Social Psychology - Week 2.docx

Social Psychology as a Perspective  Why did it take so long to develop? o nature of sociology and psychology in natural or original forms - Divorce o Why do people get divorced?  financial issues, unemployment, angry, children, abuse, unhappy, fear, adultery, betrayal, trust, mutual respect (communication), communicative basis of commitment  feelings  individually based – psychologically based  others  socially based o How much of the variation of divorce is explained by this?  only explains a small proportion of divorce rate – sociology and psychology are limited o runs the risk of tempting us into logical mistakes  to make this is caused ecological fallacy – logical error of explaining individual behaviour with reference to group data  atomistic – opposite way of ecological fallacy - Psychology  individual –biological, formal cognition, habits and emotions o discipline that tried to understand how the human was conditioned, how behaviour could be manipulated, early psychology saw us as objects to be manipulated - Sociology  evolution, capitalism, social structure, culture, systemic perspective, conditioning o claimed to be a science of society and studied interrelationships – individual without society is a problem  Both claim scientific investigation of individual and conditioning of individual  Objectivity and predictability – so they could control  all things can be controlled… they only need conditioning - Social Psychology  person – social psychology construction  identity *, capable of constructing moral reasons, rationality and reason  as a person – rationality and reason provides a distinction between form and context – we have values and claims - Person o moral reasoning and rational  they are a part of who you are – IDENTITY o we go through our lives not having to raise claims/complain – environments are structured so we minimize the sense of a dilemma - so we don’t use our moral reasoning o people = interaction, language, symbols, communication, communicative structures, power and power distribution  if you don’t know who you are, the whole thing becomes false o it is possible to conceptualize ourselves as persons who can do 2 things – form identities and engage in moral reasoning  both of these can interfere with prediction o early sociology and psychology did not want to pay attention to identity and moral sensibility History of Sociology and Psychology - A tentative definition social psychology: o a discipline that involves:  an understanding of a person’s relationship with other persons  an understanding of a person’s relationship with culture/social structure  an understanding of how/what a person knows/feels  an understanding of the interrelationship of the above three Nominalism Realism Descriptive A way of explaining social A way of explaining social events/processes with events/processes without references to the intentions of reference to human human beings, a way of intentionality but with reference knowing, strategy for