MAKATI SCIENCE TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF THE

PHILIPPINES
4410 erl bldg, Old Sta. Mesa St, Sampaloc, Metro Manila

SOBREVEGA, CAESAR JOHN P.

BS PSYCHOLOGY 3C
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
PROF. JHAVEN MAÑAS

Is social psychology is simply common sense or not?

In my own perspective social psychology is not a common sense at all, most of the
people have a misconception about this because we as a human can predict an
outcome of an event, further our common sense also lead ourselves to a certain
behavior that we believing, although that is not certainly true, Try to think if social
psychology is a common sense for example if we are aware or having able to predict
certain outcomes of an event, therefore why we always don’t understand the result
of our actions or the cause of our actions rather.

Moreover since social psychology is about relationships among people, in terms of

thinking, influence and relate to one another we can easily say that finding a answer
to a question about human behavior is a common sense right?. Scientifically
according to principals of psychology social psychologists are not the only one who
is being interested in understanding and predicting social behavior . Because some
group of society such as religious groups, philosophers, politicians, poets, novelists
even others outside of this group is also considered as a part of social behavior. But
the fact is social psychologists have deep approach of understanding towards social
behavior that is beyond human actions. They also believe that social behavior can
only acquire through systematic scientific approach and when conducting a
scientific research that normal people can’t do, so now is a social psychology is a
common sense, if you understand the context of what I’ve been written here, you
can also predict that the answer is “not”.
In sense to clearly identify if a social psychology is a common sense or not we can
simplify maybe yes for a normal people or no on professionals who is studying and
focusing on social psychology however because collective knowledge about social
interactions and considered as common sense and social psychology, In my own
understanding every people can give prediction based on his/her action or decision
or thinking that he/she do, but to be precise professional especially in the field of
psychology moreover do that thing the same but in a systematic and scientifically
way, therefore normal people have a power to judge others based on what they are
thinking towards them, but of course professionals in the field of psychology
especially the social psychologists have more thing to do to predict something or
determined a persons thinking, behavior, and how does that behavior affect other
people so that relationship will began.

Furthermore we can differentiate social psychology and common sense from itself .
Again social psychology is a scientific study on people’s social thinking, influence
and relationship, moreover psychology relies on science not on self-understanding,
even though it is theoretical understand, and because it is science therefore research
is present while common sense only relies on experience and self reasoning, this is
the clear explanation of the difference of this two.