SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY - What Are the Major Perspectives in Social Psychology?

Question: What Are the Major Perspectives in Social Psychology?

Answer:

Sociocultural Perspective

• Stresses the importance of social norms and culture.


• Proposes that children learn behavior through problem-solving interactions with other children and adults. Through these interactions, they learn the values and norms of their society.

Evolutionary Perspective

• Argues that social behaviors developed through genetics and inheritance.


• Emphasizes the role of biology and gene transmission across generations to explain current behavior.

Social Learning Perspective

• Stresses the importance of unique experiences in family, school, community, etc.


• According to this viewpoint, we learn behaviors through observing and mimicking the behavior of others.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Supports an information processing model of social behavior, where we notice, interpret, and judge the behavior of others.


• New experiences can either be assimilated (using already held beliefs to interpret the event), or accommodated (which involves changing existing beliefs in response to the event.)


• By understanding how information is processed, we can better understand how patterns of thoughts impact behavior.