HISTORICAL INFLUENCE ON SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Historical influence on social psychology



Historical influence on social psychology

Introduction

Social psychology is the science and arts of understanding of behavior, attitude, feelings and emotions of human beings and its influences with respect to their surroundings. It covers what are the factors that influence human behavior, why behavior and attitude of human beings get influenced by certain factors, what is the role of different factors in influencing human behavior. Social psychology basically revolves around three major phenomena which are; social perception, social influence, social interaction all of these three major phenomena go hand in hand.

Background of social psychology

Psychology has undergone a profound paradigmatic shift in the past few decades. This field was originated in United States of America and undergone several changes and evolve itself into a separate field.

Historical influence on social psychology

After events of World War II and various political events of Europe after that war aid the field of social psychology to develop and nurture itself. One of the main reasons why these events are considered as the main contributor in the development of social psychology is that these events occurred when social psychology was in its initial stages of development and growth.

Three influential events in social psychology

Three most influential happenings in the early years of social psychology gave identification to this field and showed the light of further development in the same field. These three major events were first social psyc experiment in 1898, Norm Triplet's social facilitation studies and the dynomogentic factors in pacemaking and competition.

Publication of books in 1908

In 1908, first two text books in the field of social psychology were published. William McDougal's “An introduction to social psychology” and Edward Ross's “Social psychology” were the first two books that got published at that time.. The publication of these two books made the presence of social psychology felt.

War and social psychology

Even before the World War II was ended government officials had begun to recruit social psychologists. It was a time when the state was suffering from variegated social issues. To deal with all these issues government thought of taking help of social psychologist and in turn this event contributed a lot in the development and progression of this field. Extensive research related to de-motivation, hopelessness, war time economy, moralization, demoralization, rehabilitation of people who were suffering from the after effects of war contributed mammoth amount of efforts in the development of social psychology.

Research in above fields has introduced various research techniques and tools. Sample survey was one of the methods that came into existence during this period of time not only this, but it also opened new venues also in this field like organizational behavior and economic behavior. Furthermore, it changed social psychologists' opinion about the field and its place in society and established social psychology as a legitimate field of specialization that can get recognition from the public.

Post war development

Once the war was over social psychologists had forum to further develop this ...