Social Psychology

Social psychology is picking up as focus of psychological study, quite possibly because a person's behavior or identity could never by truly defined outside of a social context. That is to say, a person is often identified with reference to a specific group (a family, a race, a nationality, a political collective, and the like). Evidently, this fact of life has led to a study of groups and individuals interacting with each other. Social psychology is only broad in its scope in that it touches upon many aspects of social interaction, making it an inter-disciplinary field of study. But as was said, the very root of social psychology is the observation of how each individual person is affected (in terms of thoughts, behavior and feelings) by his or her interaction with or within a group of people.

While connected, social psychology and sociology are two different fields of study: while social psychology looks at the individual, sociology examines the group and its behavior as a whole. As such, these two terms should never be interchanged with each other – take note that social psychology and sociology tend to be published in different journals, and social psychologists and sociologists consider their fields of study to be completely separate.

More on social psychology to be posted later; please check back often.