Social Behavior Essay

Social Behavior and the Transition to College There was a study conducted to examine whether social achievement goals can explain the way in which students behave socially and how they adjust to it six months later. Social achievement goals can be divided into the following three categories: social development goal, social demonstration-avoid goal, and social demonstration-approach goal. These categories can be defined as a student’s desire to improve relationships and social skills, his desire to avoid negative judgments, and instead, gain positive judgments, respectively. (Sungok and Allison, 2012) Sungok and Allison (2012) recruited a sample of 276 college students from a university located in the Midwest to measure their social achievement

The sample consisted of 52% female and 48% male in which 20% of the 276 college students were not freshmen. The researchers collected information about social achievement and self-esteem from participants using a questionnaire. Following this questionnaire, researchers conducted an observation to measure students overall social adjustment, that is, whether students endorsed a positive social ability. To further analyze students’ social competence, researchers conducted another observation to categorize each students on one of the following social adjustment category: prosocial behavior, overt aggressive behavior, popularity, socially anxious behavior, and internalizing behavior. Sungok and Allison (2012) found that social developmental goals are a predictor of positive social adjustment in the sense that it promoted a prosocial behavior. In other words, if a student demonstrates a willingness to

(Pittman and Richmond 2008). Pittman and Richmond (2008) recruited a sample of 79 first-year college students from an introduction to psychology course at a regional state university to assess their sense of belonging in college and quality of friendship in relation to their adjustment. They first collected information from participants during the fall semester and another during the spring semester to obtain a more accurate result. The sample consisted of 58 women and 21 men in between the age of 18 to 19 years old. Researchers collected information from participants using a questionnaire to assess their demographic, sense of belonging at the college, quality of friendship, self-competence, which can be defined as a student’s performance level toward academic work and social acceptance, and problem behaviors such as aggressiveness, anxiety, and