Social Psychology Is the Branch of Psychology

Social psychology is the branch of psychology that involves the scientific study of how individuals think about, relate to, and influence each other (Myers, 2012). Social psychology emphasizes several different aspects of behavior: (a) the situational influences that affect how people interact for relate to each other; (b) how cognitions interact with relationships and behavior; and (c) how and how the individual or group relates to or influences others (Myers, 2012). To put it simply social psychology studies people in the social context.

General psychology can be generally described as the study of mental functions and behavior (American Psychological Association, 2013). All disciplines of psychology study behavior in a specific context. The context of behavior that social psychology specializes in is the social context or as stated above how people think about, relate to, and affect other people. This is one aspect of general psychology. Another aspect of psychology would be the study of abnormal behavior as in clinical psychology. Social psychology is a specialized area of general psychology that studies people in the social context.

Clinical psychology is involved in the assessment, treatment and study of abnormal behavior and mental illness. Clinical psychologists are involved in providing services regarding the diagnosis, assessment, evaluation, treatment, and prevention of psychological, emotional, behavioral, and psychophysiological disorders and issues in individuals at all areas of the lifecycle (Trull & Prinstein, 2012). These services include understanding, predicting, and reducing emotional, physical, psychological, intellectual, and social maladjustment associated with mental disorders and problems of daily living. Social psychologists are not involved in the direct treatment of individuals with maladjustment or mental illness; however, social psychologists may study how these groups relate to others or how other people relate to individuals with mental illness. However, social psychologists are more interested in studying "normal behavior" than mental illness (although they may study aspects of mental illness). Social psychologists are not qualified to diagnose or treat individuals in the same way the clinical psychologists are. Instead social psychologists concentrate on studying how people relate to and affect one another. Many social psychological principles can be applied to clinical psychology and many clinical psychological theories can be applied to social psychological principles, but the two fields are entirely different.

Social psychology is also confused with sociology. Social psychologists share a keen interest in the study of group behavior with sociologists; however, for the most part sociologists concentrate on group behavior, whereas most social psychologists concentrate more in individual behavior (Myers, 2012). Social psychologists are interested in how the individual is affected by or affects the group; sociologists are more interested in studying how the group behaves. Sociologists would study a phenomenon such as how political attitudes differ between middle -- class income groups and lowered -- income groups. A social psychologist would be more interested in studying how political attitudes develop in the individual. Sometimes there is a thin line between sociology and social psychology. However, social psychologists rely much more heavy on experimental research methodologies, whereas sociologists rely more heavily on correlational research methods (Myers, 2012).

As stated above social psychology is and empirically driven specialty of psychology. Social psychologists are heavily driven by research. Social psychologists develop hypotheses, propose theories that can be tested by these hypotheses, and make predictions about how people will behave in a given context. Social psychologists are very involved with following the scientific method in order to develop their theories and test their hypotheses (Myers, 2012).

Because social psychology is theory driven social psychologists rely heavily on research to test their theories. In general there are two basic subdivisions of research: correlational studies that are often conducted in natural settings and experimental studies that manipulate one or more factors under controlled conditions (Creswell, 2012).

There are a number of different types of correlational studies including field research or natural observation, survey research, archival studies, or case studies where a single individual is studied in depth. Social psychologists make use of all of these but are especially keen on survey research and observation. The advantages of correlational studies are that they can be performed on naturally occurring groups, a large number of variables can be studied at a single time, information can be collected from many subjects at the same time, one can study variables that are not easily produced in the laboratory, and the studies are often easier to do. The major disadvantage of a correlational study is that a correlational study only describes associations or relationships between the variables in this study. Because there are a number of possible influences on the variables under study correlational studies cannot make causal inferences (Creswell, 2012).