Social and Cross-Cultural Psychology: Concepts and History

Posted on Feb 17, 2025 in Psychology

Concept and Scope of Social Psychology

Social psychology is the systematic study of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in social contexts. It’s the scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people. The subject matter of social psychology is broad and relevant to everyday life. Social psychologists study why we are helpful or aggressive, the benefits of relationships, and the costs of loneliness. They also study factors influencing consumer behavior, gender differences in social settings, group decision-making, and environmentally friendly behaviors.

Meaning of Social Psychology

Social psychologists define social psychology in various ways, categorized as follows:

1. Social Psychology as the Study of Individual Behavior in Society

Krech and Crutchfield (1958): Social psychology is concerned with every aspect of the individual’s behavior in society. It may be broadly defined as the science of the behavior of the individual in society.

Akokeler (1960): Social psychology is a study of man’s mental life and behavior with specific reference to his social environment.

2. Social Psychology as the Study of the Individual in a Social Situation

Clienberg (1924): Social psychology is the scientific study of behavior of the individual as related to other individuals.

Allport (1924): Social psychology is the science which studies the behavior of an individual in so far as his behavior stimulates other individuals or is itself a reaction to their behavior and which describes the consciousness of the individual in so far as it is a consciousness of social objects and reactions.

Sherif and Sherif (1969): Social psychology is the scientific study of experience and behavior of individuals in relation to social stimulus situations.

3. Social Psychology as the Study of Human Interactions

Krech (1962): Social psychology is defined as the science of interpersonal behavior events.

Kimbal Young (1960): Social psychology is the study of persons in their interaction with one another and with reference to the effects of the interplay upon the individuals thoughts, feelings, emotion and habits.

Kuspuswami (1961): We may define social psychology as the branch of knowledge which studies the relationships arising out of the interaction of the individuals with each other in social situations. In brief, it deals with thinking, feeling and acting of the individual in society.

Myers, Spencer & Jordon (2009): Social psychology may be defined as the science that seeks to understand how people think about, feel about, relate to, and influence one another.

Barron and Byrne (2007): Defined social psychology as the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and cause of individual behavior and thought in social situations.

A Brief History of Social Psychology

The science of social psychology began when scientists started to systematically measure human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Kruglanski & Stroebe, 2011). One of the first experiments was conducted by Norman Triplett (1897-1898). He observed that cyclists performed better when competing against others than against the clock. He tested this by having children wind a fishing reel, alternating between working alone and working parallel to each other. The results showed faster winding times when children worked side by side. Thus, the mere presence of another person enhanced performance.

Another early experiment was conducted by Max Ringelmann in the 1880s. He had men pull on a rope alone and as part of a group, measuring the effort exerted by each participant. He found that as group size increased, individual effort decreased.

These studies started a chain of subsequent studies. The earliest social psychology experiments on group behavior were conducted before 1900 (Triplett, 1898), and the first social psychology textbooks were published in 1908 (McDougall, 1908/2003; Ross, 1908/1974). The introduction of textbooks is an important milestone in the development of a field. In 1908, the first two books to bear the title Social Psychology were published, one by the sociologist Edward Ross and the other by the psychologist William McDougall. In 1924, Floyd Allport published another early social psychology book.

During the early 20th century, thinkers began to consider the direction of human society and its changes. Two ideas had a lasting influence on social psychology. One was Gordon Allport’s observation that attitudes were the most useful and important concept in social psychology. Allport also observed that the study of the self was going to be recognized as increasingly important in the coming years, and on that he was also quite correct. The other key idea was Kurt Lewin’s formula that behavior is a function of the person and the situation. For example if you want to predict whether Rekha will finish her work on time, you need to know two kinds of things. First, you must know something about Rekha: Is she lazy? Does she like her work? Is she smart enough to get the job done? Is she punctual? Second, you must know something about her situation: Is the task hard? Are other people bothering her? Is there a penalty for being late? Is her computer broken? Knowing only one kind of information without the other is an inadequate basis for predicting what will happen.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Kurt Lewin and Leon Festinger refined the experimental approach, creating social psychology as a rigorous scientific discipline. Lewin is sometimes known as the father of social psychology because he initially developed many of the important ideas of the discipline, including a focus on the dynamic interactions among people.

Social psychology began to come into its own as a field in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time, psychology was divided between two camps. One camp, known as behaviorism, sought to explain all of psychology in terms of learning principles such as reward and punishment. Behaviorists were opposed to talking about the mind, thoughts, emotions, or other inner processes, and they favored experiments and the scientific method. The other camp was Freudian psychoanalysis, which preferred elaborate interpretations of individual experiences (especially from clinical psychology) instead of systematic studies that counted behaviors. Social psychology was more congenial to the behaviorist camp in that it favored experiments and the scientific method, but it was sympathetic to the Freudian camp with its interest in inner states and processes.

Social psychology quickly expanded to study other topics. John Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) developed a model that helped explain when people do and do not help others in need, and Leonard Berkowitz (1974) pioneered the study of human aggression. Meanwhile, other social psychologists, including Irving Janis (1972), focused on group behavior, studying why intelligent people sometimes made decisions that led to disastrous results when they worked together. Still other social psychologists, including Gordon Allport and Muzafir Sherif, focused on intergroup relations, with the goal of understanding and potentially reducing the occurrence of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.

In the 1970s and 1980s, social psychology found its own way, using scientific approaches to measure behavior but also trying to study thoughts, feelings, and other inner states scientifically. The study of simple cognitive (mental) processes, such as attribution theory, evolved in the 1970s and 1980s into a large and sophisticated study of social cognition (how people think about people and the social world in general). This area of interest has continued up to the present.

Another huge development from the 1990s onward was a growing openness to biology. The influx of biology began with evolutionary psychology, which sought to extend and apply the basic ideas of evolution to understanding human social behavior. It gained further momentum as some social psychologists began to study the brain in order to learn how its workings are related to social events.

The study of the self has been another central theme of social psychology since the 1970s. In recent decades, social psychologists have explored many different aspects of the self-not only self-esteem but also self-regulation (also known as self-control), self-schemas, and self-presentation.

In the 21st century, the field of social psychology has been expanding into still other areas. Examples that how social situations influence our health and happiness, the important roles of evolutionary experiences and cultures on our behavior, and the field of social neuroscience-the study of how our social behavior both influences and is influenced by the activities of our brain (Lieberman, 2010). Social psychologists continue to seek new ways to measure and understand social behavior, and the field continues to develop. I cannot predict where social psychology will be directed in the future, but I have no doubt that it will still be alive and vibrant.

The Person and the Social Situation

Social psychology studies the dynamic relationship between individuals and the people around them (see Figure 1 “The Person-Situation Interaction”). Each of us is different, and our individual characteristics, including our personality traits, desires, motivations, and emotions, have an important impact on our social behavior. But our behavior is also profoundly influenced by the social situation-the people with whom we interact every day. These people include our friends and family, our fraternity brothers or sorority sisters, our religious groups, the people we see on TV or read about or interact with on the web, as well as people we think about, remember, or even imagine. Figure 1 “The Person-Situation Interaction”

Social psychologists believe that human behavior is determined by both a person’s characteristics and the social situation. They also believe that the social situation is frequently a stronger influence on behavior than are a person’s characteristics. Social psychology is largely the study of the social situation. Our social situations create social influence, the process through which other people change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and through which we change theirs.

Kurt Lewin formalized the joint influence of person variables and situational variables, which is known as the person-situation interaction, in an important equation: Behavior = f (person, social situation). Lewin’s equation indicates that the behavior of a given person at any given time is a function of (depends on) both the characteristics of the person and the influence of the social situation.

Social Psychology Is Scientific in Nature

Many people believe that the term science refers only to fields such as chemistry, physics, and biology. If you share that view, you may find our suggestion that social psychology is a scientific discipline somewhat puzzling. How can a field that seeks to study the nature of love, the causes of aggression, and everything in between be scientific in the same sense as chemistry, physics, or computer science? The term science does not refer to a special group of highly advanced fields. Rather, it refers to two things: (1) a set of values and (2) several methods that can be used to study a wide range of topics.

In deciding whether a given field is or is not scientific, therefore, the critical question is, does it adopt these values and methods? To the extent it does, it is scientific in nature. To the extent it does not, it falls outside the realm of science. The core values that social behavior and thought in as careful, precise, and error-free a manner as possible.

Objectivity: A commitment to obtaining and evaluating such information in a manner that is as free from bias as humanly possible. all fields must adapt to be considered scientific in nature. Four of these are most important:

Accuracy: A commitment to gathering and evaluating information about the world (including social behavior and thought) in as careful, precise, and error-free a manner as possible.

Skepticism: A commitment to accepting findings as accurate only to the extent they have been verified over and over again.

Open-mindedness: A commitment to changing one’s views-even views that are strongly held-if existing evidence suggests that these views are inaccurate.

What Do Social Psychologists Do?

You might think that social psychology focuses specifically on the study of groups or relationships. It does include those topics, but it studies much more. At present, social psychology aims for a broad understanding of how human beings think, act, and feel. It focuses particularly on normal adult human beings, though some social psychologists do study children and people who suffer from mild mental illness (such as depression). Very little of what people do, other than those with severe mental illness, is off limits to social psychology. Social psychology is concerned with the effect of other people (real or imagined) on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. These three dimensions or building blocks of social psychology are known as the ABC triad.

The A stands for Affect-how people feel inside. Social psychologists are interested in how people feel about themselves (e.g., self-esteem), how they feel about others (e.g. prejudice), and how they feel about various issues (e.g., attitudes). The B stands for Behavior-what people do their actions. Social psychologists are interested in all the various behaviors people engage in, such as joining groups, helping others, hurting others, liking others, and loving others. The C stands for Cognition-what people think about. Social psychologists are interested in what people think about themselves (e.g., self-concept), what they think about others (e.g., stereotypes), and what they think about various problems and issues in the social world (e.g., protecting the environment).

Another important feature of social psychology is that it accepts the scientific method. Most social psychologists conduct experiments, which are careful and systematic ways of testing theories.

Relationship with Other Social Sciences

Social psychology is related to other social sciences and to other branches of psychology. It also differs from them in important ways. Social scientists study people and the societies in which people live. They are interested in how people relate to one another. The various social sciences focus on different aspects of social life.

Anthropology: Anthropology is the study of human culture. Human culture consists of the shared values, beliefs, and practices of a group of people. These values, beliefs, and practices are passed down from one generation to another. Not only are humans social animals, they are also cultural animals. Social psychologists cannot understand human behavior fully unless they understand the cultural context in which that behavior occurs.

Economics: Economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Social psychologists are very interested in these topics. In fact, some social psychological theories are based on economic principles. For example, social exchange theory predicts commitment to relationships by considering factors such as the costs, rewards, investments, and the number of alternatives available. Economics also calls our attention to large social systems (such as the labor market or money system) and to how these systems shape behavior. Again, a full understanding of human behavior requires appreciating not just what goes on inside one person’s head and what is happening in his or her immediate environment at the time, but also how the person’s behavior fits into the larger social system.

History: History is the study of past events. For humans to progress, they should understand past events and learn from them. Society progresses when members can avoid repeating the same mistakes others have made. Social psychologists sometimes debate whether the behaviors they study have changed historically, but until recently there has been little interaction between social psychologists and historians.

Political Science: Political science is the study of political organizations and institutions, especially governments. Social psychologists conduct research on political behavior. They study political issues such as voting, party identification, liberal versus conservative views, and political advertising. They are also interested in what makes some people better leaders than others

Sociology: Sociology is the study of human societies and the groups that form those societies. Sociology was first defined in 1838 by the French social philosopher Auguste Comte, who applied the principles of the scientific method to society. Sociology is the systematic study of society. Society is a broad term that includes many levels of social interaction, from those occurring among individuals to complex relations among nations. Sociologists analyze social life across these levels of analysis (Aron 1965; Collins 1985). Social contexts can range from a small group of people to the larger culture and social conditions manifested in a society as a whole. In a sense, social psychology serves as a natural bridge between the fields of sociology (which focuses on the social conditions influencing people) and psychology (which takes the individual as the central concern). However, sociologists are more likely than psychologists to take into account the effects of structural forces and statuses. For instance, sociologists are more likely than psychologists to compare the self-esteem levels of different racial and ethnic groups (Rosenberg 1986; Schieman, Pudrovska, and Milkie 2005). On the other hand, psychologists are more likely than sociologists to study the thinking processes associated with self-esteem (Crocker and Park 2003).

Although both sociologists and social psychologists are interested in how people behave in societies and groups, they differ in what they focus on. Sociologists focus on the group as a single unit, whereas social psychologists focus on the individual members that make up the group. Some sociologists call themselves social psychologists, and the exchange of ideas and findings between the two fields has sometimes been quite fruitful because they bring different perspectives to the same problems.

Social Psychology’s Relationship within Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental process. Psychology is like a big tree that contains many branches. Social psychology is just one of those branches, but it is intertwined with some of the other branches

Biological Psychology: People are biological creatures, and everything that people think, do, or feel involves some bodily processes such as brain activity or hormones. Biological or physiological psychology and (more recently) neuroscience have focused on learning about what happens in the brain, nervous system, and other aspects of the body. Until recently, this work had little contact with social psychology, but during the 1990s (the Decade of the Brain) many social psychologists began looking into the biological aspects of social behavior, and that interest has continued into the 21st century. Social neuroscience and social psychophysiology are now thriving fields.

Clinical Psychology: Clinical psychology focuses on abnormal behavior, whereas social psychology focuses on normal behavior. Social psychological theory can shed a great deal of light on so-called normal behavior. In fact social and clinical psychology has had a long tradition of exchanging ideas and stimulating insights into each other’s fields. In particular, clinical psychologists have made good use of social psychological theories.

Cognitive Psychology: Cognitive psychology is the basic study of thought processes, such as how memory works and what events people notice. In recent decades, social psychology has borrowed heavily from cognitive psychology, especially by using their methods for measuring cognitive processes. Under the rubric of social cognition, social psychologists study how people think about their social lives, such as thinking about other people or solving problems in their world. Conversely, however, cognitive psychology has not borrowed much from social psychology.

Developmental Psychology: Developmental psychology is the study of how people change across their lives, from conception and birth to old age and death. In practice, most developmental psychologists study children. Developmental psychology has borrowed much from social psychology and built on it, such as by studying at what age children begin to show various patterns of social behavior. Until now, social psychology has not taken much from developmental psychology, though this may be changing. Social psychologists interested in self-regulation, emotion, gender differences, helping behavior, and antisocial behavior sometimes look to the research on child development to see how these patterns get started.

Scope of Social Psychology

1. Socialization of the child
2. Study of culture and personality
3. Individual and group differences
4. Social interactions: three types-person to person, person to group and group to group.
5. Leadership
6. Group process
7. Crowd and audience
8. Dynamics of communication
9. Motivation perception and teaching learning process
10. Attitude and prejudice
11. Social pathology
12. National and International politics

Recent Trends of Social Psychology

The trend of social psychology is changeable on the passages of time. It is proved by a glance of history of social psychology. According to Kimbal young (1960), the recent trends are as follows.

1. Change in the method of study.
2. Presentation of the subject matter
3. Learning theories in place of instinct theory
4. Increasing impact of cultural anthropology
5. Increasing impact of clinical and experimental psychology
6. Growing acceptance of the concept of interaction, role and status

Sherif and Sherif (1956)

1. Use of scientific methods and techniques
2. Achieving necessary perspectives

References

1. Baron, R. A., Byrne, D., and Branscombe, N. R. (2006). Social Psychology. Prentice-Hall India: New Delhi (11th edition, Indian print).
2. Baumeister, R.F, Bushman B.J,(2008). Social Psychology and Human Nature. Thomson Wadsworth, a part of The Thomson Corporation, USA.
3. Saylor Foundation

Unit -II

Cross-Cultural Psychology

Cross-cultural psychology: a branch of psychology that compares the behaviour and experience of people from different cultures in order to understand the extent of cultures influence on psychological functioning. In other words, cross-cultural psychologists try to find out what aspects of behaviour and experience are common to all human cultures – and thus what aspects are unique to certain places. Cross-cultural psychology generally operationalises culture as an antecedent variable that lies outside of and apart from the individual. According to the definition presented in Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga (1990), Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behaviour and its transmission, taking into account the ways in which behaviours are shaped and influenced by social and cultural forces (p. 3).

Cultural psychology sees culture as inside the individual (Price-Willeam, 1999; Shweder, 2001), as a way of knowing and construing the world and other people (Bruner, 1990). Culture is defined by shared knowledge and meaning that is derived through processes of interaction and communication (Boesch, 1991; Cole, 1996; Eckensberger, 1990).

Indigenous psychology understands culture as subjectively created systems of meaning but goes one step further by taking informal folk theories of psychological functioning formalizing them into psychological theories (Greenfield, 2001). Supporters of the indigenous approach argue that a truly universal understanding of human nature requires the development of theories originating in the indigenous psychologies of discrete societies (Kao, 1997; Pandey, 1996).

History of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Psychology has developed based on the contributions of many European and White American psychologists. It is sometimes criticized as addressing the dominant culture, but failing to account for minority cultures in its theory, practice, and development (Bernal et al., 2003).

As a result, the field of cross-cultural psychology emerged in an attempt to: (1) Transport present hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings to test their validity and applicability in other groups of humans; (2) Explore other cultures to discover cultural and psychological variations that are not present in our own limited cultural experience; and (3) Attempt to assemble and integrate, into a broadly based psychology, the results obtained when pursuing the first two goals, and to generate a more universal psychology that will be valid for a broader range of cultures (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002).

Cross-cultural psychology is a branch of psychology that looks at how cultural factors influence human behavior. The International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) was established in 1972, and this branch of psychology has continued to grow and develop since that time. Today, increasing numbers of psychologists investigate how behavior differs among various cultures throughout the world.

Cross-cultural psychology has a long past, but only a short history, as psychologists have been interested in the impact of culture on individuals for a very long time, but a more consistent study of culture on individuals has only occurred recently (Ho & Wu, 2001).

Berry et al. (2002) define cross-cultural psychology as: the study of similarities and differences in individual psychological functioning in various cultural and ethnocultural groups; of the relationships between psychological variables and socio-cultural, ecological and biological variables; and of ongoing changes in these variables (p. 3).

Sociology, anthropology, and social psychology were the first disciplines to consider cultural factors (Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990). German psychologists J. F. Herbart and Lightner Witmer, who is also the father of school psychology (Fagan & Wise, 2000), began to consider how culture affects human behavior (Hogan & Sussner, 2001).

After World War II, cross-cultural psychology grew in spurts. By the 1970s it came of age, having 1,125 cross-cultural psychologists registered in the Directory of cross-cultural research and researchers, professional organizations, and journals specific to issues in it (Bernal et al., 2003; Ho & Wu, 2001; Segall, 1979). In addition, in 1970, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology was launched at Western Washington University (Bernal et al., 2003).

The first textbook in social psychology, Social psychology by Otto Klinberg in 1940, highlighted the diversity of human behavior, questioned the claim about the universality of psychological concepts, and criticized the concept of biological determinism that had been used to support the belief in the inferiority of non-Western peoples (Hogan & Sussner, 2001; Segall et al., 1990). A brief introduction to cross-cultural psychology was written by Serpell in 1976, and an edited volume dealing with research issues in cross-cultural psychology was written by Warren in 1977 (Segall, 1979).

In addition, international conferences began to take place during the 1970s, in Ontario, the Netherlands, and Germany (Segall, 1972). In 1972, a group of psychologists from different countries convened in Hong Kong to examine and discuss cultures influence on the human experience. This led to the founding of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) (Bernal et al., 2003). In addition, the first Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, a series of six volumes, was edited by Triandis et al. (1980). Another important book in the subject was The handbook of cross-cultural human development by Munroe, Munroe, and Whiting in 1981. This book provides impressive evidence that there are scientific laws governing human development (Segall et al., 1990). Given these important contributions, cross-cultural psychology is now an established field, but cultural diversity is yet to be incorporated systematically in other areas of psychology (Segall et al., 1990; Sue, Arrendondo, & McDavis, 1992). Title Year

• Association of Black Psychologists Early 1970s
• Network of Indian Psychologists Early 1970s
• Asian American Psychological Association Early 1970s
• Journal of Black Psychology 1974
• White Cloud Journal of American Indian/ Alaska Native Mental Health 1978
• Renamed American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research 1987
• Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 1979
• Journal of the Asian American Psychological Association 1979
• National Hispanic Psychological Association 1980