HISTORY OF SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGY
SOCIO 123: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 02
ANA MARIE FAITH L. CORPUZ, INSTRUCTOR
 TIMELINE

1 2 3
EARLY INFLUENCES 19TH-20TH CENTURY EXPERIMENTS &
LATER
DEFVELOPMENTS
 EARLY INFLUENCES

ARISTOTLE, PLATO, HEGEL & THE ANGLO-

EUROPEAN WRITINGS OF THE MID-1800s
ARISTOTLE

 He is considered as the pioneer of

the individual approach to social
psychology.
 This understanding came from his
argument that humans beings are
inherently social beings because co-
existence was key to our survival.
PLATO

 On the other hand, Plato took a

more society-centered approach.
 He argued that people are
controlled by the society because it
enforces social responsibility
specific to particular social
contexts.
HEGEL

 He wrote on the existence of a social

mind.
 He said that the society people live
develops among those who live within it a
group mind making social life cohesive
and in order.
 Concepts about conformity, obedience
and group processes evolved out of this.
THE MID-1800s
 Emphasized the influence of culture in the
development of personality. They termed this as
volkerpsychologie (Wundt, Steinthal and
Lazarus)
 They put prime importance to language as the
cultural element which influenced personality
the most.
 They argued that language as a social/cultural
product evolved out of communal social thought
and from which culture, in all its details, is
mirrored.
 19th-20th CENTURY
INFLUENCES

ALLPORT, BANDURA, LEWIN, FESTINGER, TAJFEL,

WEINER, MILGRAM, ZIMBARDO
GORDON ALLPORT

 Proponent of the Trait Theory.

 Key figure in introducing the concept
social facilitation or the tendency of
people to perform better in the presence
of others.
 This would later on develop into one
whole area of study called group
processes.
ALBERT BANDURA

 Proponent of the Social Learning Theory

which primarily contends that our
behaviors are shaped by what we learn
from role models or the society in
general.
KURT LEWIN

 Referred to as the father of modern Social

Psychology because he shaped the
scientific methodology of the discipline.
 Through his social experiments on
leadership, decision-making and group
dynamics, he pioneered the use of the
scientific method and experimentation in
analyzing social behavior.
LEON FESTINGER
 His major contribution in modern social
psychology are the concepts cognitive
dissonance and social comparison.
 His idea was that human beings had an inner
drive to avoid disharmony so we have to
eliminate the source of inconsistencies or
dissonance.
 Along with Lewin, he refined the experimental
nature/methodology of Soc Psych.
HENRY TAJFEL

 His major contribution is the Social

Identity Theory.
 His experiments on group behavior
revealed that when people are divided
into small groups, prejudice starts from
the awareness that there is an “other
group.”
BERNARD WEINER

 He coined one of the most important

concepts in SocPsych called attribution.
 This concept reveals that human beings
desire control and it is manifested in their
craving to find causal explanations to
success and failure.
 He said that attributions were based on
three areas: locus, stability and
controllability.
STANLEY MILGRAM

 His experiment on obedience remains to

be one of the most notable social
experiments in the field.
 He laid down the concept of destructive
obedience and gave an analysis that even
the most decent people could be
encouraged to do very bad things.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
 His controversial Stanford Experiment gave light
to the concept of conformity.
 He primarily wanted to assess the psychological
effect of perceived power among prisoners and
guards.
 The study showed that conformity to social roles
occurred as part of the social interaction, as both
groups displayed more negative emotions and
hostility and dehumanization became apparent.
EXPERIMENTS AND LATER
DEVELOPMENTS
THE TRIPLETT EXPERIMENT (1898)

 One of the earliest recognized

experiments in social psychology
executed by Norman Triplett.
 His experiment on cyclists became
the foundation of the social
facilitation theory improved by Kurt
Lewin.
ROBBERS’ CAVE EXPERIMENT (1935)
 One of the earliest recognized experiments
in group conflict executed by Muzafer
Sherif.
 He wanted to prove that intergroup conflict
and hostility arises when there is
competition for limited resources, causing
them to have negative thoughts and
behavior towards the other groups.
 This led to the concepts of social
judgement and realistic conflict.
POST SECOND WORLD WAR
EXPERIMENTS

 Conformity and obedience

(Zimbardo, Milgram, Ash)
 Prejudice and aggression (Leonard
Berkowitz)
 Group processes (Irving Janis)
 Altruism and pro-social behavior
(John Darley and Bibb Latane)