Social Psychology: Definition, Theories, Scope, & Examples

Baron, Byrne, and Suls (1989) define social psychology as “the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior in social situations” (p. 6).

Topics examined in social psychology include the self-concept, social cognition, attribution theory, social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination, interpersonal processes, aggression, attitudes, and stereotypes.

Gordon Allport gave the field’s classic definition, still the most widely cited in the discipline.

“An attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings” (Allport, 1954).

The word implied matters most. Even on an empty road, most drivers keep close to the speed limit, because a rule-governed society is internalized rather than actually watched. Read more about Gordon Allport‘s work.

Principles

Social psychology operates on several foundational assumptions. These fundamental beliefs provide a framework for theories, research, and interpretations.

1. Individual and Society Interplay: Social psychologists assume an interplay exists between individual minds and the broader social context. An individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are continuously shaped by social interactions, and in turn, individuals influence the societies they are a part of.
2. Behavior is Contextual: One core assumption is that behavior can vary significantly based on the situation or context. While personal traits and dispositions matter, the circumstances or social environment often play a decisive role in determining behavior.
3. Objective Reality is Difficult to Attain: Our perceptions of reality are influenced by personal beliefs, societal norms, and past experiences. Therefore, our understanding of “reality” is subjective and can be biased or distorted.
4. Social Reality is Constructed: Social psychologists believe that individuals actively construct their social world. Through processes like social categorization, attribution, and cognitive biases, people create their understanding of others and societal norms.
5. People are Social Beings with a Need to Belong: A fundamental assumption is the inherent social nature of humans. People have an innate need to connect with others, form relationships, and belong to groups. This need influences a wide range of behaviors and emotions.
6. Attitudes Influence Behavior: While this might seem straightforward, it’s a foundational belief that our attitudes (combinations of beliefs and feelings) can and often do drive our actions. However, it’s also understood that this relationship can be complex and bidirectional.
7. People Desire Cognitive Consistency: This is the belief that people are motivated to maintain consistency in their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Cognitive dissonance theory, which posits that people feel discomfort when holding conflicting beliefs and are motivated to resolve this, is based on this assumption.
8. People are Motivated to See Themselves in a Positive Light: The self plays a central role in social psychology. It’s assumed that individuals are generally motivated to maintain and enhance a positive self-view.
9. Behavior Can be Predicted and Understood: An underlying assumption of any science, including social psychology, is that phenomena (in this case, human behavior in social contexts) can be studied, understood, predicted, and potentially influenced.
10. Cultural and Biological Factors are Integral: Though earlier social psychology might have been criticized for neglecting these factors, contemporary social psychology acknowledges the roles of both biology (genes, hormones, brain processes) and culture (norms, values, traditions) in shaping social behavior.

History

Early Influences

Aristotle believed humans are naturally sociable. Living together, he argued, requires an individual-centered approach to society. Plato disagreed: the state should discipline the individual and encourage social responsibility, a socio-centered approach.

Hegel (1770–1831) introduced the concept that society has inevitable links with the development of the social mind. This led to the idea of a group mind, which is important in the study of social psychology.

The idea has deep roots.

Lazarus and Steinthal founded German Völkerpsychologie (“folk psychology”) in 1860, not an Anglo-European movement as sometimes assumed. It held that a people’s language, myth, and custom shape the individual mind.

This shaped how personality was understood: it develops through cultural and community influences, especially language. Wundt agreed. He later encouraged the methodological study of language’s influence on social life, extending the German tradition into the new century.

Early Texts

Texts focusing on social psychology first emerged in the 20th century.

McDougall published the first notable English-language book in 1908, An Introduction to Social Psychology. It covered emotion, sentiment, morality, character, and religion, a mix of topics quite different from the field today.

McDougall believed social behavior was innate and instinctive. This belief did not survive into modern social psychology.

Allport’s work (1924) shaped current thinking far more directly. He argued that social behavior results from interactions between people, not instinct.

He also took a methodological approach, discussing actual research and describing the field as a science of individual behavior in social contexts.

“… which studies the behavior of the individual in so far as his behavior stimulates other individuals, or is itself a reaction to this behavior” (Allport, 1942, p. 12).

His book covered topics still central today: emotion, conformity, and the effects of an audience on others.

The field then consolidated. Murchison published the first handbook of social psychology in 1935. Murphy and Murphy summarized roughly 1,000 studies in 1931. Klineberg (1940) examined how social context shapes personality development. By the 1950s, several texts were available on the subject.

Journal Development

• 1950s – Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
• 1963 – Journal of Personality, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
• 1965 – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
• 1971 – Journal of Applied Social Psychology, European Journal of Social Psychology
• 1975 – Social Psychology Quarterly, Personality and Social Psychology Bulleti
• 1982 – Social Cognition
• 1984 – Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Early Experiments

There is some disagreement about the first true experiment, but the following are certainly among the most important.

Triplett (1898) ran what is usually called social psychology’s first laboratory experiment, testing how the presence of others affects performance (see Famous Experiments, below, for the full study).

By 1935, the study of social norms had developed, looking at how individuals behave according to the rules of society. This was conducted by Sherif (1935).

Lewin et al. then began experimental research into leadership and group processes by 1939, looking at effective work ethics under different leadership styles.

Later Developments

Much of the key research in social psychology developed after World War II, when researchers grew interested in how people behaved when grouped together.

Key studies followed in several areas. Some focused on how attitudes form, change with social context, and can be measured.

Two studies became famous above the rest. Milgram’s “electric shock” study examined obedience, looking at the role an authority figure plays in shaping behavior. Zimbardo’s prison simulation demonstrated conformity to assigned roles.

Wider topics then began to emerge. Social perception, aggression, relationships, decision-making, pro-social behavior, and attribution all became central themes. These topics are discussed throughout this website.

The growth years of social psychology were the decades following the 1940s.

Core Theories

The scope of social psychology is vast, reflecting the myriad ways social factors intertwine with individual cognition and behavior.

Its principles and findings resonate in virtually every area of human interaction, making it a vital field for understanding and improving the human experience.

1. Interpersonal Relationships: This covers attraction, love, jealousy, friendship, and group dynamics. Understanding how and why relationships form and the factors that contribute to their maintenance or dissolution is central to this domain.
2. Attitude Formation and Change: How do individuals form opinions and attitudes? What methods can effectively change them? This scope includes the study of persuasion, propaganda, and cognitive dissonance.
3. Social Cognition: This examines how people process, store, and apply information about others. Areas include social perception, heuristics, stereotypes, and attribution theories.
4. Social Influence: The study of conformity, compliance, obedience, and the myriad ways individuals influence one another falls within this domain.
5. Group Dynamics: This entails studying group behavior, intergroup relations, group decision-making processes, leadership, and more. Concepts like groupthink and group polarization emerge from this area.
6. Prejudice and Discrimination: Understanding the roots of bias, racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice, as well as exploring interventions to reduce them, is a significant focus.
7. Self and Identity: Investigating self-concept, self-esteem, self-presentation, and the social construction of identity are all part of this realm.
8. Prosocial Behavior and Altruism: Why do individuals sometimes help others, even at a cost to themselves? This area delves into the motivations and conditions that foster cooperative and altruistic behavior.
9. Aggression: From understanding the underlying causes of aggressive behavior to studying societal factors that exacerbate or mitigate aggression, this topic seeks to dissect the nature of hostile actions.
10. Cultural and Cross-cultural Dimensions: As societies become more interconnected, understanding cultural influences on behavior, cognition, and emotion is crucial. This area compares and contrasts behaviors across different cultures and societal groups.
11. Environmental and Applied Settings: Social psychology principles find application in health psychology, environmental behavior, organizational behavior, consumer behavior, and more.
12. Social Issues: Social psychologists might study the impact of societal structures on individual behavior, exploring topics like poverty, urban stress, and crime.
13. Education: Principles of social psychology enhance teaching methods, address issues of classroom dynamics, and promote effective learning.
14. Media and Technology: In the digital age, understanding the effects of media consumption, the dynamics of online communication, and the formation of online communities is increasingly relevant.
15. Law: Insights from social psychology inform areas such as jury decision-making, eyewitness testimony, and legal procedures.
16. Health: Concepts from social psychology are employed to promote health behaviors, understand doctor-patient dynamics, and tackle issues like addiction.

Famous Experiments

Allport (1920) – Social Facilitation

Allport introduced the notion that the presence of others (the social group) can facilitate certain behavior. The first social psychology laboratory experiment is usually credited to Norman Triplett (1898). His method still holds up.

Aim: Triplett wanted to test, under controlled conditions, whether the presence of a competitor improves performance on a simple physical task.

Method: Forty children aged 8 to 17 wound a fishing reel that dragged a small flag around a four-metre course. Each child did this alone, and again in a competing pair, so times could be compared within the same child.

Results: Most children were faster when competing. Some were unaffected. A minority actually went slower, appearing “overstimulated”.

Conclusion: A co-actor generally raises arousal and lifts performance, but too much arousal can impair it.

Additional research since has found a similar pattern: an audience improves performance on well-learned, easy tasks, but can hurt performance on newly learned, difficult ones, through social inhibition.

Bandura (1963) Social Learning Theory

Bandura introduced the notion that behavior in the social world could be modeled.

Three groups of children watched a video of an adult acting aggressively towards a bobo doll. In one condition, the adult was simply seen doing this. In another, the adult was rewarded by a second adult. In the third, the adult was punished.

Children who had seen the adult rewarded were found to be more likely to copy such behavior.

Festinger (1957) – Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger (1957) proposed that holding inconsistent beliefs, attitudes, or cognitions creates dissonance, an uncomfortable inconsistency.

People are motivated to reduce this discomfort. They change one of the conflicting thoughts, or they selectively attend to information that supports one belief and ignores the other (the selective exposure hypothesis).

Dissonance is strongest around difficult choices, or when someone acts against their own attitude.

Three situations bring it about. Effort justification happens when working toward a modest goal. Induced compliance happens when people are forced to act against their attitude. Free choice means weighing up decisions.

Tajfel (1971) – Social Identity Theory

When divided into artificial (minimal) groups, prejudice results simply from the awareness that there is an “out-group” (the other group).

The pattern was stark. The boys were asked to allocate points to others, points that might later become rewards.

Some of these others were in their own group, some in the out-group. The boys showed a strong in-group preference: they gave more points to boys they believed shared their own group.

Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory explains this. People need to maintain a positive sense of personal and social identity. One way to do this is by emphasizing the desirability of one’s own group, and drawing distinctions from other, “lesser” groups.

Weiner (1986) – Attribution Theory

Weiner was interested in the attributions people make for their successes and failures. He asked how we explain behavior in the social world.

He proposed three dimensions behind these explanations. Locus is whether the cause is internal or external. Stability is whether the cause changes over time. Controllability is whether the person could have controlled it.

Weiner’s model sits inside a wider tradition of attribution research. That research also explains why people tend to over-attribute others’ behavior to personality and under-weight the situation, a bias known as the fundamental attribution error.

Milgram (1963) – Shock Experiment

Participants believed they were taking part in a study on learning. They always played the teacher, responsible for running paired-associate learning tasks.

When the learner (a stooge) gave a wrong answer, a scientist told the participant to deliver an electric shock. This never actually happened. The participant did not know that: they had received one real, mild sample shock at the very start of the experiment.

After each wrong answer, participants were told to raise the voltage. Every participant delivered shocks up to 300 volts. 65 percent went all the way to the maximum, 450 volts. The obedience rate stunned researchers.

Obedience was most likely in an unfamiliar setting, with an authority figure present.

This was especially true under covert pressure to comply. Some participants may also have felt that someone else, not themselves, was responsible for what happened.

Haney, Banks, Zimbardo (1973) – Stanford Prison Experiment

Volunteers took part in a simulation. They were randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard, and taken to a converted university basement made to resemble a prison.

Prisoners lost some basic rights. They were unexpectedly arrested, then given a uniform and an identification number, which stripped away their individual identity: they were deindividuated.

The study showed conformity to social roles as part of this interaction. Both groups displayed more negative emotion. Hostility and dehumanization became apparent. Prisoners grew passive, while the guards became active, brutal, and dominant.

Although normative and informational social influence played a role, deindividuation (the loss of a sense of identity) seemed the most likely driver of conformity. Both this study and Milgram’s introduced the idea of social influence, and new ways to observe and test it.

Current Issues and Trends

Current issues and trends reflect major shifts in human behavior, technology, and societal complexity, moving beyond traditional laboratory experiments to address real-world phenomena such as the pervasive influence of digital media and intensifying political divides.

1. The Influence of Digital Media and Technology

The emergence of virtual daily behavior and widespread use of mobile technology have created a major new domain of investigation for social psychologists.

Social Media and Isolation/Anxiety

The relationship between social media and mental well-being is a current focus, particularly in clinical and existential-humanistic (EH) psychology contexts, which often intersect with social psychology.

• Social Media Addiction and Existential Isolation: Compulsive engagement in social media is suggested to be a contemporary supplement to maladaptive defenses against existential isolation.
• Social Media-Induced Anxiety: Research is warranted regarding the effectiveness of therapeutic strategies, such as EH therapy, for preventing and treating social media–induced anxiety like the fear of missing out (FOMO) in adolescents, especially given the isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the current hypertechnologized era.
• Digital Disconnection: Social psychologists are asking questions about how new technologies have shaped attraction and social connections. Research suggests that smartphones and other mobile devices can undermine social connectedness. One study found that limiting social media usage decreases loneliness and depression. Another study examined social media stress and its relationship with sleep in adolescents.
• Virtual Behavior as a Research Target: Researchers are increasingly viewing virtual behavior (how people act and interact on the Internet) as being as serious as “actual” behavior, making it a legitimate area of investigation.

Social Media and Group Dynamics/Influence

Social media platforms are not just communication tools; they are powerful mechanisms for social influence and data collection.

• Cyberbullying: This repeated behavior intended to cause psychological or emotional harm is a focus of research, particularly concerning its causes, effects, and remedies among youth. It is one aspect of social violence that has been studied in psychology.
• Social Norms on Digital Platforms: Social norms—expectations of appropriate behavior—are everywhere, including on social media outlets. Social norms can be rapidly communicated through social media. Researchers explicitly ask what some social norms are on sites like Facebook or Instagram.
• Online Social Influence: Experimental research designs are being exported into online settings. A pioneering study demonstrated the potent effects of online social influence when testing peer feedback on voting behavior, noting that online political-mobilization messages cumulatively resulted in an estimated 340,000 additional votes due to indirect social contagion effects. The role of normative social influence in trends like the polar plunge and the ALS ice bucket challenge which went viral on social media is also discussed.
• Deindividuation Online: The tendency of deindividuation (loss of self-awareness in a group) has been updated to consider how it is manifested in on-line contexts, such as the phenomenon of the Internet “troll,” which is enabled by feelings of anonymity.
• Attraction and Dating Apps: The impact of technology on close relationships is a new area of inquiry, exemplified by new opening vignettes focusing on Tinder and other dating-related apps/websites.

2. Group Polarization and Sociopolitical Issues

Social psychology has long studied group processes, but modern trends include research on how these dynamics contribute to political extremism and conflict resolution in a diverse world.

Group Polarization and Partisanship

Group polarization is defined as the strengthening of an original group attitude after the discussion of views within a group.

• Extreme Views: If a group initially favors a viewpoint, discussion will likely lead to a stronger endorsement of that viewpoint (or vice versa, leading to stronger opposition). Group polarization helps explain actions taken by groups that would not be undertaken by individuals.
• Political Context: Recently, some theorists have argued that group polarization may be partly responsible for the extreme political partisanship that seems ubiquitous in modern society. This is exacerbated when people self-select media outlets consistent with their political views, leading to less exposure to opposing viewpoints and a strengthening of their own perspective, alongside potentially hostile attitudes toward others.
• Mechanisms: Group polarization occurs because of the persuasive arguments interpretation (exposure to new supporting arguments) and the social comparison interpretation (individuals shift to a more extreme stance to fit in and be liked by taking a position similar to everyone else’s but a little more extreme).

Social Justice, Diversity, and Cultural Context

A major modern area of focus involves questioning the Western, individualistic foundation of psychology and incorporating multicultural and social justice perspectives.

• Multicultural/Liberatory Perspectives: Psychology needs to consider the implications of multicultural, social justice, and liberatory perspectives for research and epistemology. Taking these critiques seriously has the potential to be transformative to the entire field of psychology, calling into question problematic foundational assumptions.
• Critique of Western Bias: Mainstream approaches to psychology often impose values like rationalism, individualism, objectivity, and improved functionality on colonized populations. There is a recognition of the dominance of Western White male perspectives and the exclusion of other voices in determining what constitutes the “good life” or upholding the status quo.
• Structural Injustice: Future research is needed regarding the experiences and existential treatment of individuals confronted with a lack of privileges, such as those belonging to an ethnic or socioeconomic minority group, or suffering from structural injustice and moral injustice. Research has applied terror management theory to psychological topics including racism, nationalism, and extremist responses.
• Interdependence and Healing: Marginalized epistemologies underscore the notion that relationships are crucial to healing (a value more conducive to understanding and enacting genuineness in therapy) by honoring individuals’ interdependence. Cultural issues influence concepts like individualist versus collectivist identities.
• The Global Community: Recent efforts in positive psychology have focused on extending its principles toward peace and well-being at the level of the global community, suggesting that a “positive peace psychology” could help in overcoming oppression and working toward global peace in a world common with conflict, hatred, and distrust. Sociocultural experiences, such as experiences of racial discrimination and/or socioeconomic disparities, are increasingly seen as interacting with neuropsychological factors to determine risk or resilience for disorders like anxiety.
• Gender and Identity Politics: There is a rapid change in perceptions of gender roles, media portrayals, and legal trends relating to gender, including the surge in acceptance of homosexuality and gender questioning. Modern youth are increasingly viewing gender as a spectrum instead of a strict male/female binary. The intersection of social context and identity politics forms a critical area of focus.

3. Interdisciplinary Integration and Advanced Methodology

Social psychology is adopting advanced methods and collaborating with other fields to study social phenomena with greater precision.

• Social Neuroscience: This is a developing subfield that uses advanced technologies like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to correlate different kinds of brain activity with social information processing. The goal is to investigate the connection between biological processes and social behavior. For example, social neuroscience has been used to study racial bias by examining activation of the amygdala.
• Computational Approaches: These approaches are burgeoning areas of research, offering tools for disentangling complex dysfunctions and mechanisms related to mental health. Theory-driven, mechanistic models develop algorithms concerning how the brain implements certain computations and how they result in behavior, helping to identify potential targets for behavioral interventions.
• “Smartphone Psychology” and Ecological Assessment: The rise of smartphones presents immense potential for scientific data collection and intervention. These devices automatically store vast amounts of real-world user interaction data and utilize sensors to track physical (e.g., location) and social context (e.g., wireless connections) of interactions. This is part of the broader methodological shift toward Ambulatory Assessment, which assesses behavior and environments in naturalistic settings.
• Applied Social Problem Solving: There is an ongoing focus on applying social psychological theories and methods to address pressing social problems like reducing violence and prejudice, increasing altruism and tolerance, inducing people to conserve resources, practicing safe sex, and eating healthier food. Researchers study issues like conflict resolution within groups, juries, and between nations.