Introduction to Social Psychology
Senior 6 · Psychology (Languages)
Introduction to Social Psychology
Lesson 1 of 4
25 min
In 1970, at Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States, the psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson asked 40 students training to become church ministers to prepare a short talk. Half were to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a traveller who stops to help a wounded stranger. The others were to speak on jobs for seminary graduates. Each student was then sent to another building to give the talk. Some were told they had plenty of time, some that they were just on time, and some that they were already late.
On the way, in a narrow alley, each student passed a man slumped in a doorway, coughing and groaning. He was an actor working for the researchers. Did the students stop?
| How hurried the student was | Share who offered some help |
|---|---|
| Low hurry (“you have a few minutes”) | 63% |
| Medium hurry (“they are ready for you”) | 45% |
| High hurry (“you are late”) | 10% |
The topic of the talk made little difference: some students hurrying to speak about the Good Samaritan stepped over the man on their way. What predicted helping was not what the students believed, or how religious they were, but a small feature of the situation: how late they thought they were. This is the kind of finding that social psychology is built on.
Definition
Social psychology: the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other people (after Gordon Allport, 1954).
Situation: the immediate social setting a person is in, including the people, the roles, the rules and the time pressure.
The German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin (1936) summed up the field’s starting point in a short formula:
Behaviour is a function of the person and their environment . Neither alone is enough. A kind student may still walk past a stranger in need when she is late; an impatient student may still stop when he has time. Social psychology pays special attention to , because people usually underestimate how strongly the situation acts on them.
Figure 1. Lewin’s equation: behaviour comes from the person and the situation acting together.
The scope of a discipline is the range of questions it covers. Most textbooks group social psychology’s questions into three areas, and then list the fields where its findings are applied.
| Area | Typical question | Example topics |
|---|---|---|
| Social thinking | How do we make sense of other people and ourselves? | first impressions, explaining behaviour, attitudes, the self |
| Social influence | How do other people change what we think and do? | conformity, obedience, persuasion, norms, roles |
| Social relations | How do we relate to other people? | prejudice, helping, aggression, attraction, group life |
| Applied fields | How can findings solve real problems? | health campaigns, schools, courts, workplaces, peacebuilding, language learning |
In many Rwandan secondary schools English is the language of teaching, yet students often switch to Kinyarwanda as soon as the teacher leaves the room. Three disciplines would ask different questions about the same moment:
| Method | What it is | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Laboratory experiment | One factor is changed under controlled conditions; people are randomly assigned to conditions. | Can show cause and effect | Artificial setting; participants may guess the aim |
| Field experiment | An experiment run in a real setting, like the seminary alley. | Natural behaviour, still shows cause | Less control; consent is harder |
| Correlational survey | Many people answer questions; researchers look for variables that go together. | Large samples, many variables | Cannot show cause; people may not answer honestly |
| Observation | Behaviour is watched and recorded, e.g. on CCTV. | Real behaviour | Observers may interpret differently |
Opinion Science: “Good Samaritan Study - Social Psychology of Helping”. Watch how the hurry manipulation was set up, and note what the presenter says about why hurried students did not stop.
Important
Evaluate the Good Samaritan study. It was a clever field experiment with random assignment, so hurry can be called a cause of not helping. But the sample was small (40 men), all from one American seminary, and helping was judged in a single moment. Darley and Batson themselves noted that hurried students were also trying to help someone, the researcher waiting for them, so “not helping” may partly reflect a conflict between two duties. The study has rarely been repeated in the same form, so treat its exact percentages as suggestive rather than settled.
Warning
Common mistake: writing that social psychology studies “groups” or “society”. It studies individuals as they are affected by other people. Studying a society as a whole is sociology.
Tip
Memory hook: “A-I-I” for actual, imagined and implied presence, and “think, influence, relate” for the three areas of scope.
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the text, the tables, Figure 1 and the exercises.
