In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding,” I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such area of psychology that many fiction writers and some nonfiction writers should understand is social psychology. Social psychology is a field that has a long and diverse history, which can be utilized by writers in both fiction and non-fiction stories, especially if one of the writer’s main characters is a social psychologist.

Social psychology is a broad field of study that studies how people observe and interpret their own behavior and the behavior of others; additionally, the field serves to examine the ways in which a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others (Stangor, 2011). This field of psychology does not have an exact creation date or location; some believe that Aristotle was the first social psychologist (eg. Taylor, 1998) while others believe that the origin of the research that led to the formation of this field began in the 1900s with William James and Wilhelm Wundt (Finkel & Baumeister, 2010). Regardless of when the field of social psychology was officially referred to as social psychology, it is clear that the field has had an important impact on history and has grown and changed from the time of Aristotle to the present day.

The field of social psychology has changed greatly over the course of history from Plato’s description of the utilitarian functions of groups, to Socrates creating what is thought to be the first dual-process model of persuasion, to Aristotle’s study of how the social environment can affect an individual (Finkel & Baumeister, 2010). These accomplishments would all be classified as examples of social psychology, yet at the time of these accomplishments, no such field existed. The emergence of social psychology as a recognized field began during 1850–1930 during which time the field was recognized and named as a field of psychology. The first major change began during this time period when the field not only began to get recognition but also definition when Floyd Allport championed the field with laboratory experiments at Syracuse University during the 1920s and defined social psychology as a part of the psychology of the individual (Allport, 1924, p. 4).

One of the largest ways in which social psychology has changed across history is in the focus of the field. For example, during 1930-1945 the field focused on Allport-inspired individualist emphasis; in 1946-1969 the main focus became group dynamics due to the influence of Lewin’s contemporaries, and the 1990-to present-day period shows a focus on interdisciplinary research programs to address important modern-day problems (Finkel & Baumeister, 2010). Throughout history, the focus on social psychology has changed while growing from a small inclusive field of scholars to today’s modern version of the field with unprecedented opportunities for collaboration with other sciences (Taylor, 2004).

Throughout the field of social psychology’s growth from a small inclusive field to today’s open collaboration field, there have been many significant contributors to this evolution. Yet Floyd Allport’s contribution is one of the more significant as his conviction that controlled laboratory experimentation would provide the needed rigor for advancing social psychology as a scientific field led to his championing of the field (Finkel & Baumeister, 2010). This decision served to help propel social psychology to its modern-day status as a respected field of psychology, as without the rigor provided by the experiments, the progress of the field may have slowed or ceased without the provable facts from experiments to provide scientific proof.

References

Allport, F. H. (1924). Social psychology as a science of individual behavior and consciousness.

            Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Finkel, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2010). Advanced Social Psychology : The State of the Science.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=324042&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Stangor, C. (2011). Principles of Social Psychology. College Park, MD: University of Maryland

            Press.

Taylor, S. E. (1998). The social being in social psychology. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G.

Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 58–98). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Taylor, S. E. (2004). Preparing for social psychology’s future. Journal of Experimental Social

            Psychology, 40,139-141.