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      The person in the crowd In the modern world, it can be difficult to develop a sense of individuality and self-determination in the midst of social pressures to conform.

      Geoff Tompkinson / Science Source.

      Social psychologists seek to understand how other people affect the behavior, thoughts, and feelings of individuals. We might examine, for instance, how a person’s Facebook friends affect what she posts online or how being the lone minority member of a group affects that member’s thoughts about himself. In both of these cases we ask about social aspects of human existence: people influencing individuals. The emphasis on social distinguishes our discipline from other domains of psychology, and social is of course the core concept in our field: Social psychology is the scientific study of the social experiences and behaviors of individuals. Let’s examine each element of this definition.

      First, social psychology is a science: It relies on the rigorous application of scientific methods in the same way that physics or biology does. Like these other sciences, social psychology is not a collection of commonsense, simple observations and intuitive ideas. Rather, it is a systematic examination of social phenomena that utilizes both traditional and novel scientific methods involving careful experimentation, advanced technology, and sophisticated statistical analyses (and sometimes develops new ones). For example, we investigate the sexual orientation of many people using rigorous research, as opposed to merely asking opinions from a few individuals.

      Second, social psychology focuses on individuals rather than groups. For instance, we are interested in how a crowd affects its members but not in how one crowd influences another crowd. Third, we’d like to understand the ways in which individual social behavior is affected by others. Social behaviors are observable actions that stem from the direct or indirect influence of others. With regards to sexual attraction, one question social psychologists would try to answer is how other people impact who we are attracted to.

      Finally, social psychologists study the individual’s social experiences. The term experience encompasses conscious thoughts and feelings as well as nonconscious processes, brain activation, and hormone regulation. Thus, neurophysiological changes that are neither self-reportable nor obvious to an independent observer—say, activation of the amygdala—are included in this definition. We’ll have much more to say about nonconscious processes later, but for now, suffice it to say that we are not always aware of how others affect our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Again returning to our opening vignette, social psychologists are likely to examine how both conscious and nonconscious processes affect to whom we are attracted.

      In sum, social psychologists investigate how people influence the social experiences and behaviors of other humans. For the sake of simplicity, I will often shorten “social experiences and behaviors” to “social behaviors” and will make it clear when I am referring only to observable actions. What social psychology is and is not will be further clarified below when we contrast it with other branches of the social sciences and of psychology.

       [Dear Student: I have placed Think Again! questions throughout the text in order to help you gauge your comprehension of and memory for what you have just read. I urge you to try to answer each question you encounter right away—preferably by writing it down—and, if needed, to look back at the chapter to solidify your understanding.]

      Why Social Psychology?

      If you are reading this book, then you are likely already enrolled in a social psychology course. Why should you stay in it or sign up if you haven’t already? Well, consider that social behavior is virtually everywhere around (and inside) us all of the time. To social psychologists, the world is our proverbial oyster. Many of the same behaviors that fascinate you, as a student, captivate our imagination and literally call out for investigation. There are four compelling reasons to study social psychology. First, social psychology investigates the most fascinating topic in the universe: us. Second, social psychology provides tremendous insight into what people do and why people do it. You’ll undoubtedly come to a much deeper understanding of yourself and others by the time you finish reading this text. Students invariably tell me how much they have learned about why they and others do what they do and how they excitedly share what they learn with partners, family, and friends. For instance, they’ll tell a friend that they observed a car salesperson appeal to the consistency principle and now understand why it worked (more on this later). Or they realized that others did not in fact notice their “bad hair” day as much as they had expected. You too will be applying the lessons from social psychology almost immediately—and doing so is one effective way to learn them.

      Third, social psychology is useful: It helps us to solve serious real-world problems in ways that other sciences cannot. It aids us in improving schools, increasing helping behavior, reducing violence, and overcoming prejudice. Many of our central research streams originate in our desire to change the world for the better and are often rooted in our personal experiences and observations. For instance, Muzafer Sherif began to study social psychology after having narrowly escaped death in a violent ethnic dispute and sought to comprehend, among other things, the nature and causes of intergroup conflict (reported in Trotter, 1985) (see Figure 1.1). On a less serious note, I may be walking across campus and notice a staff person throwing an empty glass bottle into a trash bin rather than the adjacent bright blue bin clearly displaying a recycling

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