of the theory, history, and methodology of SP; the patterns of interaction and communication among people; various characteristics of large social groups; psychological problems of small social groups; and the study of personality. At present, applied SP is developing actively, oriented toward solving important problems of social subjects in the spheres of education, economics, politics, and so on.
Other definitions:
The history of social psychology as a science is considerably "younger" than the history of what may be called "social-psychological thinking." The difficulty of creating a scientific history of social psychology lies in the fact that the discipline was formed from many sources, and it is hard to determine at what boundaries within one science or another the elements of social-psychological knowledge became separate. In the emergence of social psychology as an independent branch of knowledge, as in the emergence of any other scientific discipline, causes of two kinds played a role: both social and purely theoretical . The independent status of social psychology worldwide is dated from 1908 — the simultaneous publication of W. McDougall's "Introduction to Social Psychology" in Europe and E. Ross's "Social Psychology" in America .
The founders of experimental social psychology are V. M. Bekhterev, W. Moede, and F. Allport :8. Bekhterev recognized social psychology but proposed instead to study collective reflexology (which studies processes in groups of people) :17.
Social psychology arose as an independent science in the second half of the 19th century, separating from philosophy. Its emergence and recognition are associated with two scholars, linguists and philosophers: H. Steinthal (1823—1893) and M. Lazarus (1824—1903) :11. These scholars were the first to advocate the creation of a new science, calling it "folk psychology" (Völkerpsychologie) :11. In its subject matter, folk psychology was very close to some branches of social psychology :11. W. Wundt (1832—1920) also contributed to this science, writing a 10-volume work, "Völkerpsychologie" (1900 onward) :11.
In general, three periods can be distinguished in the history of social psychology :
According to G. M. Andreeva, social psychology includes 3 main branches:
According to B. D. Parygin, social psychology studies:
Research carried out in social psychology:
Social psychology currently considers and studies: :31—33
As a result of numerous experiments a number of changes inherent in human behavior as a consequence of being in a group have been identified to date, for example: conformity, social facilitation, social inhibition, social pressure, diffusion of responsibility (the so-called bystander effect), group polarization, emotional contagion, social loafing, reduced self-awareness, and so on.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the psychologist Norman Triplett, walking in a park, noticed that cyclists ride faster when there are people in the park and slow down considerably when there is no one. This launched a series of experiments in which subjects performed various tasks, sometimes alone and sometimes in the presence of "spectators." Thus arose the conclusion that a person copes better with mechanical work when watched, and with work requiring creative and intellectual effort, without witnesses.
In the early twenty-first century, the British scientist Benedikt Herrmann described the social-psychological phenomenon of antisocial punishment. The phenomenon consists in society's censure or punishment of individuals who show what society considers excessive activity, even when that activity is objectively beneficial to the public. The research showed that this phenomenon is widespread in countries with insufficiently developed social ties, sociopolitical institutions and traditions of socially beneficial activity .
G. M. Andreeva divided all research methods in social psychology into two main groups: methods of research and methods of influence. All methods are also divided into theoretical and empirical groups
Theoretical methods are used in developing and proving scientific theories. These methods include: 1) the critical method, 2) the constructive method, 3) the review-and-analytical method
This group contains methods of collecting information and methods of processing it.
Empirical research methods include:
Observation methods include:
Data processing methods:
These belong to the "psychology of influence".
When research is conducted, a program of social-psychological research is drawn up. It clearly specifies the aim of the research, the tasks to be solved, the chosen object of study, the formulated problem under investigation, the concepts used, and the whole set of methods employed.
Methods of social-psychological influence are, above all, the methods used in the mass media, in individual and group psychotherapy, in the conduct and organization of public speaking, in propaganda, advertising, industry (for organizing optimal work and brainstorming) and agitation In social psychology these phenomena are classified and given a scientific explanation.
Cultural-historical psychology (CHP) is a virtual field of research and knowledge that is formally considered a branch of cultural psychology, which studies the role of culture in the psychological life of society. CHP focuses on the global problem of the role of culture in psychological development at the stages of both phylogenesis and ontogenesis. CHP made a fruitful attempt to return to the context of life and culture those psychological functions that had been torn out of it by classical experimental psychology. It can be interpreted as a new and natural stage in the development of psychology.
M. Cole worked on the questions of CHP and devoted his book to it. He considered CHP the science of the future, but, as experience shows, it is also a science of the past. Moreover, it served as the source of practical psychology, which governed the behavior and activity of people and arose much earlier than scientific psychology. CHP represents psychology's return to its cultural sources. In its Hegelian interpretation, CHP is understood as a search for the path from the abstract concept to the concrete, and then the reproduction of the concrete in the process of thinking. Within CHP the activity approach in psychology emerged, thanks to which numerous ideas of CHP were developed. Further contacts are emerging that unite CHP and cognitive psychology, which continues the analytical work begun in classical psychology and leads to a holistic understanding of the human psyche.
Cultural-historical psychology has two substantially different strands. The first is the Marxist strand in psychological research, laid down by Lev Vygotsky in the late 1920s and, as a result of the massive and systematic falsification and distortion of this scholar's scientific legacy, often developed in a substantially distorted form by his self-proclaimed pupils and followers, both in Russia and throughout the world. The second was created on the basis of studies of human activity and age-related development, and took shape over several decades of the Soviet and post-Soviet period. Nevertheless, the first academic textbook on cultural-historical psychology, The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology, appeared only in 2014, published by Cambridge University Press .
Although the designation "cultural-historical theory" (or "cultural-historical school") never occurred in Vygotsky's own texts, and was put into circulation in critical works of the 1930s with an accusatory and denunciatory purpose , this name subsequently took hold among a number of scholars who positioned themselves as Vygotsky's followers, and became widespread primarily in their publications . The expression "cultural-historical theory" spread further in North America and Western Europe in the context of the activity approach, under the name "cultural-historical activity theory" (cultural-historical activity theory, CHAT), whose closest analogue in the Russian-language tradition is the expression "the Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria school"; however, the assumption that such a scientific movement exists has been substantially criticized in a number of publications. A series of studies in recent decades also points to numerous problems in the Western "Vygotskian" tradition .
Representatives of "cultural-historical psychology" postulate a fundamentally non-adaptive, goal-directed and social character and mechanisms of the development of psychological processes.
Declaring the study of human consciousness (and its ontogenetic development) to be the main problem of psychological research, cultural-historical psychology, according to Vygotsky's original design, studies the role of mediation (mediation) and of cultural mediators, such as the sign and the word, in the development of the higher psychological functions of the human being and of the personality in its "peak" (Vygotsky) manifestations. As of the beginning of the twenty-first century, Vygotsky's original design has never been realized, and an integrative "peak psychology" of the human being in his socio-biological development has never been built.
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