History of Social
Psychology
Ayesha Haroon
Overview
Birth of Social Psychology
1880-1920s
Confidence and Crisis
1930s-1950s
A Call to Action
1960s-Mid 1970s
Social Psychology Now(2000- Till Now)
Mid 1970s- 2000
An era of Pluralism
Now
Definition
1.
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).
2.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how
people's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, intentions
and goals are constructed within a social context
by the actual or imagined interactions with
others.
Social Psychology Foundation
Plato
Aristotle
• Socio centric
• Platonic- primacy of state over
the individual who had to be
educated to become truly social.
• Individual centric
• Aristotelian- human being is
social by nature and nature can
be trusted to enable individuals
to live together and to enter
personal relationships from
which families, tribes and
ultimately the state will naturally
develop.
Social Psychology Foundation
Plato
Aristotle
• Social nature of man, Needs the
states because individual
himself is not self-sufficient
• Hence state formedPredominant with certain social
sentiments
• Social Groups formed because
of man’s need for them
• The will to mix up is instinctive
• Man is a social animal
• Based on human naturePositive affiliation- collective
way of thinking
Early Social Psychology
Concepts
Hedonism: People act in
order to secure and
maintain pleasure and
to avoid and reduce
pain.
Utilitarianism: The
doctrine that advocates
the pursuit of the
greatest happiness of
the greatest number.
Armchair Phase
The Phases of
Theory
Development
Observation and Data recorded
-Theories were tested
Labs, large scale continuous
Research
I. Birth of Social Psychology (1880-1920s)
1879- Wilhelm Wundt-First laboratory
Distinguished between Experimental and Volkerspsychologie-Folks
Psychology
1897- Norman Triplett- The Dynamogenic Factors in Pace making and
Competition
Repeated with Children-Rolling the spring in Fishing reel- Individually
and in group
Social Facilitation Effect
First Social Psychology
Experiment
• 40 kids in the lab
• Had them turn/roll the fishing reel as fast as they
could
• Children turned the reels faster when they were
around other kids doing the same experiment!
Norman Triplett
Father of
Social
Psychology
Kurt LewinBehaviour = f(PxE)
Three Text Books
• William McDougall
(1908)
Edward Ross
(1908)
Floyd Allport (1924)
II. A Call to Action: 1930s1950s
• Hitler and WWII greatest impact
• Blind obedience, Conformity, Prejudice, Discrimination,
Aggression, Mass murder.
• The world needs answer
Holocaust
Musafar sherif –
conformity studies
• Auto Kinetic Effect- a spot of light in a
dark room will appear to move, even
though it is still.
• Individual Vs Group
Solomon Asch
• 95 % answered correct
• 75% went against their own eyes.
Kurt Lewin
• Father of Social Psychology
• Behaviour =f ( P x E)
• Interactionist Perspective
• Personality Psychology
• We see our world through our hopes, biases, motives.
• Marketing, Propaganda
The field theory of Kurt Lewin is often
considered a model of middle range theory.
Middle Range
Theories
At present, the theories of middle range are
mostly concentrated around four trends:
behaviourism, psychoanalysis, cognitivism and
interactionism.
The greater part of social psychological
theories existing today (theories of frustration,
aggression, changes of attitudes, cognitive
dissonance, cooperation and competition etc.)
belong to the bracket of middle range theories
Peak of social
psychology
III Confidence and
Crisis
Milgram’s Obedience
Experiments
Zimbardo’s prison
experiments
Milgram’s
Obedience
Experiments
The
Advertisement
The Experimental setup
The Shocking Results
Stanley Milgram
Zimbardo Prison
Experiment
The Role Play
The Cruel Treatment
Ethical concerns..
• Over reliability on lab experiments
• Ethical concerns
• Internal crisis
• Prisoners broke down
• Unable to quit the experiment even being told to do so.
• Cruel Behaviour
• Lab experiments along with correlational and field studies
IV. Era of Pluralism
• Multicultural Research
• Cross cultural research
Social Psychology
Now..
• Cognitive social psychology
• Social neuroscience
• Large scale research
• Both Experimental and
Observation research
• Behavioural economics
• Public Policy
Thank You