Social psychologists play an important role in fixing and preventing societal problems. They try to understand which behaviour causes the problem, what factors influence the behaviour and they try to make different interventions. For interventions, social psychology and applied psychology are important. Social psychology is the science that tries to understand the core and causes of individual behaviour and thinking in social situations. Applied psychology is the systematic appliance of social psychological constructs, theories, intervention techniques, research methods and research results to understand social problems better or to improve them. Social psychologists have to work often with scientists from another field to make an intervention.There are multiple similarities between fundamental and applied social psychology. One of those similarities is to develop and test theories. Another similarity is using scientific methods. There are four important values: accuracy (search and evaluate information carefully), objectivity (minimalizing the bias when getting and evaluating the data), scepticism (the extent to which results are verified determines the accuracy of the results) and open-mindedness (accept the evidence, regardless of the consequences). There are also differences between fundamental and applied social psychology. Fundamental social psychological tries to develop tests and theories and it uses a deductive approach (to research...
1 - Go to JoHo.org/en/joinjoho, and join JoHo WorldSupporter by choosing a membership with online access
2 - Return to WorldSupporter.org and create an account with the same email address
3 - State your JoHo WorldSupporter Membership during the creation of your account, and you can start using the services
JoHo can really use your help! Check out the various student jobs here that match your studies, improve your competencies, strengthen your CV and contribute to a more tolerant world
English Summary - Applied social psychology: Understanding and managing social problems van Steg & Buunk - 1st editionThe science of social psychology aims to understand human social behaviour and the cognitions, emotions, and motivations related to it. Many societal problems have aspects that involve social psychology, making research in this field of utmost importance to solving major problems. Often, the solutions to and prevention of societal problems involves a change in attitudes, beliefs, behaviour, and lifestyles. Applied social psychologists focus on the aspects of social problems that can be improved through intervention. They examine which factors influence a particular behaviour and investigate which intervention techniques are appropriate and available.
Social psychology is the field that attempts to gain a better understanding of the nature and causes of individual behaviour and thought in social settings. Applied social psychology is the systematic application of constructs, principles, theories, intervention techniques, and research findings of social psychology to the solving and understanding of social problems. Constructs are the individual psychological characteristics that are latent and observable only through the use of questionnaires (ex. Attitudes, values, and norms). Principles are statements that describe how psychological processes function (ex. the foot-in-the-door technique, cognitive dissonance, and the availability heuristic). Theories are integrated sets of principles describing, explaining, and predicting events based on observations. They cannot be considered facts or laws and must be tested.
While basic social psychologists focus on developing and testing theories, applied social psychologists focus on resolving and understanding practical problems. Therefore, theory development is not the main reason that applied social psychologists do research, and they can often use established theories to tackle problems.
Basic social psychologists follow a deductive approach, starting with a theory and examining how it can be used to understand behaviour. Applied social psychologists take an inductive approach, starting from specific problems and examining which theories are best to understand and explain the problem.
English BulletPoints - Applied social psychology: Understanding and managing social problems van Steg & Buunk - 1st editionSocial psychologists play an important role in fixing and preventing societal problems. They try to understand which behaviour causes the problem, what factors influence the behaviour and they try to make different interventions. For interventions, social psychology and applied psychology are important. Social psychology is the science that tries to understand the core and causes of individual behaviour and thinking in social situations. Applied psychology is the systematic appliance of social psychological constructs, theories, intervention techniques, research methods and research results to understand social problems better or to improve them. Social psychologists have to work often with scientists from another field to make an intervention.
There are multiple similarities between fundamental and applied social psychology. One of those similarities is to develop and test theories. Another similarity is using scientific methods. There are four important values: accuracy (search and evaluate information carefully), objectivity (minimalizing the bias when getting and evaluating the data), scepticism (the extent to which results are verified determines the accuracy of the results) and open-mindedness (accept the evidence, regardless of the consequences). There are also differences between fundamental and applied social psychology. Fundamental social psychological tries to develop tests and theories and it uses a deductive approach (to research if a theory is useful for understanding social behaviour). Applied social psychology tries to understand practical problems and solve them. It uses an inductive approach (which theories help us to understand a social problem). Applied social psychology is usually applied in the field.
Within the applied social psychology there are different jobs. There are researcher jobs (to research which factors cause social problems), consultants (assisting groups, individuals and organisations in solving their problems, giving training and coaching) and policy advisor (giving advice to policy makers to change cognitions and behaviour).
There are different theories about social influence in psychology. Social influence has to do with the way in which the social environment can influence our thoughts, behaviour and feelings. Some theories look at imitation (automatically, unintentionally cooping someone’s behaviour), other theories look at conformity (changing behaviour to be consistent with real or imagined social expectancies) and other theories look at obedience. Cialdini and Goldstein suggest that people give way to a request when obedience results in attaining goals. Three goals are: developing important social relationships, getting to know oneself and to decrease ambiguity.
There are several ways to navigate the large amount of summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter.
Do you want to share your summaries with JoHo WorldSupporter and its visitors?
Field of study
Add new contribution