SCIE​
AS Psychology
For your AS Psychology course, you will study 4 Social Psychology Studies in detail. These are:
A further strength of the social approach is the contributions it makes about understanding social behavior. Social psychology makes useful applications because it can explain and even offer solutions to problems in the real world. However, we do have to recognize that studies which measure social behavior may be specific to the time they were conducted. For example, obedience rates in the 1960’s might be very different to those in the contemporary era.
A problem which arises when studying social behavior relates to ethics. It is difficult to study social behaviour without negatively affecting the participants in the study. Nowadays psychologists have strict ethical guidelines which they should follow when conducting studies and this can affect both the participants and the researcher alike. A further problem with the social approach is related to the generalisability of the research findings. The social approach attempts to make generalizations about social behavior but often the samples used are very restricted. Often, a self-selected ample may be used (as with Milgram) which means that the sample may not be representative of the general population.
Social Psychology
The Social Approach
Social psychology (or the social approach) is interested in studying individuals in a social context, such as the family, institutions or the wider society. Social behavior may involve activity within a group or between groups. According to social psychologists our behavior is influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
A main strength of social psychology is the attempt to use real-life situations when studying behavior. Because social psychology is interested in human interaction this is best studied in real situations where participants have the opportunity to interact such as with the field experiment method. Field experiments are experiments carried out in a real world situation. They are high in ecological validity and may avoid demand characteristics as participants are unaware of the experiment. However, with field experiments it is not possible to have the same level of control as with laboratory experiments.
