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IT IS YOU
I say him I love him
He squiggles like a worm
Yes I love you, I say
Him, I love him, I say.
It is not your beauty that I need
Importance of Social Psychology
What is relevant in social psychology? What is useful in social psychology? What is informative in social psychology? In social psychology, there are several informative themes and lessons that I have learned from the course and text. These include how social psychologists do their research, the ways in which we come to understand other people, and conformity with influencing behavior. These are lessons that I would pass on. These lessons teach valuable lessons concerning social psychology, its relevance to other sciences, and its application in terms of studying society and its behavior.
The first theme that I find relevant is the lesson of how social psychologists do research. They do their research by formulating hypotheses and theories, as well as utilizing the observational and correlational methods of describing and predicting social behavior. The observational method is helpful in describing what a particular group of people or type of behavior is like and even extends to the archival analysis of the accumulated documents, or archives, of a culture. The correlational method measures two variables systematically, as well as the relationship between the two variables. The correlational method seems effective in cases where ethics play an important role. The correlational research method is also common in studies of development.
Many hypotheses and theories in research have been studied since the 1950s. With Leon Festinger's dissatisfaction of behaviorism as an explanation of why people change their attitudes, he formulated what is known as dissonance theory, which other researchers were dissatisfied with and, in turn, conducted further research to test other possible explanations. Social psychologists also utilize the experimental method, answering causal questions. Although random with different conditions and an independent variable, this method allows causal inferences. Throughout their research, social psychologists explore basic and applied research, as well as follow guidelines for ethical issues in research for social psychology.
This is important in light of the extension of hypotheses and theory, as utilizing observational and correlational methods of describing and predicting social behavior is relevant in that social behavior is an ongoing process. With a proper description of this ongoing process, complex interactions that take time and energy to proceed are usefully categorized and the ideas that are assimilated can be passed on to others. For instance, instead of having to go through the basic hypotheses and theory of predicting social behavior, a social psychologist could utilize archival analysis and also study past findings of cases that match the specifications of the ongoing study. This is interesting to me because although it allows a greater breadth of research in a more timely and efficient fashion, many of the controls and variables have been preset by other researchers and allows a more ethical study to be conducted.
