Social psychology began to develop at the beginning of the 20th century.
Social psychology is a discipline that began to be developed at the beginning of the 20th century in the United States. It is a branch of psychology that revolves around the assumption that there are psychological processes that determine the way society functions and the way in which social interaction takes place. These social processes are what outline the characteristics of human psychology.
Social psychology examines the mutual determination between an individual and his or her social environment. Thus, this science investigates the social traits of behavior and mental functioning.
The father of social psychology
The father of social psychology is the French sociologist Auguste Comte , according to the vast majority of experts and scholars. A figure who, among other things, proposed what was called positive morality and which focused both on what the role of man was in society and culture and on what its biological foundations are in matters of conduct .
However, Karl Marx , a German intellectual, is also established in that category of antecedent and pioneer of this discipline that concerns us, who proposed a series of elements that would later be fundamental in it. Specifically, he developed concepts referring to the influences that the individual has, both cultural and institutional, material or technical.
To all this we can add that specifically those who are considered builders of this social psychology are three Americans: George H. Mead , Floyd Henry Allport and Kurt Lewin , who was Polish but who ended up becoming an American citizen.
Social psychology can be approached from different approaches.
The contributions of Kurt Lewin
Lewin stands out for being the founder of the so-called modern social psychology , for contributing in a palpable and notable way to the development of Gestalt psychology (current of modern psychology) and for creating what is known as of field theory .
A theory that states, among other things, that it is impossible to try to know and understand man's behavior outside of his environment.
Different approaches in social psychology
Different approaches can be mentioned within social psychology, such as psychoanalysis , behaviorism , postmodern psychology and the group perspective .
Psychoanalysis understands social psychology as the branch that examines collective drives and repressions , which have their origin within the individual unconscious to condition the collective and influence the social.
Behaviorism , for its part, considers social psychology as the study of social influence , which is why it focuses its efforts on observing and analyzing the behavior of the subject with respect to the influence of the environment or others.
For postmodern psychology, on the other hand, social psychology is responsible for analyzing the components that intervene in diversity and social fragmentation .
Finally, according to the group perspective, each group of individuals constitutes a unit of analysis with its own identity . Therefore, social psychology studies human groups as an intermediate point between the social and depersonalized and between the individual and particular .