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0:01
Humans require human contact to even develop into ordinary adults. Also, we typically think a lot about other people even when we are alone, and the things we do alone often have something to do with other people. We might write an article to be posted online, or we might make plans for a soccer game. Such things only make sense because of how these activities involve other people. The importance of our social environment has led to the development of a psychological field of
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study that has actually become separated from psychology proper: social psychology is now considered a field of its own. But because it is obviously closely connected to psychology, I will provide this short introduction to the field here, as part of my series Introduction to Psychology. I will first briefly explain what social psychology is. Then I will go on to explain several concepts that are central to the field, such as social cognition, attribution, conformity,
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and more. I will explain some basic things about how groups work, and then I will discuss emotions, social skills, and gossip. Lastly, I will explain how prejudices have been studied in social psychology, and at the end I will provide a short summary of this video. My name is Jouni Vilkka, and this is my channel TFF - Teacher From Finland. Don’t forget to subscribe and click the thumbs up button. 1. What is social psychology? It would be impossible to have
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human experience or anything resembling what it is to be human without social groups of humans, upon which societies and cultures are built. We couldn’t even speak without others, because we wouldn’t know a language if we hadn’t learnt that from, and with, others. We have different roles in the groups we are members of, and also recognize the roles of others. Most things we do involve other people, at least in the abstract, even if we do those things alone.
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Many things we do only together with others, of course. Even when we are not with other people, we can recall how they behaved in the past, or anticipate how they will behave the next time we interact with them. This recalling and anticipating can be extremely important, even for our mental health. For example, we can stress about our boss, or we can fondly remember a moment with a loved one, or we can plan to amuse a friend with an anecdote about what just happened
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to us. A musician probably wants other people to hear their music, a scientist wants others to learn from their research, a political activist wants to influence how other people behave in their daily lives. Practically everything we do is connected to other people in these ways. Biologically speaking, humans are social animals. Some unfortunate children have been raised in extremely poor conditions, even by other animals, such as wolves, which is why
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such children are generally called wolf children (or feral children, or wild children), regardless of the type of animals that “raised” them. Other horrible cases include children basically just kept alive in certain orphanages in Romania, which were revealed to the Western public after the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (1918–1989), in 1989. During his regime, large numbers of children were kept in orphanages where especially their social needs were neglected,
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to say the least. The developmental issues related to such cases will be discussed in a bit more length during the course Introduction to Developmental Psychology. Here it suffices to say that such cases make it clear that to fully develop, humans require social rearing, or at least social contact with other humans, preferably adults. Instead of psychological development, social psychology focuses on groups, their influence on
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the individual, and interactions with members of different groups. Whereas psychology is typically focused on the individual and sociology on society at large, social psychology is somewhere in between the two, trying to understand the significance of groups and group membership for both the individual and society. Social psychology approaches human behavior in social contexts on (1) the level of the individual, (2) between individuals, (3) between groups, and (4) on a societal level.
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There has been a lot of research in social psychology concerning six concepts that I will explain here: social cognition, schema, attribution, norms, cohesion, and conformism. 2. Social cognition, schema, stereotype It is no doubt obvious that other people influence us, especially those physically around us. For example, imagine you enter a city bus. Is it early in the morning, the afternoon, or late at night? The time will probably affect your behavior
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and what you especially pay attention to. You will always pay attention to other passengers. If there are few of them, how will you choose your seat? What if the bus is practically full? You will make all kinds of assumptions and predictions about the others based on their appearance. You will most likely avoid people who seem drunk or aggressive, or who you suspect might get aggressive toward
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you. Perhaps there was a big soccer match and you are wearing the scarf of a team that won, and see people wearing scarfs of the losing team. Social cognition refers to our ability to make estimates and calculations about the probable behaviors of other people that we can use to choose our own actions. Because we live in groups, we need to be able to interpret the situations and the actions of other people, and to act accordingly.
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Schema is a concept used to explain our thinking. I already explained the concept in an earlier video, but will mention it here because of the special relevance of the concept in social contexts. For example, schemas refer to learned models of behavior, explanations for the reasons for others to behave the way they do, norms about how one should behave in certain situations, and so on. One important type of schema is called Script. It of course doesn’t mean a real script, as in
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a theatre play, but something similar: ways of behaving (including speaking) in certain kinds of situations. These are very much culture-specific, but also learned from personal experience. They may or may not be explicitly taught. They include things like greeting and introducing yourself, paying for groceries in a supermarket, ways of avoiding unwanted attention at a bar, and many other things. Scripts might not always be very good, and can actually lead to various
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kinds of problems, but the good thing about them is that you can unlearn bad scripts and learn new, better scripts. Scripts are used not only to direct one’s own behavior, but also to understand and explain the behavior of other people: you can recognize a script another person is using, even if their behavior otherwise would seem odd in the current circumstance. For example, in Finland, as in Europe generally, people greet others by shaking hands. I might bow instead, which to a
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European might seem odd. But if they recognize that form of greeting from other cultures, they may understand what I am doing, and hopefully use that superior form of greeting themselves as well.
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Perhaps the most obvious problem with schemas in social contexts is their use in stereotypes, which include such things as racist or sexist thinking. A racist person could think that all white men, for example, are alike in some way. If they encounter behavior that seems to support that notion, they will of course notice it, possibly also commenting on it, but because of Confirmation Bias, they will probably fail to notice cases that would disprove the notion.
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Stereotypes are simplistic notions that tend to get repeated, and you have to actively resist them in order to keep your mind free of their influence. While other schemas may be useful in simplifying life, stereotypes tend to be harmful. Humans are all individuals, whether they like it or not, and should always be considered as such. By interacting with many different kinds of people and paying attention to their individual differences and idiosyncrasies,
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you can try to keep your mind free of stereotypes. Even if you don’t, you might sometimes experience something unexpected and contrary to your assumptions (schemas), and this might force you to change your thinking. 3. Attribution Attribution means explaining an event or behavior with a cause that is not necessarily evident. The Fundamental Attribution Error is a common error people make when judging failures: one’s own failure is attributed to external circumstances,
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while other people’s failures are attributed to their character. It should be obvious that this is not rational; this is using a double standard, when the rational thing to do would of course be using the same standard for all. In my opinion, we should refrain from judging others, and rather try to see what external causes might have caused the failure. We also should not judge ourselves too harshly, which is a different kind of common problem.
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Besides external or internal, attributions are also considered temporary or permanent, and controllable or uncontrollable. You may think that you are just not athletic and thus will not be able to do a cartwheel, assuming this to be your permanent condition. Thus, it will also be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it will most likely keep you from practicing the cartwheel. If you have a bad day at work, perhaps making several mistakes,
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you might think it is because the weather was causing you to lose focus. Thus you attribute your failures to a temporary and external cause. In both of the two examples you also think that the cause is outside of your own control. But you could think differently, and see how you actually may be able to control the outcomes: even though you cannot control the weather, you could perhaps do things to mitigate its effect on you, by listening to suitable music,
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using good lighting, choosing the right clothing, and so on. You could perhaps learn to do a cartwheel by seeking a teacher (or just tutorial videos), and spending some time practicing. 4. Conformity Among the things of most interest to social psychologists is how the presence of other people influences our behavior and thinking. For example, the Panopticon is a type of prison, where the inmates are kept in cells that are placed in a
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circle around a guard post. The prisoners cannot see if a guard is actually present or not, so they cannot tell if they are being watched or not at any given time. This will usually make them behave as if there was a guard observing them. Some studies have found similar results even in ordinary offices, where the picture of an eye was placed on a wall. The suggestion is that people will be subconsciously influenced even by the symbol alone.
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The Bystander Effect refers to the alleged phenomenon that people are less likely to help victims of crime or accident if there are other people around who are not helping. An old example used to illustrate this was the case of the murder of Kitty Genovese (1935–1964). That case has even been used to claim that when being attacked, one should not call for help, or for police, but rather shout something like “fire!” because people would only then
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perhaps be motivated to come and see what is going on. It was later shown that the terrible case in question had been grossly misrepresented even in psychology textbooks. It still does seem to be the case that sometimes, for example in the case of school bullies, bystanders often do not come to help the victim. In some studies, psychologists have created situations where they have tested how subjects
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behave if someone is apparently injured in the room next to where they are sitting, or if there is smoke coming into the room they are in. If there are others in the room who do not react to the event, most people seem to be reluctant to do anything themselves either. This, to me, seems to reveal the harmful effect our nature as social animals can have: instead of just acting as rational individuals, most of us seem to just go along with the masses.
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This manner in which we tend to conform to peer pressure or the social situation is called Group Conformity or Conformism. As the Latin origin of the word indicates, this is about trying to be of the same form as the others. There are several classic studies of this phenomenon, which I will now introduce. In the 1930s Muzafer Sherif (1906–1988) conducted an experiment, in which the test subject was told to estimate the movement of a dot of light in the back of a dark room. The
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light didn’t actually move, but because of the darkness and the Autokinetic Effect, observers thought it did. What Sherif did was have several observers in the room, each stating out loud how much the light appears to move. Interestingly, the groups seemed to come to a consensus on how much the light moved. The individual members of the group even retained this opinion a week later, when tested again alone. Remember that the light did not actually move at all. The point is that
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lacking an objective frame of reference, social reality overrides the individual’s own perception. Solomon Asch (1907–1996) did a similar experiment in the 1950s, except that this time several test subjects were told to estimate the length of a line displayed quite visibly in front of them all in a well-lit room. There was trickery involved: all but one of the test subjects were actually accomplices of the researcher, just pretending to be test subjects like the real one.
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Over a third of the actual test subjects could be pressured this way to answer in ways that were clearly in contradiction with their own, quite obvious observations. They could begin to doubt their own eyes, or were just unwilling to go against the strong consensus of the group. In the 1960s Stanley Milgram (1933–1084) conducted famous experiments about obedience to authority, rather than just peer pressure. This time the actual test subject was misled into believing
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that he is giving electric shocks to another test subject as part of an experiment on learning. According to Milgram, up to two thirds of the test subjects obeyed the command of the authority figure, a scientist in a white lab coat, even to the point where it seemed the person being given shocks would die. As is the case with many experiments in social psychology (and other fields), there are problems with Milgram’s classic experiments and their reporting. For one,
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he failed to report studies that did not yield the same result. For another, there is reason to believe that many of the test subjects actually did not believe they were giving electric shocks to another person, and were skeptical of the experiment. 5. Norms, sanctions, cohesion Norms can be formal or informal, explicit or implicit rules of behavior. Breaking those rules can result in sanctions, some kind
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of punishments, loss of status in the group, or even being cast out of the group. At the least, breaking norms is expected to cause the transgressor to feel shame for doing so. For example, legal norms are laws, and breaking a law can result in fines or imprisonment, among other things. Ethical norms are morals, defining what is acceptable or not. Incidentally, I have a whole series dedicated to philosophical ethics, so if you are interested in the subject,
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I suggest you look for the playlist Introduction to ethics on my channel. The point of norms and sanctions is to uphold group cohesion. If the cohesion of a group is strong, the members of the group really want to belong in the group, considering the group important. Breaking the norms of the group threatens, in some way, the existence of the group, and so cannot be allowed to be done with impunity. Groups
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typically cause (and expect) their members to show conformity with the group. There are different kinds of norms, with different purposes. The purpose of a norm can be, for example, to - increase the uniformity of its members, - guide towards the goals of the group, - increase predictability of behavior, - avoid social clashes within the group and with outsiders, - define acceptable behavior, and - uphold the values of the group.
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Groups can have different goals, and different members of the group can have different goals for their membership in the group. Groups typically have an emotional goal, such as the pleasure of the company of friends. A group can also have a mission goal, depending on what the group is meant to do. It doesn’t have to be something grand like an activist organisation might have, as a group can be formed pretty spontaneously for a single event. It can even be something
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like watching a movie together. Even the audience in a movie theatre can be a group in this sense. Different groups will have different priorities, so that a group of friends playing a board game might not actually consider playing the game as the most important point in their gathering, while the activist group might actually think that the mission of the group goes above all else. Members of a group will adopt various roles in the group. They can be explicitly stated,
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or not. These roles will create expectations, norms related to the position the person is in. A person can have several different roles, especially in different groups, and this can create conflicts between the roles. Even a single role can cause conflicting expectations. For example, a parent might think that they need to focus on their career in order to ensure the financial situation of the family, which might cause them
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to spend less time with their family, and even neglect the emotional needs of family members. A classic experiment about social roles is Philip Zimbardo’s (1933–2024) infamous Stanford prison experiment. It was conducted at the university, not a real prison, in 1971. The test subjects were recruited and divided into prisoners and guards. The experiment was actually cut short because of the events that occurred. Zimbardo claimed that the test subjects,
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regardless of which role they were assigned to, adopted their roles a bit too well. Some of the guards became sadistic and started to feel superior to their prisoners. The prisoners became submissive and resigned to their fate. These claims have been questioned later, and there seem to have been many problems with the experiment, both ethical and methodological. Still, it does seem to corroborate the common sense view that situations influence the people
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in them, and that people and their behaviors are influenced by their roles in the situation. 6. Emotions in social relationships Emotions play an important part in social relationships. Positive emotions like joy, happiness, and love draw people together, while negative emotions like anger, disgust, and fear cause others to avoid the company. Gestures and expressions, whether intentional or not, communicate emotions. Emotions are
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also highly contagious, and especially big expressions of emotions will probably have some effect on others, although the emotions they instill are not always the same as those expressed. But you have probably noticed that smiles tend to cause others to smile, and other similar phenomena. Sensitivity to the emotions of others (the ability to correctly recognize and interpret them) differs from person to person.
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For example, jealousy is a universal emotion. It has to do with considering another person to be better or more successful than oneself. They could be seen as more talented, having better looks, more friends, money, or whatever. Those who emphasize individuality and competition tend to experience jealousy more than those who don’t. Communality or sense of community reduces the occurrences of the emotion. Jealousy is clearly caused by comparing oneself to others. Also,
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those who are grateful for what they have, are not jealous. Thus, if you want to avoid the negative feeling of jealousy, stop comparing yourself to others, and be grateful for what you have, what you have succeeded in, or are good at. It may even be a good idea to write such things down once in a while. That will help you remember what you are grateful for, and you can also check your notes, if you have trouble remembering that, as may sometimes be the case.
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Emotions are connected to social motives: people need positive interaction with others, intimacy, connectedness, and other such things. The need for a safe, trusted, dependable partnership is strong in most people. The need for attention and shows of appreciation varies more from person to person. The appreciation of the people closest to oneself is considered more important than the appreciation of other people less significant to oneself. Desire for power
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(ability to influence others) and competitiveness vary greatly from person to person. All these motives are clearly social and connected to emotions, and there are many more of them. The need for social relationships can be analyzed in terms of two different aspects: the need for social interaction and the need for intimacy. Those who have a strong need for social interaction tend to be socially active, dislike being alone, seek approval and avoid conflict,
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are rarely very competitive or task oriented. They often choose to do tasks rather with friends than with experts, experience problems with relationships strongly, rarely speak ill of others, and highly value good team spirit. Those who have a strong need for intimacy tend to be fairly passive in their social relationships, maintain few but close relationships, and seek openness and mutual care in their relationships. They are considered warm, genuine,
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and loving by others, and are able to adapt to changes in their lives, and are very likely to be satisfied with their marriage in middle age. These two aspects of social needs seem only partially exclusive. It seems obvious to me that a strong need for social interaction is connected to high extraversion, while people with a strong need for intimacy are more likely to be introverts. 7. Social skills Social skills refers to one’s ability to
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use verbal and nonverbal means to interact with others and influence them. They can be either (1) related to discussion and listening, (2) about emotions, (3) alternatives to aggression, or (4) ability to plan and make decisions. It is important to realize that social skills are not the same as sociability; the latter just means having the tendency to enjoy social situations and find them rewarding, having an extroverted personality. Fundamentally,
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being sociable is based on innate temperament, while social skills are learned. One can have good social skills and still not care for social interaction, or one could be very strongly extroverted, and yet have poor social skills. One might think that a sociable person would be likely to have social experiences and thus opportunities to improve their social skills, but not all of them do. Still, a cycle of positive reinforcement is possible. It goes as follows:
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(1) Positive feedback from social interactions leads to improvement in social skills. (2) As social skills improve, self-esteem grows. (3) As self-esteem grows stronger, one tends to have more positive expectations for social interactions. (4) This leads the person to behave in a prosocial manner (with empathy, helpfulness, co-operation, and so on). (5) Prosocial behavior is met with acceptance and popularity by others. (6) Interactions with others tend to
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be more and more positive in general. This leads full circle back to (1).
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If you think you have poor social skills, it might be a good idea to skip the first three points, and try to approach everyone in a prosocial manner (4). By being nice, kind, and helpful to them, you will make positive interactions with them more likely (5). This can start the ball rolling, so to speak, eventually leading to improvements in your social skills, and strengthening your self-esteem as well. 8. Gossip Frank T. McAndrew (1953–) found that,
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against the stereotypes, women do not seem to gossip more than men. There are differences, but not in the quantity of gossip. For one, men mostly gossip with their partner, and mostly about things related to status, use of money, and success. They get anxious from positive stories, because they perceive the success of others as a threat to themselves. Women, on the other hand, gossip with their partners, but also with their women friends, and the things they talk about are
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related mostly to social situations. Women tend to get anxious from negative gossip, because they fear becoming the target of such stories. For both men and women, the higher the social standing, the more they are the subject of gossip. According to Robin Dunbar (1947–), gossip has several functions. For example, gossip is used to (1) show trust and strengthen the friendship, (2) gather information about acquaintances
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(which can be used to asses their trustworthiness, among other things), (3) caution others about people who behave immorally, and (4) process emotions in the community without disrupting it (talking behind people’s backs avoids causing an open conflict and enables the gossiper to better tolerate the person in face-to-face interaction). 9. In-group and out-group, and prejudice Members of any group form what is called
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an “in-group”, which leads to preferential treatment of other members of the in-group. Those not in the group are called the “out-group”. People can create all kinds of arbitrary in-groups in this way, and still the phenomenon occurs. Even if people are randomly selected into a temporary group, they will almost immediately evaluate members of that in-group more positively than those not selected, or those selected to another group.
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The out-group refers to those a person does not identify with, who are seen as not belonging in the same group, any of the groups one belongs to oneself. This easily leads to prejudice. Members of such groups are typically seen through stereotypes, generalizations of the members of whatever group they are seen as part of. This of course often leads to discrimination, especially if based on skin color, nationality, or religious identity.
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Xenophobia, the fear of the unknown (or foreign, strange), is a strong motive. People fear what they don’t know, and often use hate to disguise their fear. False stereotypes can also be used to replace ignorance and fuel hatred. Increased knowledge removes ignorance and thus the cause of fear. It can replace stereotypes. This makes it possible to see the individual instead of the stereotype, and perhaps recognize similarities and shared features, values, views, and other things
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that can become the basis for a new in-group that now includes the person who used to be a stranger. Muzafer Sherif (1906–1988) conducted a classic study about group membership, called the Robber’s Cave Experiment, in 1954. It has inspired the Realistic Conflict Theory. The test subjects were boys in a summer camp. It was found that the boys quickly bonded with the members of their group. They also found that it was easy to cause friction between such groups,
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and that the limits of resources quickly caused conflict between them. They then found that mere interaction or co-existence does not improve relations between members of the different groups, but working towards shared goals does. This last point seems very important to remember. There were some problems with the original experiments, but these main lessons from it seem to hold water. 10. Summary This has been my
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very short introduction to Social Psychology. As I explained, humans are very much social animals, and so our psychology is inextricably connected to other individuals and even abstract groups. Social psychology studies all the related social phenomena, rather than just the individual in various circumstances, which is mainly what psychology proper is interested in. In this video, I explained how some of the most important concepts, such as social cognition,
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stereotype, schema, conformity, norm, sanction, cohesion, and social skill, are used in social psychology. I went over some of the most basic findings regarding group-membership and social relationships. I even pointed out how you could perhaps put some of that information to good use. Throughout this video, I discussed some classic studies to also give you some idea of the history of the field. I will put some related links in the description below. Social psychology
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is a very young science, only very recently considered a separate field of its own. It is a very interesting subject (which is why I have studied social psychology separately from psychology as well), and will be covered in more detail either as part of a later course, or as a separate course. But this should be enough for a very brief introduction for now. Because of some very unfortunate things in my private life, I have not been making new videos in
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the past maybe three months, but I will now resume making them whenever I have the time. My plan is to publish a long video every week, as well as a YouTube Short, cut from earlier long videos, at noon (Finnish time) every day. That is all from me this time. Bye for now!
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