Social Psychology Case Study

1. The development point of view of social psychology has changed the understanding of human nature in relation to social contexts. Social psychology is the study of how individuals act, think, and feel in relation to the context of society. Furthermore, social psychology concentrates on how other people influence an individual’s behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Basically, social psychology has changed our understanding of human nature as it investigates how an individual’s behavior influences a groups’ behavior or internal mechanisms; attitude or self-concepts. Post-World War 2(WW2), researchers were curious to investigate the reasonings for why people follow orders, despite the potential repercussions of those actions. Furthermore, social experiments are usually applied to demonstrate key

This lack of awareness does not bode well for human nature as this makes humans susceptible to heinous acts; demonstrating that there may be no innate moral code to humans, and in the event, there is a guideline, it can be overruled by authority. Moreover, social psychology demonstrates how an aspect of human nature is the need to feel accepted and fit in; the motivation for why individuals conform or give into social norms. Overall, the whole purpose of social psychology is to be able to draw general assumption from accepted phenomena to predict individuals’ reactions to certain social stimulus. It relies on social context heavily, and would not divulge any knowledge if there was only one individual present. Fundamentally, social psychology depends on group dynamics, or perceived presence of others in order to draw any conclusion about human nature. Thus, social psychology is insightful in regard to human nature when in a social environment, but not human nature on the individual scale. All social psychology phenomena are contingent on a perceived/actual presence of others or group dynamics; the mannerisms of human nature in social context cannot be applied to the