PSYC 2120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Floyd Henry Allport, Gestalt Psychology, How We Think
16 Dec 2013
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The scientific study of how peoples thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by factors in the social world. Social psychologists study how people explain their own and other"s behaviours, how people influence others and how people connect with each other. Allport: an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied prescience of other human beings . Social psychology uses scientific inquiry to explain social phenomena: commitment to collecting accurate and error-free information, commitment to objectivity and collecting data that are free of bias. Must follow the scientific method research method for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge and evaluating and integrating previous knowledge. Must form a hypothesis about the relationship between events and then examine the accuracy of this hypothesis by collecting data through observation or experimentation to determine whether this hypothesis is supported by the data.
