LESSON 4

PERSPECTIVES INS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social Psychologists use different perspectives when looking at questions about

social behavior. There are four major perspectives used by social psychologists.
These are:

Sociocultural perspective

It stresses the importance of social norms and culture.

It states that children learn behavior through problem-solving interactions with other
children and adults. Through these interactions, they learn the values and norms of
their society.

Social psychologists using this perspective may look at how cultural norms and
social influence impact social behavior. For example, when considering aggression,
a person taking the sociocultural perspective would look at how people are socialized
to behave aggressively in certain situations.

This perspective borrows from the sociocultural theory.

Sociocultural theory

This theory looks at the important contributions made by the society towards
individual development. It looks at the culture and its influence towards human
learning and development.

Vygotsky and Sociocultural theory

The Sociocultural theory was greatly informed by Lev Vygotsky who believed that
parents, caregivers, peers and the culture were responsible for developing higher-
order functions. He credits learning to interactions with other people. After
interactions, information is integrated on the individual level.

According to him, children are born with basic biological constraints on their minds.
Each culture however provides tools of intellectual adaptation, which allow them to
use their abilities to adapt to the way of life.

Evolutionary perspective

It argues that social behaviors are developed through genetics and inheritance.

It emphasizes the role of biology and gene transmission across generations to explain
current behavior.

When looking at a social problem such as aggression, a psychologist taking this

perspective would consider how genetics and evolutionary influences contributed to
the development of the behavior.

Social learning perspective

It the stresses the importance of unique experiences in family, school, community,

etc.

As per this viewpoint, we learn behaviors by observing and mimicking the behavior
of others.

In our earlier example of aggression, someone taking the social learning perspective
would be interested in how people learn aggressive behaviors from parents, peers,
and even media influences.

Social cognition perspective

It focuses on the information-processing model of social behavior, where we notice,

interpret, and judge the behavior of others.
The new experiences we encounter either can be assimilated (using already held
beliefs to interpret the event) or accommodated (which involves changing existing
beliefs in response to the event).

By understanding how information is processed, we can better understand how

patterns of thought affect behavior.

Explore- which perspective in Social Psychology do you resonate with and use to
explain human behavior?

Explore other different perspectives in general Psychology. Which are similar to

what we have discussed? Which are different?

SELF AND SOCIAL IDENTITY

Social Identity Theory

Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are, based on their membership to a
respective group.

The groups in which individuals belong are a source of pride and self-esteem.

Social categorization is the process of grouping individuals, e.g. “us” to describe our
group and “them” to describe the other group.

This process of categorizing people into groups, which is a form or prejudice, is a

normal cognitive process. In this process of categorizing people including ourselves
into groups, we exaggerate the following:

 The differences between groups

 The similarities of things in the same group
The main hypothesis of the Social Identity Theory is that group members of an in-
group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group as a way to enhance their
self-image.

The in-group is the group with which we belong while the out-group is the group
with which other people belong with which we do not.

Being part of a group is something with which we identify with and is a real part of
ourselves that we cannot do without.

Prejudiced views between cultures may result in racism or tribalism.

Below is an image of group categorization and prejudice.

Source: McLeod (2019)

Social Identity Theory Stages

Three mental processes are identified in the mental process that involves
categorizing people into either “us” or “them”. These are social categorization,
social identification and social comparison.

Social categorization
We categorize others and objects so as identify and understand them. This therefore
helps us understand our social environment. When we assign persons and things a
category, then we know things about these individuals. We also find things about
ourselves when we know which category we belong to.

NB- With the above, we define appropriate behavior as per the group with which we
belong. An individual can belong to many groups at the same time.

Social identification

In this stage, we adopt the identity of the group with which we identify ourselves
with and in. An emotional bond is built because of identification with the group.
One’s self-esteem will therefore be influenced as a result of group membership.

Social comparison

Once we have identified ourselves with a group, we tend to compare that group to
other groups. For our self-esteem to be maintained, our group has to fair positively
and favorably in comparison to the other groups.

When two groups identify themselves as rivals, they have to compete to uphold and
maintain their self-esteem. Competition between groups is therefore not exclusive to
resource competition but also identity competition.