SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND WHAT DOES IT AIM TO STUDY?

Inspired by Kurt Lewin (1951), social psychology adopted the experimental method to study human behavior (Wood & Kroger, 1998). In this regard, Wood and Kroger (1998) report that, "Lewin's experiments in leadership style (autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire) became classics in the new experimental social psychology" (p. 267). Lewins' early work was carried on by Festinger and others who explored cognitive dissonance for the next 20 years at MIT and subsequently at the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota, making this one of the foundations of social psychology (Wood & Kroger, 1998).

Simply stated, social psychology uses the scientific method to study human social behavior (Rogers, 2003). According to Rogers, psychological social psychology "studies how social events and phenomena influence the ways in which individual people feel, think and act. It is concerned with the psychological processes (such as social perception and cognition) that...
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