CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

This response deals with two questions relating to various concepts and approaches of social psychology which are used to explain human behavior in its biological, emotional, cultural and social organizational setting (B-E-C-SO).

#2. Six research programs translated into B-E-C-SO

1. Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytical research is concerned with the study of the facts of mental life. It focuses on a patient's emotional or inner psyche, especially during his or her infancy and early childhood. Its central findings deal with the role of unconscious instincts and experiences and the abnormal consequences which follow later in life from unsatisfactory bonding experiences with parents or other care-givers which thwart a child's basic needs for protection, food and sex. Psychoanalysis broke with other schools of thought which interpreted human behavior, primarily as a result of external, cultural or environmental forces and Darwinism which stressed the importance of genetic factors in shaping human behavior. However, it became a closed intellectual system (Lecture notes, 1994, September 13). Later researchers such as John Bowlby found that a child's need for attachment with his mother was basic, " a psychological bond in its own right" (Holmes, n.d., p. 63). Within limits, he found that fear and anxiety (the reaction to separation or loss from the person to which one becomes attached) "is a perfectly healthy reaction," not a psychiatri

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n" (Lecture notes, 1994, September 15). 5. Ethology. Ethology involves the attempt to arrive at generalizations concerning human nature and development from the observation by anthropologists and others of life among other living creatures, principally non-human primates and other mammals, and in primitive human societies. The search is for cultural and psychological patterns and the reasons therefor. The studies of Jane Lawick-Goodall of chimpanzees in the wild and of Shirley Strum of baboons produced some surprising results, quite different from the 'survival of the fittest,' 'dog eat dog' scenario which the Social Darwinists derived from the findings of Charles Darwin. Lawick-Goodall (1971) said that chimpanzees have "an extremely complex social organization" (p. 129). Among the baboons, Strum says there is "social reciprocity among individuals" (n.d., p. 152). Although a social hierarchy exists among males and females, aggression and violence are restrained or limited "to obtain what one wanted" (Strum, n.d., p. 81). The dominant facts about gender roles were that while males were more dynamic, unpredictable and willing to take risks and females more conservative, there was "no male dominance" but rather a "complementary equ

Category: Psychology - C