Social psychology is the scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence of others. In this definition, scientific refers to empirical investigation using the scientific method, while the terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors refer to the psychological variables that can be measured in humans. Imagined and implied presences refer to the internalized social norms that humans are influenced by even when alone.
Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as being a result of the relationship between mental state and social situation, studying the conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur and how these variables influence social interactions.
Social psychology has bridged the gap between psychology and sociology to an extent, but a divide still exists between the latter two fields. Nevertheless, sociological approaches to psychology remain an important counterpart to conventional psychological research In addition to the split between psychology and sociology, there is difference in emphasis between American and European social psychologists, as the former traditionally have focused more on the individual, whereas the latter have generally paid more attention to group-level phenomena
In social psychology, attitude is defined as learned, global evaluations (e.g. of people or issues) that influence thought and action. Attitudes are basic expressions of approval and disapproval, or as Bem (1970) suggests, likes and dislikes (e.g. enjoying chocolate ice cream, or endorsing the values of a particular political party). Because people are influenced by other factors in any given situation, general attitudes are not always good predictors of specific behavior. For example, a person may value the environment but may not recycle a plastic bottle on a particular day.
Research on attitudes has examined the distinction between traditional, self-reported attitudes and implicit, unconscious attitudes. Experiments using the implicit-association test, for instance, have found that people often demonstrate implicit bias against other races, even when their explicit responses profess equal mindedness. Likewise, one study found that in interracial interactions, explicit attitudes correlate with verbal behavior while implicit attitudes correlate with nonverbal behavior.
One hypothesis on how attitudes are formed, first proposed in 1983 by Abraham Tesser, is that strong likes and dislikes are ingrained in our genetic make-up. Tesser speculated that individuals are disposed to hold certain strong attitudes as a result of inborn personality traits and physical, sensory, and cognitive skills. Attitudes are also formed as a result of exposure to different experiences, environments, and through the learning process. Numerous studies have shown that people can form strong attitudes toward neutral objects that are in some way linked to emotionally charged stimuli.
Attitudes are also involved in several other areas of the discipline, such as conformity, interpersonal attraction, social perception, and prejudice.
Persuasion is an active method of influencing that attempts to guide people toward the adoption of an attitude, idea, or behavior by rational or emotive means. Persuasion relies on appeals rather than strong pressure or coercion. The process of persuasion has been found to be influenced by numerous variables that generally fall into one of five major categories:
Communicator: includes credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness.
- Message: includes varying degrees of reason, emotion (e.g. fear), one-sided or two sided arguments, and other types of informational content.
- Audience: includes a variety of demographics, personality traits, and preferences.
- Channel/medium: includes printed word, radio, television, the internet, or face-to-face interactions.
- Context: includes environment, group dynamics, and preliminary information to that of Message (category #2).
Dual-process theories of persuasion (such as the elaboration likelihood model) maintain that persuasion is mediated by two separate routes: central and peripheral. The central route of persuasion is more fact-based and results in longer-lasting change, but requires motivation to process. The peripheral route is more superficial and results in shorter-lasting change, but does not require as much motivation to process. An example of peripheral persuasion is a politician using a flag lapel pin, smiling, and wearing a crisp, clean shirt. This does not require motivation to be persuasive, but should not last as long as central persuasion. If that politician were to outline what they believe and their previous voting record, he would be centrally persuasive, resulting in longer-lasting change at the expense of greater motivation required for processing.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_psychology