- On the Web:
- Social Sciences LibreTexts - What Is Social Psychology? (Nov. 07, 2026)
social psychology
-
What is social psychology?
Social psychology is the scientific study of how individuals behave within social and cultural contexts. It explores a range of topics, using observation data and various theories.
Research originally came from the United States, but is expanding to other countries. Social psychologists work in university psychology or sociology departments, and applied settings like industry and government. They are employed in businesses and mental health facilities and work to improve mass communications, conflict resolution, and child rearing.
Early research involved lab experiments, but now sociological, cognitive, and linguistic approaches are more common.
5 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How does social psychology study people's thoughts and behaviors in groups?
Social psychology uses scientific methods to study how individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by their social and cultural context. It explores various aspects of group dynamics, such as conformity, social influence, and intergroup relations.
Social psychologists examine how individuals' perceptions and behaviors change within groups, focusing on the impact of group norms, social pressures, and hierarchies. They also investigate topics such as prejudice, discrimination, and the factors that contribute to social harmony or conflict.
5 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What is conformity in social psychology?
In social psychology, conformity is adapting one's beliefs, attitudes, actions, or perceptions to align with those of a group. This is driven by the desire for group acceptance and the need to have an accurate view of reality.
Conformity can manifest as public agreement (compliance) or private agreement (acceptance). Compliance involves outwardly changing behavior to match group norms, while acceptance involves altering one's private opinions.
Classic studies by Muzafer Sherif and Solomon Asch highlight the power of social influence. Sherif's work showed how group norms can shape perceptions of ambiguous stimuli, while Asch's experiments demonstrated that individuals often conform even when the majority is clearly wrong.
2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How do social roles and expectations influence how people act?
Social roles and expectations profoundly shape individual behavior. A social role is a comprehensive pattern of behavior expected of a person in a specific social position, offering a means of identifying and situating individuals within society. These expectations encompass actions and qualities, influencing how individuals behave and interact.
People often conform to group norms due to the desire for acceptance and the need to accurately perceive reality. Social identity theory suggests individuals seek positive traits within their groups, potentially leading to favoring in-groups over out-groups. The logic of appropriateness emphasizes that individuals often prioritize conforming to social norms, routines, and roles, sometimes subconsciously. Gender roles, shaped by cultural and social factors, further illustrate how expectations based on concepts of masculinity and femininity influence behavior.
5 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
What is the difference between stereotypes and prejudice in social psychology?
Stereotypes are fixed, oversimplified, and often biased beliefs about a group of people. They are typically generalizations lacking rational support, which can prevent individuals from seeing others as individuals and can also legitimize hostility against a whole social group.
Prejudice is an adverse or hostile attitude toward a group or its members, generally without sufficient evidence and is characterized by irrational, stereotyped beliefs. Prejudice can target various groups based on factors like ethnicity, weight, disability, or religion. Stereotypes can be used to justify hostility, blaming disadvantaged groups and relieving individual frustration.
4 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How do experiments in social psychology help us understand why people help or harm each other?
Social psychology experiments offer insights into the factors influencing helping and harming behaviors. Studies like the Stanford Prison Experiment highlight how social situations and assigned roles can drastically alter individual behavior, leading to cruelty or compliance.
The bystander effect demonstrates that the presence of others can inhibit helping behavior in emergencies, suggesting a diffusion of responsibility.
Experiments such as the Milgram experiment, reveal how authority can compel individuals to act against their conscience, even to the point of inflicting harm. These experiments underscore the powerful role of situational and social factors in shaping human behavior, for good or ill.
4 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
social psychology, the scientific study of the behaviour of individuals in their social and cultural setting. Although the term may be taken to include the social activity of laboratory animals or those in the wild, the emphasis here is on human social behaviour.
Once a relatively speculative, intuitive enterprise, social psychology has become an active form of empirical investigation, the volume of research literature having risen rapidly after about 1925. Social psychologists now have a substantial volume of observation data covering a range of topics; the evidence remains loosely coordinated, however, and the field is beset by many different theories and conceptual schemes.
Early impetus in research came from the United States, and much work in other countries has followed U.S. tradition, though independent research efforts are being made elsewhere in the world. Social psychology is being actively pursued in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Scandinavia, Japan, and Russia. Most social psychologists are members of university departments of psychology; others are in departments of sociology or work in such applied settings as industry and government.
" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">
Much research in social psychology has consisted of laboratory experiments on social behaviour, but this approach has been criticized in recent years as being too stultifying, artificial, and unrealistic. Much of the conceptual background of research in social psychology derives from other fields of psychology. While learning theory and psychoanalysis were once most influential, cognitive and linguistic approaches to research have become more popular; sociological contributions also have been influential.
Social psychologists are employed, or used as consultants, in setting up the social organization of businesses and psychiatric communities; some work to reduce conflict between ethnic groups, to design mass communications (e.g., advertising), and to advise on child rearing. They have helped in the treatment of mental patients and in the rehabilitation of convicts. Fundamental research in social psychology has been brought to the attention of the public through popular books and in the periodical press.
Research methods
Laboratory experiments, often using volunteer students as subjects, omit many features of daily social life. Such experiments also have been criticized as being subject to bias, since the experimenters themselves may influence the results. Research workers who are concerned more with realistic settings than with rigour tend to leave the laboratory to perform field studies, as do those who come from sociological traditions. Field research, however, also can be experimental, and the effectiveness of each approach may be enhanced by the use of the methods of the other.
Many colleges and universities have a social-psychology laboratory equipped with observation rooms permitting one-way vision of subjects. Sound and video recorders and other devices record ongoing social interaction; computing equipment and other paraphernalia may be employed for specific studies.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
Social behaviour is understood to be the product of innate biological factors resulting from evolution and of cultural factors that have emerged in the course of history. Early writers (e.g., William McDougall, a psychologist) emphasized instinctive roots of social behaviour. Later research and writing that tended to stress learning theory emphasized the influence of environmental factors in social behaviour. In the 1960s and β70s field studies of nonhuman primates (such as baboons) drew attention to a number of similarities to human social behaviour, while research in cultural anthropology has shown that many features of human social behaviour are the same regardless of the culture studied. It is coming to be a widely accepted view that human social behaviour seems to have a biological basis and to reflect the operation of evolution as in the case of patterns of emotional expression and other nonverbal communication, the structure of language, and aspects of group behaviour.
Much research has been done on socialization (the process of learning from a culture), and learning has been found to interact with innate factors. An innate capacity for language, for example, makes it possible to learn a local language. Culture consists of patterns of behaviour and ways of organizing experience; it develops over the course of history as new elements are introduced from a variety of sources, only some of which are retained. Many aspects of social behaviour can be partly accounted for in terms of their history.
Social perception
In some laboratory experiments, subjects watch stills or moving pictures, listen to tape recordings, or directly observe or interact with another person. Subjects may be asked to reveal their social perception of such persons on rating scales, to give free descriptions of them, or to respond evaluatively in other ways. Although such studies can produce results that do not correspond to those in real-life settings, they can provide useful information on the perception of personality, social roles, emotions, and interpersonal attitudes or responses during ongoing social interaction.
Research has been directed to how social perception is affected by cultural stereotypes (e.g., racial prejudice), by inferences from different verbal and nonverbal cues, by the pattern of perceptual activity during social interaction, and by the general personality structure of the perceiver. The work has found practical application in the assessment of employees and of candidates for positions.
There also has been research on the ways in which perception of objects and people is affected by social factors such as culture and group membership. It has been shown, for example, how coins, colours, and other physical cues are categorized differently by people as a result of their group membership and of the categories provided by language. Other studies have shown the effect of group pressures on perception.