What is the term social scientists use to describe the process of explaining peoples behavior?

Conclusion

Social psychology is a far-reaching field with implications for every facet of human life that gains attention in any discipline concerned with social and behavioral sciences. The fact that both psychologists and sociologists accord social psychology a prominent place in their disciplines indicates the interdisciplinary nature of the topic. Additionally, it suggests that bringing different intellectual orientations to the study of social psychological phenomenon can generate important insights for the social and behavioral sciences. Some reviews of social psychology have decried the lack of integration of psychological and sociological perspectives and research. However, as noted in our assessment of both textbooks and research articles, there is an indication that such integration is occurring, as represented by the striking overlap in research topics. Furthermore, all three sociology textbooks and one of the psychology textbooks explicitly note that social psychology is a branch of both sociology and psychology.

The strategy used here for systematically assessing the field in terms of sociological and psychological orientations may have unintentionally led to the illusion that there are more differences than similarities across these approaches to social psychology, or that any differences may be counterproductive to the growth of social psychological knowledge. To the contrary, the differences contribute important new insights and critical avenues of integration, which may lead to an enhanced body of knowledge that informs the social and behavioral sciences. Moreover, we believe that shifts in the technological and research landscape are likely to catalyze integration across the two disciplines. For example, as online databases such as PsycINFO continue to archive both sociological and psychological sources, researchers are more likely to stumble upon useful insights of others from a different orientation. Additionally, print and online journals with explicit interdisciplinary orientations [such as Journal of Social Psychology and Current Research in Social Psychology] may also facilitate the flow of knowledge across disciplinal boundaries. Likewise, increased attention to the importance and value of interdisciplinary research by higher education institutions and organizations that support research in the social and behavioral sciences may motivate further collaborations by researchers trained in different orientations. These promising shifts make it all the more important to continue to represent the interdisciplinary nature of social psychology and the topics that are covered in both sociological and psychological research. As noted by Michener and DeLamater in 1999 [p. 5; italics in the original], “Social psychology bridges the gap between sociology and psychology…As we might expect, this leads them to formulate different theories and to conduct different programs of research. Yet, these differences are best viewed as complementary rather than conflicting. Social psychology as a field is the richer for them.”

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people perceive, influence, and relate to other people. This general definition encompasses diverse processes ranging from the situational determinants of interpersonal and intergroup behavior to the intrapsychic cognitive and affective mechanisms that regulate social behavior. Although social psychologists emphasize the situational context of behavior, they do so by recognizing the role of motives, preferences, and dispositions in shaping an individual's response to these situations. Evaluating and refining through empirical investigation general theories of cause and effect relations in social behavior is the field's primary operational focus. Methods used in these studies are diverse, emphasizing laboratory experimentation but increasingly incorporating complementary methods. Because social interaction is fundamental to most human behavioral phenomena and processes, the theories and findings of social psychology have widespread relevance across all of the social and behavioral sciences.

Motivation and Environment

Social Psychology has long studied the social influences on motivation. In the context of creativity research, this has also proved to be a valuable entry point. What is the relationship between creativity, motivation, and the environment?

To be motivated, means to be moved to do something. Unless we are moved to do something, it is unlikely we will be creative in doing that task. Motivation can therefore be thought of as a person's attitude toward a task, which ranges from being highly motivated and therefore wanting to move towards a task, to being highly unmotivated to do it, and wanting to move away from it, presumably as fast as possible. Research indicates that intrinsic motivation is a key factor in creativity. Intrinsic means ‘from within.’ Intrinsic motivation literally means that we are moved from within to do something. The intrinsically motivating factors can include fascination for the subject, enjoyment while performing the task, or a feeling of accomplishment. Intrinsically motivated people enjoy what they do, and they do so because they find the task itself rewarding. The journey is the reward.

Extrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from external sources rather than the pleasure of the task itself. Financial incentives and social approval are examples of extrinsic motivation. Extrinsically motivated people do the task because there is an external reward attached to it. The task itself is not what they enjoy; it is the reward [financial or otherwise] that provides the appeal.

There is ample evidence to suggest that people are much more creative when they are intrinsically motivated, rather than when they are driven to perform by extrinsic motivation. This finding makes intuitive sense: performing a task because it provides personal enjoyment or a basic feeling of gratification is a very different type of motivation than doing something because of external pressures or extrinsic rewards, or ‘just to make a buck.’ Yet, using rewards to manipulate or control behavior, achieving an expected reward, meeting deadlines, winning or competing, or managerial edicts are all frequently used motivators.

A particularly interesting implication of this research of course is that whether a job is intrinsically interesting to us or not is on some level a personal choice. This choice as to how we view a task or job reflects a subjective dimension of work. We can choose to find our particular task boring, or we can find something fascinating about it. Even dishwashing can be interesting if performed with certain states of mind. It is possible to focus not on the nature of the task itself [dishwashing does not strike most people as an intrinsically fascinating task], but on the nature of our awareness while we perform a task. If we are not interested in a task, we tend not to do such a good job. If our interest is in doing a good job, and working at our peak regardless of the nature of the task, we can actually ‘be moved’ by the task. It is also possible to reframe the task at hand, from one that is desperately boring to one that is potentially exciting – finding a new way of performing the task, or finding something that we can learn while we do the task.

Intrinsic motivation is diminished when external rewards are used to make people perform. The presence of such extrinsic factors alters peoples’ perceptions or reasons for engaging in the task. Creativity will be inhibited if the perception is that a task is being performed for the purposes of getting a reward, rather than because of intrinsic interest in the task itself. This does not mean that creativity requires the total absence of rewards or recognition for good work, simply that external reward should not be the main motivation.

Social Psychological Practices, Ethics, and Institutional Recognition

From its very beginnings, social psychology was conceived as an empirical science. Initially, social psychology was mainly experimental. This practice formed generations of social psychologists and characterized the discipline. There has been, however, criticism about the preponderance of experimentation [see also Gergen, 1973, 1995], and the development of social constructionist approaches opened the field to qualitative methods and epistemology. Moreover, survey methodology has been widely used and sophisticated statistical techniques have been developed to test social psychological hypotheses [for a comprehensive account, see Social Psychology: Research Methods]. Nowadays, social psychologists use a variety of methods including techniques of neuroscience. Social psychological research is no longer characterized by a particular methodology. What does characterize the discipline is the importance that is given to empirical findings either to test a theoretical hypothesis or to help develop new theories.

The use of experimentation with human participants raises ethical issues. These concerns are raised in particular because experimental studies have sometimes used deception and not revealed initially to participants the real purpose of the study, in order to create the desired conditions of the social context. Famous studies such as the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison experiment by Zimbardo [1973] were criticized for the conditions to which they exposed their participants. Today, ethical concerns are very seriously taken into account, and ethical committees within universities review research projects and make sure that all ethical standards are kept. Important steps are taken to get participants' informed consent and to fully debrief them at the end of the study. Associations and academic societies have been involved in making public ethical codes of conduct [examples of these codes of conduct for research are the American Psychological Association standard 8: research and publication //www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=11 and the British Psychological Society //www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/code_of_human_research_ethics.pdf see also the site of the European Union //ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1433].

Nowadays, there are also debates about replication issues, and journals devote special editions looking to strengthen the discipline by assuring replication [see, for example, a 2012 special edition of Perspectives on Psychological Science]. However, for some types of contexts and methodologies, replication is not the important issue. What matters is the understanding of the relationships and the phenomena occurring in a particular context. Social psychology as an alive community of research practice will continue to discuss these issues and enrich the scientific process.

At an institutional level, despite the interdisciplinary nature of social psychology, most scholars work in psychology departments and are trained through a psychology curriculum. Social psychology courses are considered core modules in degrees of psychology. There are many associations and academic societies of social psychology that organize conferences, academic activities, and summer schools for young researchers, such as: Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Society of Experimental Social Psychology, European Association of Social Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Asian Association of Social Psychology, Society of Australasian Social Psychology, Canadian Psychological Association: Social and Personality Section, British Psychological Society: Social Psychology Section, Association pour la Diffusion de la Psychologie Sociale, and many national associations. Moreover, social psychologists publish their work in a multitude of journals [for example, Asian Journal of Social Psychology, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, British Journal of Social Psychology, Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, European Journal of Social Psychology, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Social Psychological and Personality Science]. The multitude of learning societies and journals testify to the rich scientific environment of social psychology and the depth of institutional support it has.

Three Faces of Sociological Social Psychology

Social psychology is the study of human behavior in a social context. Utilizing this definition, researchers from several fields may be considered ‘social psychologists’ but they approach the field in different ways and utilize different perspectives in their approach to the topic. Some psychologists, for instance, focus on the immediate social contexts of interactions in the study of social psychology while others focus on genetic or internal thought processes occurring during those interactions. They also employ specific psychological perspectives such as social learning theory. Sociologists employ different perspectives and methods in the study of human social behavior than psychologists and sociologists emphasize the societal conditions that impact social psychological dynamics. How, for instance, do people's position in society influence interactions in small groups? How do we learn social roles in society? Sociologists employ a cybernetic approach to social psychology in which individuals interact in ways that reproduce society and society impacts individual-level interactions through norms, roles, statuses, and other elements of society [Figure 1].

The three main perspectives in sociological social psychology include symbolic interaction, social structure and personality, and group processes [House, 1977, 1992]. Symbolic interactionists traditionally employ qualitative methods to study the social construction of reality, the ways that individual interactions lead to the development of society [Berger and Luckmann, 1967]. Social psychologists who employ the social structure and personality perspective typically utilize surveys and other quantitative research techniques to assess the impacts of society on individual-level thoughts, feelings, and behaviors once they have been produced. A third group of scholars in sociological social psychology emphasizes the study of societal processes during group interactions. In some cases, researchers examine how social conditions [e.g., status differences] impact interactions within the group. In other cases, these scholars emphasize the study of how status differences develop within groups. In this sense, groups represent a microcosm of larger society.

The role of sociobiology in sociological social psychology has been growing over the last decade. Sociobiology is utilized both to understand the relative impacts of genetic dispositions on social psychological processes and to assess how social conditions may impact biological outcomes. Some social scientists have argued that characteristics such as intelligence quotients [IQ], for instance, are genetically determined [Herrnstein and Murray, 1994] while sociologists examine how social conditions impact those things or how humans may define those characteristics as more or less important in society.

Abstract

Social psychology emphasizes situational and cognitive influences on violence and its prevention. Using a systems approach, this article examines the causes of both direct and structural violence at levels ranging from the interpersonal to the societal and international levels. Key situational influences include obedience, conformity, social learning processes, intergroup competition, relative and absolute deprivation, and structural inequities. Key cognitive influences include social identity, radical ideologies, cultural narratives and symbols, enemy images, and dehumanization. The article examines both the causes of violence and social psychological approaches to peacemaking and peacebuilding.

Social Psychology Theories between the World Wars

Social psychology increasingly aspired to address social problems between the World Wars. The scientific status of psychology in the United States was solidified by the rise of testing, measurement, and application, and behaviorist theory. In the 1920s, the measurement of individual attitudes, values, personality traits, and stereotypes all became more ordinary practices, and competing theories of what these constructs might be were generally occluded as they began to be measured with greater frequency and enthusiasm. Floyd Allport's [1890–1979] 1924 volume Social Psychology explained effects of suggestion and association in the behaviorist language of ‘conditioned reflexes.’ Allport defined the ‘social’ of social psychology in individualist terms, ruling out of court the idea that there was a ‘group’ level of description; which he described as a ‘fallacy’ [Danziger, 2000b]. Freud's work stimulated a public appetite for psychological theory as sexual mores changed. Social theories, minds, and societies entered more active feedback loops particularly when social scientists were called upon to address social problems created by the great depression.

Theories of ‘culture’ and ‘personality’ put mind and society into theoretical relationships in ways that remained closely tied to psychoanalytic theory and practice rather than measurement. In 1928, anthropologist Margaret Mead [1901–78] published Coming of Age in Samoa, using variation in gender roles as ‘negative instances’ to disprove theories about universal human nature. Along with German émigrés such as Karen Horney [1885–1952], and American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan [1892–1949], Mead and other anthropologists formed alliances around New York known later as ‘the culture and personality school’ whose members attempted to theorize modern subjective experiences of neurosis, anxiety, and freedom at the boundaries of psychiatry and the social sciences. Adolf Hitler's rise to power stimulated a very different need for ‘cultural’ explanation of consciousness and behavior. At Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research, scholars such as Erich Fromm [1900–80] used Marx to theorize the problems of adjustment revealed by psychoanalysis as specific to capitalist societies. Fromm also contributed to the fertile culture and personality school, and his 1941 Escape from Freedom typifies a Marxist-Freudian style of historically embedded theory.

Hitler's rise to power in 1933 created a new form of dictatorship that stimulated a new interest in explaining ‘suggestion’ because of Hitler's effective propaganda. Prior to this, Gestalt psychology had flourished in Berlin, and psychologist Kurt Lewin's [1890–1947] attention was drawn particularly to social motivation [Ash, 1995]. His 1935 A Dynamic Theory of Personality summarized ‘field theory’ – the most enduringly influential theoretical synthesis in social psychology from this period. Lewin specified that behavior was a function of a person and phenomenological proximal environment. Expressing a belief in the scientific status of measurement, Lewin's central axiom was expressed by a formula B = f[P, E], used topographical diagrams to show which behaviors could occur, and ‘vector psychology’ to predict which behaviors would occur [Gold, 1999]. The practical utility of this general theory seemed demonstrated by Lewin's own work on the effects of authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire leadership. Muzafer Sherif's [1906–88] 1936 studies of conformity to group norms also expanded the concept of the ‘norm’ beyond sociology, toward something that could be manipulated in a situationist experiment to effect the behavior of individuals and groups. John Dollard [1900–80] and colleagues' Frustration and Aggression [1939] was a similarly situationist theory that drew on behaviorism, engaging Freudian concepts to theorize aggressive behavior as a form of drive reduction. By linking patterns of lynching to low cotton prices in the South it went beyond classic Lewinian theory in examining historical change as well as the individual's immediate ‘environment.’

3.5 Social Dynamics

Social psychology provides evidence of social dynamics impacting on perception, cognition, attitudes, prejudice, and aggression [among other areas]. However, while this suggests a potential influence on financial decision making, the theories of social psychology do not lend themselves to hypothesis development and testing in finance as easily as the theories in cognitive and emotional psychology.

Research applying social psychology theories in behavioral finance has concentrated primarily on the theory of conformity. Conformity is the tendency for individuals in a group to adopt similar attitudes; it has been linked to cultural formation, fashion fads, herd behavior, and a wide variety of social norms [Baron and Byrne, 2004]. The theory of conformity is said to originate with Asch’s [1955; see Baron et al., 1996, for a comprehensive review] experiments where participants in an experiment were persuaded to give wrong answers to a straightforward question when they had to give their answer after a number of “pretend” participants all gave the wrong answer.

In behavioral finance studies, links have been drawn between the social interaction of groups of people and their tendency to invest. Shiller and Pound [1989] find that the decision to buy a particular equity is influenced by someone the investor knows directly telling them about it. Shiller [2000] also noted the importance of social interaction in the internet stock pricing bubble driven by herding behavior. Hong et al. [2004] find that factors such as church attendance [as a proxy for social interaction] were a determinant of likelihood to invest. While Duflo and Saez [2002] found that employees’ tendency to invest in a pension scheme seems to depend on social norms in that workplace. More recently, Kaustia and Knüpfer [2012] show that the decision to enter financial markets is partially determined by the past success of peers, further suggestive of herding behavior. Other research, such as Nofsinger [2005], draws a plausible link between social mood and overconfidence.

In emerging markets, Ahmed et al. [2010] document evidence of price bubbles in nearly all MSCI emerging markets at some point between 1995 and 2005 [start date for a country dependent on data availability], but do not explore whether the frequency of such bubbles differs from developed markets. Chang et al. [2000] document a greater presence of herding behavior in the emerging markets of South Korea and Taiwan compared to developed markets. More recent research by Chiang and Zheng [2010] documents herding as being more prevalent in the culturally collectivist Asian countries compared to the relatively individualistic Latin American countries. In other emerging markets [and less-developed markets], Białkowski et al. [2012] find that for Muslim-majority countries stock markets tend to rise predictably during the socially [and, of course, religiously] important month of Ramadan, perhaps suggestive of herding in these markets in that period. Chen et al. [2007] further claim that herding should be more prevalent in collectivist cultures in their study of emerging markets and behavioral finance. This is suggestive of a greater role for social dynamics in collectivist emerging markets, but clearly the literature is very limited and in need of further expansion.

The social psychology of status and role refers to the study of the social interactive processes that involve people in displaying, creating, and changing statuses and roles. The 1930s writings of Ralph Linton, George Herbert Mead, and Robert E. Park initiated the conception and study of the social psychology of status and role. Following World War II three social scientists, Theodore R. Sarbin, Erving Goffman, and Ralph H. Turner, were exceptionally influential in the conceptual elaboration of the social psychology of status and role. By the close of the 1970s a theoretical language of status and role had been established. The language provided for an empirically grounded interactive theory of status and role as social processes. The language was conceptually bold but still preliminary. The 1980s began a period of critical consolidation of theorizing status and role. Three forms of conceptual consolidation were proffered. Although still not unified, the conceptual language of status and role is now routinely employed in a variety of empirical investigations such as the study of organizations and organizational change; group, gender, and race relations; and in many other studies where the empirical issues call for their use.

1 Organization of this Review

Social psychology's theories each tend to center on one of a few major types of social motivation, describing the social person as propelled by particular kinds of general needs and specific goals. Most reviews acknowledge these motivational roots by reference to broad traditions within general psychology or sociology: role theories, cognitive and gestalt theories, learning and reinforcement theories, and psychoanalytic or self-theories.

As a variant, this review takes a more integrated but compatible premise, based on people's evolution in a social niche: to survive and thrive, people need other people. Several core social motives arguably result from this perspective. Over the twentieth century, social and personality psychologists frequently have identified the same five or so core social motives, which should enhance social survival [Stevens and Fiske 1995]. Belonging reflects people's motive to be with other people, especially to participate in groups. Understanding constitutes people's motive for shared social accounts of themselves, others, and surroundings. Controlling describes people's motive to function effectively, with reliable contingencies between actions and outcomes. Self-enhancing comprises people's tendencies to affirm the self. Trusting concerns people's motives to see others [at least own-group others] positively. While these motives are not absolute [other reviewers would generate other taxonomies], not invariant [people can survive without them], nor distinct [they overlap], they do arguably facilitate social life, and they serve the present expository purpose. Within each core social motive, distinct levels of analysis address social psychological processes primarily within the individual, between two individuals, and within groups.