PSYC 2120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Social Influence, Peer Pressure, The Need
6 Feb 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The heart of social psychology is the phenomenon of social influence. The examples of social influence are ones that are direct attempts at persuasion, where one person deliberately tries to change another person"s behaviour. Example done in an advertising campaign to try to sell something or peer pressure. Social influence extends beyond behaviour but also includes our thoughts and feelings and overt (open to view or knowledge) acts. Social psychology is distinct because it is concerned with how people are influenced by their interpretation or construal of their social environment. Construal is the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world. So it is more important to understand the construal then to understand the objective properties of the social world itself. Construal psychology is also an experimentally-based science: we test our assumptions, guesses and ideas about human behaviour empirically and systematically, rather than relying on folk wisdom, common sense, or opinions.
