Generally, science is a field that organizes and puts knowledge into provable experiments in real-life situations. Science is comprised of several areas of study, amongst them being psychology. Psychology is a field in science that deals with the thinking capability of an individual and his actions and activities. A human being is known to have the ability to take part in various physical activities in life and other intellectual processes through the performance of investigations and setting up some personal principles and conclusions in life. In most cases, the conclusions that are arrived at are for the benefit of the entire community.
Psychology also entails a range of fields of study, amongst them being social psychology. Social psychology may be said to be a branch of psychology that entails studying people’s feelings, emotions, and their interaction with other members within the society. This encompasses people’s feelings, thoughts, sensations, and general behavior. The components of social psychology exhibited by an individual influence the person’s behavior next to him/her. This critique will focus on the impact of social psychology on my life.
Social psychology influences nearly every step and judgment that I may be anticipating to take in my life. Any footstep I make ends up to my realization that it has been influenced by social psychology. To begin with, it is my personal social cognition. According to Bartlett (1932), social cognition entails the “processing, storage, as well as the application of social information.” Social psychology influences the functioning of my entire intellectual capability. Social psychology thus affects the general activity, including collecting the whole actions and deeds that I need to take through the re-organization of knowledge.
The whole of my academic experience that I always gain so that I can use some time to come is always the effect of social psychology. The impact of social psychology in performing the processing of social information is very vital. This is because it influences my interest, attention, and need in any given communication source, such as the media. Social psychology affects my entire notions about the world. These include the appearance of the features on the earth’s surface and the performance of different things on earth. The mental shortcut enables me to interpret everything that is around me effectively. Social psychology influences the functioning of the mind persistently without stopping. Social psychology plays a significant role by influencing social behavior and, at the same time, influence thinking too (Brown, 1936).
Social psychology influences my attitude as well as the change in attitude. Attitude at present has become a significant area of research in social psychology. The majority of the social psychologists have stated attitude as their primary area of concern for study. Attitude is a very vital area of study. This is because attitude is what determines the success of an individual. An individual can never attain his/her expectations without the help of attitude.
Attitude measures the rate of interest of an individual towards the task the person is to undertake. On the other side, an individual might decide to change his attitude from being negative to positive for attitude change. An individual with positivism towards any task that he is given is the probable achiever (Cooley, 1956).
Concerning this, I must admit that I cannot do anything without a positive attitude towards any given task. Therefore, the study of social psychology is critical is it entails the most vital areas of study. According to a certain scientist in Brown (1936), individuals can decide to alter their lives by modifying their minds’ attitude. Furthermore, attitude may be considered a psychological state that is comparative to what we believe and influences our entire life.
Attitude can be exhibited in words as well as deeds. Attitude is created by the usual manner of thinking that may determine whether the attitude leans to the positive side or the negative side. According to Ross (1908), each individual worldwide has his own capability to choose his/her own attitude. Attitudes are, in most cases, developed from the person one interacts mostly with. Attitude can thus be explained to be contagious.
Social psychologists recommend individuals to interact with idealistic individuals highly. Interaction with such people will increase the chances of developing a positive psychological attitude. Individuals who don’t have the right attitude will tend to develop some kind of attraction towards optimistic persons. Therefore, the attitude of an individual originates from the mind. Basing on the influence of social psychology, an individual may start to condition his thinking such that he/she develops a positive psychological attitude.
This may assist the individual in attaining his goals. Psychologists concentrate on the development, components, and how the attitude changes. Social psychologists have developed three core components of attitudes. These are the affective, behavioral, and cognitive components. These components describe how we feel, behave, and understand (Cohen & Nagel, 1934).
Social psychology affects my life through various activities such as violence and aggression. Whenever such activities occur, many individuals who were not part of the mayhem are always affected. These activities arise as a result of social disagreements among a group of individuals. I can recall the day when I initiated a fight among us within the society, which turned out to be very severe. This was because of the poor actions that were being taken by our leader.
I realized that violence and aggression must be directed towards somebody. The impacts are, however, for the entire community. My decision to start a fight is always influenced by social psychology. The influences of the media have also been discovered to cause violent activities. Most of the causes of acts of violence emerge from a social ground. This has prompted social psychologists to research the various causes of violence and avoid or counteract violence. The major cause of violence is alcohol. A person who is drunk always starts fights at any place anytime (Cooley, 1956).
Social psychology affects prosocial behavior in my life. This entails exploring diverse influences that enhance the deeds for the benefit of individuals next to you. My behavior has always kept on changing day by day. I have never had the same sentimental feelings all day long. This is all attributed to social psychology. With time, my feelings, thoughts, and deeds have been changing. Whenever I come close to my colleagues, especially those with problems, I tend to develop a feeling of assisting them without necessarily requesting, for any pay, from them.
I developed the feeling of readily offering voluntary services, especially after long periods of interaction with colleagues. Generally, looking at my prosocial behavior at present and comparing it with my behavior some times back, the behavior is incomparable. This proves some changes in my prosocial behavior. This is attributable to social psychology, thus influences the prosocial behavior of life (Deutsch, 1983).
Social psychology affects my life through prejudice, as well as discrimination. The various acts of injustice, discrimination, and prejudice have always existed within a social group of individuals. Sometimes, I tend to develop feelings of hatred towards a group of individuals from certain groups. This originates from the belief in the mind that associates a certain group of individuals with different unique character traits. Like any other human being, I, fortunately, have likes towards certain characters in a particular group of persons. I also have dislikes towards the characters exhibited by a certain group of persons.
This negative attitude I have developed towards these characters believed to be exhibited by a certain group of individuals that makes me negatively affect individuals who share a common origin with the hated group. This has even evoked a lot of interest among the social psychologists to venture into the field. Most of them have specified to take part in determining the origin of the negative feelings, the causes, and even impacts of the poor attitude towards others (Ross, 1908). Therefore social psychology dominates in every part and aspect of my life.
Social psychology influences my personal and social identity. When I try to figure out how I came to know more about myself, it is all comparative to social psychology. The entire information relies on the mind and intellectual capability. I knew the influence of social psychology on my personal and social identity when I realized that my self-perceptions greatly impacted the individuals who were around my presence. My perceptions determine the kind of people to interact with. I discovered that most of my inner life perceptions influenced most of my areas of social interaction (Sherif, 1936).
From the examples, it can be noted that social psychology widely affects every aspect of life, from the thinking of an individual, the social interaction between persons, how an individual’s decision influences the people around him, and how an individual comes to know about his identity. Therefore, social identity is a vast field of study that entails nearly all decisions and aspects of life. I would thus recommend for more individuals to undertake studies and courses in social psychology. This is to increase the number of individuals to venture into the field.
Reference List
Bartlett, C. (1932). Remembering: A study in social and experimental psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, F. (1936). Psychology and the social order: An introduction to the dynamic study of social fields. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Cohen, M., & Nagel, E. (1934). An introduction to logic and scientific method. New York: Harcourt.
Cooley, H. (1956). Human nature and the social order. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Deutsch, M. (1983). Current perspectives on justice. European Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 305-319.
Ross, A. (1908). Social psychology. New York: Macmillan.
Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York: Harper.