Social psychology is a branch of psychology that studies how social phenomena influences society and how people interact with one another. It is a mixture of psychology and sociology, but most social psychologists are trained in general psychology. Those who earn degrees in social psychology focus more on group behavior and social structures such as class, gender and race. Some topics studied in social psychology schools include:
- Aggression
- Conformity
- Group dynamics
- Influence
- Socialization
Social psychologists understand how groups impact society’s choices and actions. Such studies may be applied to marketing and economic strategies. The four major perspectives of social psychology are sociocultural, evolutionary, social learning and social cognitive. Sociocultural views the inherent behaviors such as survival that stem from evolutionary instinct in addition to cultural influences on the individual. Social learning examines past experiences and their outcomes to create the foundation in developing social behaviors. The social cognitive perspective focuses on how one must choose a particular event to observe, interpret the meaning and how to remember it.
Methodology
Social psychology methodology involves the collection of reliable behavioral data. Experimentation is conducted under controlled conditions in order to study a particular psychological occurrence or to test hypotheses concerning that phenomenon. Experimentation includes:
- Randomly assigning participants to groups, operationally defining variables
- Developing a hypothesis
- Measuring the variables
- Use findings to diagnose various social behaviors
History of Social Psychology
Norman Triplett (1861-1931) authored the first published study in social psychology, which appeared in the American Journal of Psychology in 1898. Triplett proved people tend to work faster in pairs rather than alone when given simple laboratory tasks. In 1924, Floyd Allport (1890-1978) published the textbook "Social Psychology". He is considered a founder of experimental social psychology, in part for his theoretical emphasis on measurement.
Roger Brown (1925-1997) wrote an acclaimed 1965 textbook, also called "Social Psychology". This book played a central role in training a generation of social psychologists. Social scientist, Evelyn Hooker (1907-1996), was the first to study the psychosocial adjustment of gay men outside hospital or prison settings. Her findings eventually lead the American Psychiatric Association, or APA, to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of mental disorders. Today, social psychology continues to persist in the 20th century, inspiring research, which adds understanding of social experience and behavior.
Education and job prospects
In most cases, students becoming a social psychologist should start by earning an undergraduate degree in psychology. Doctorate programs require four or five years of study and focus heavily on research. Students should expect at least four to five years of graduate study in order to earn doctoral degrees in social psychology.
Graduate degrees from social psychology schools prepare students to research, consult and teach in community organizations, educational institutions, government agencies and research institutes. Top social psychology schools are:
- University of Michigan — Ann Arbor
- Ohio State University
- Stanford University
- Yale University
- Harvard University
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most social psychologists work in academic settings, where they teach courses supervising student research as well as working on their own. The mean annual wage for those working in the field was $72,540 in 2010. Psychologists could see a projected employment growth rate of 12 percent.