Social Psychology Research: Ethics / Social Responsibility (Research Paper Sample)

Ethics/social responsibility.
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Part 5.
Social psychology is the study of how people’s behaviors, thought, and feelings are affected or influenced by the imagination, actions, and presence of other people in the same environment. (McDougall, 2015).Social psychology can be thought as an investigative study of behaviors of people when they interact with one another. Social psychology doesn’t only mean that there is interaction with people but generally interaction with the environment for example when one is one is watching a movie on television his house alone, he/she develops some behaviors that implies that he/she is interacting with the video. The majority of social psychological variables are measurable for example feelings, behavior and even thoughts and the outcome deduced hence it becomes interesting to investigate a person behavior and assign measurable units of measurements. In general, social psychology involves investigation of people’s behavior as a result of social interactions with the environment in different situations.
To understand Social psychology we need to know the critical areas of research. Social psychology has a vast area of research and that’s why different scholars have conducted research on these fields. Social psychology areas which researchable discipline include; social cognition, violence and aggression, attitude and attitude changes, prosocial behavior, discrimination, and prejudice, social and self-identity, group behavior, interpersonal relation and social influence.
Social cognition is a social psychological discipline which tries to show how people think about, perceive information about others and the manner upon which they can remember others or information concerning others. (Trafimow, 2015). Social cognition majorly involves schemas which try to show the general ideas of information concerning how things are, how they function and how they relate to each other and the environment. Through social cognition one can know everything that surrounds him/her. The major area of study in the social cognition is the attribution. Attribution is the manner in which one can explain how a particular individual behave. The manner in which someone can behave is as a result of either influence of others or mimicry of another person behavior. (Rast et.al, 2016). Attribution has two branches that are inner attribution which is behavior caused as a result of the inner characteristics an individual possess such as personality, ability, disposition and others. External attribution involves behavior caused or influenced by external surroundings, for example, weather. One can easily change the behavior associated with external attribution. Concerning ethics, ethics has a great impact on the social cognition of either a group or an individual. Individuals or groups of people who have good values are perceived highly by others and easily remembered by other people, and even some individuals will try to mimicry their behavior. On the contrary, when an individual or group conduct themselves in a way that they perceived negatively, the majority of people will not follow similar habits.
In violence and aggression refers to actions which make people get hurt or causes harm to other people. In social psychology, the psychologist is interested in studying how and why people engage in violence. Characteristics of individuals prone to violence and the necessary steps taken to solve the violence or aggression acts. (Staw, 2016). The social psychologist also studies the variables that trigger violence. Improper conducts cause violence implying that it is the behavior of an individual that matters a lot when it comes aggression.
Social psychology regards attitude as the key discipline of research. Attitude refers to the study of issues which may influence thought and force someone to trigger some actions. In simple terms attitude refers to anything that an individual "likes or dislikes”. According to ethical responsibility, attitude is one of the fundamental factors that influences attitude as there is a positive correlation between ethics and attitudes. (Wilde, 2016). An individual or group who are perceived to have good attitude have good ethics. Attitude changes usually occur due to some reasons such as behavior towards a group of people, environment ones stay and many others.
Prosocial behavior is another subject of discussion in social psychology as it involves how people help each other and they cooperate in activities. Prosocial behavior in social psychology is studied to ascertain why some people prefer teamwork to achieve what they want. Regarding ethics which represents the conducts of individuals towards one another, it is believed that prosocial behavior has an association with the proper conduct of individuals. (Hall et.al, 2016). Ethics responsibility is usually based on the corporation, coordination and feeling of the sense of belongings towards another person or group. In the same case, prosocial behavior tries to cultivate a sense of attachment towards one another by helping those in need.
Regarding prejudice and discrimination, the social psychologist is interested in studying about the interactions between people with others socially and the origin, reasons for existence and effects of certain types of attitudes. (Thau et.al, 2015). In this case, the social psychologist has conducted research and came out with reasons why a group or and individual becomes prejudice. Self and social identity are a vast area of research conducted as it focuses on identification of who we are and how the social identity influences our interactions with others. In this field of the investigation, other subjects have come up such as self-esteem, self-awareness, self-expression, self-concept and the factors that influence the interactions with others.
Group behavior is another vast area of research in social psychology as different group influence each of the members into performing certain actions which couldn’t be done individually. The actions of the group can be either positive or negative. (Trafimow, 2015). The social psychologist usually focuses on the research about the leadership of the group, group changes that often occur, group conflicts that are what causes them, group influence and individual efforts with regards to the perception of the group that is whether he/she is willing to corporate or not. Social influence is another area of study as it involves subjects such as social pressure, peer influence, obedience and other areas. Social influence has an on the decision on which an individual or group takes. Social influence is a dominant element as research has been conducted to ascertain how powerful it is and why people become inflexible to divert from behaviors and attitudes which they are influenced.
The last area of research widely studied is the interpersonal relationship where the social psychologist investigates how the interpersonal relationship affects feelings, behavior, attitudes and thought. Interpersonal relationship usually do affect people’s decision making. (McDougall, 2015). Different scholars have developed studies to measure how close interpersonal relationship can be. Other subjects researched under interpersonal relationship include; theories of romance, theory, and styles of attachment.
Moral behavior is the proper conduct of an individual or a group with or without influence. The conduct of an individual usually affects the decision and actions to be undertaken. (Hall et.al, 2016). The two psychological factors that significantly influence the moral behavior of an individual include; Group behavior and social interrelationship. As we have seen above, that group behavior and social responsibility have a significant impact on the behavior of an individual.
Group behavior influences moral behavior because a person can do some actions which are unethical in a group but canâ...