Social psychology is the study of the way people’s thoughts, feelings and actions are affected by others, and the nature and causes of individual behavior in social situations.

Social Cognition: Impressions of others are formed through social cognitions--the processes that underlie our understanding of the social world. People develop schemas, which organize information about people and social experiences in memory. Such schemas represent our social life and allow us to interpret and categorize information about others.

One of the ways in which people form impressions of others is through the use of central traits, personality characteristics that are given unusually heavy weight when an impression is formed. Information processing approaches have found that we tend to average sets of traits to form an overall impression.

Attribution theory tries to explain how we understand the causes of behavior, particularly with respect to situational or dispositional factors. The attribution process involves determining what a behavior reveals to us about another person. In making attribution, we must determine whether a behavior is caused by the situation or the person. For example, a favorite ploy of many children is to convince their parents that their naughty behavior was caused by an external event: " It wasn’t may fault." Parents, conversely use information about distinctiveness, consistency and consensus (how others react) to make attributions about their children’s behavior. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to base attributions solely on behavior without considering the possible influence of the situation. An example of this error is common when viewing situation happening to other people. When witness an car accident we would often attribute the cause as due to the driver specially if the driver is a female without considering the situations that are also present like mechanical failure. There are may biases that affect the attribution process. These biases include a greater likelihood of assigning a trait when we are affected by the behavior (hedonic relevance), overemphasizing the behavior (underemphasizing the role of the situation), and the tendency to attribute another’s behavior to traits while viewing our own actions as a response to the situation. Attributions about ourselves are also biased. We tend to exaggerate the importance of our contributions in shaping events.

Attitudes- Learned predispositions to respond in favorable or unfavorable manner to a particular object. They are relatively enduring feelings (positive, negative or neutral) about objects, events or issues. Attitudes that are salient and those that are very specific are more likely to influence behavior. Furthermore, attitudes that are based on personal experience are the best predictors of behavior.

Parents have the strongest influence on the formation of children’s attitudes, because they are automatically believed and they do not have to deal with preexisting attitudes. They use rewards and punishments. Children who voice the "right" attitudes are likely to get praises and smiles ,whereas children who express the "wrong" attitudes are likely to be greeted with frowns and scoldings. Personal experiences, culture, peers and the media and even genetics also influence our attitudes. One of the basic processes underlying attitude formation and development can be explained on the basis of Classical Conditioning principles. People develop associations between various objects and the emotional reactions that accompany them. Operant conditioning explains attitudes on the basis of reinforcement principles. Attitudes that are reinforced, either verbally or non-verbally, tend to be maintained. Conversely, a person who states an attitude that elicits ridicule from others may modify or abandon the attitude.

Factors in Persuasion or attitude change

A number of theories suggest that people try to maintain consistency between attitudes. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) occurs when two cognitions— attitudes, behavior or thoughts—contradict each other and are held simultaneously by an individual. To resolve contradiction, the person may modify the cognition, change its importance, or deny it, thereby bringing about a reduction in dissonance. Dissonance should occur for smokers who deal with a barrage of information showing the link between smoking and cancer specifically if they have chosen a behavior that has so many negative consequences. According to dissonance theory, they may reduce dissonance by actually enjoying smoking more and seeking out other smokers to validate their behavior.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model suggests that attitudes are changed through two routes. The central route involves scrutinizing and evaluating that message content. Convincing people via the central route involves focusing their attention on the content of the message and presenting a clear, well-reasoned position. We are most likely to use central processing of information when the topic of the message is important or is interesting to us, when we have had direct experience with the issue of concern, and when we are in a neutral mood state, not excited or angry. The peripheral route involves issues outside the message content, such as the characteristics of the communicator and our mood. It is found that people in a good mood are more likely to be persuaded, unless the message is a complex one that requires considerable attention and thought to understand.

Social influence is the area of social psychology concerned with situations in which the actions of an individual or group affect the behavior of others. Conformity refers to changes in behavior or attitudes that occur as the result of a desire to follow the beliefs or standards of real or imagined group pressures, despite personal feelings to the contrary. Among the factors affecting conformity are the nature of the group, the nature of the response required, the kind of task, and the unanimity of the group. Compliance is behavior that occurs as a result of direct social pressure. Two means of eliciting compliance are the foot-in-the-door technique, in which people are initially asked to agree to a small request but later asked to respond to a larger one, and the door in the face procedure, in which a large request, designed to be refused, is followed by a smaller one. In contrast to compliance, obedience is a change in behavior that results from commands of a person in a position of authority. Among ways to remain independent of group pressure are inoculation, ( exposure to arguments opposing one’s beliefs, making the subject more resistant to later attempts to change those beliefs) forewarning,( a procedure in which a subject is told in advance that a persuasive message is forthcoming, sometimes reducing the effects of social influence) and consistency ( the persistence of those holding an unpopular view, eventually bringing about a change in the attitude of the majority).

The study of interpersonal attraction, or close relationships, considers liking and loving. Among the primary determinants of liking are proximity,(nearness to another) mere exposure, similarity and physical attractiveness.

Similarity is one of the strongest predictors of attraction because similar others validate our own opinions and actions. The similarity can be on almost any dimension including attitudes, ability, intelligence, economic conditions, race, height, physical attractiveness, and sometimes personality. However, we are not attracted to people who have a characteristic that we do not admire in ourselves.

Proximity or physical closeness leads to liking. We like people who are physically close to us for reasons of familiarity. There is a great deal of research showing that mere exposure or the more we are exposed to a person, name or song, the more we come to like it. The mere exposure effect is powerful, but there are two limitations. The first is that if you initially dislike someone, increased familiarity may make the situation worse, breeding contempt instead of attraction. The second limitation is based on the sheer frequency of exposure. A stimulus that is frequently presented loses impact if it is "overexposed" — especially if it is repeatedly presented to people who are easily bored. Thus, proximity can also lead to disliking.

We like physically attractive people because they may give us a certain status and we see ourselves as being more similar to attractive people than to unattractive people. However, we often end up with partners who are about as attractive as we are, because we like people who are attracted to us.

Loving is distinguished from liking by the presence of intense physiological arousal, an all-encompassing interest in another, fantasies about the other, rapid swings of emotion, fascination, sexual desires, exclusiveness, and strong feelings of caring.

According to one approach, love can be categorize into two types: passionate or romantic, a state of intense absorption in someone that is characterized by physiological arousal, psychological interest and caring for another’s needs. From the ecstatic highs to the agonizing lows, passionate love is the stuff of romance novels, popular music, and soap operas.

On the other hand, companionate love is the strong affection we have for those with whom our lives are deeply involved. It is a form of affection between friends or lovers that is less emotionally intense, but deeper and more enduring. Resting on a foundation of mutual trust and respect, companionate love enables partners to exhibit high levels of self-disclosure— in other words, to bare their souls and reveal details about themselves. The love we feel for our parents, other family members, and even some close friends fall into this category.

Robert Sternberg’s theory further subdivides love into eight kinds. Recent work has examined the development, maintenance, and deterioration of relationships. Relationships tend to move through stages, and various components of love—intimacy (encompassing feelings of closeness and connectedness), passion (motivational drives relating to sex, physical closeness, and romance), and decision/ commitment ( encompassing the initial cognition that one loves someone, and the longer term feelings of commitment to maintain love)—vary in their influence over time.

(Robert Sternberg, 1986)

Aggression is intentional injury of or harm to another person. Instinct approaches suggest that humans have an innate drive to behave aggressively, a fighting instinct which in earlier times ensured protection of food supplies and weeded out the weaker of the species, and that if aggression is not released in socially desirable ways— catharsis, it will be discharged in some form. According to this theory, society ought to provide acceptable means of catharsis through, for instance, participation in games and sports in order to prevent its discharge in less socially desirable ways.

Frustration-aggression theory suggests that frustration— a state produced by thwarting or blocking of some ongoing, goal directed behavior, produces a readiness to be aggressive— if aggressive cues— stimuli that have been associated with aggression in the past are present.

Finally, observational learning theory hypothesizes that aggression is learned through reinforcement— particularly reinforcement that is given to models. This theory pays particular attention not only to direct rewards and punishments that individuals receive, but to the rewards and punishments that models— individuals who provide a guide to appropriate behavior— receive for their aggressive behavior. Most research suggests that there is a significant association between watching violent television programs and displaying aggressive behavior. For example, one experiment showed that human subjects who watched a lot of television as third-graders become more aggressive adults that those who didn’t watch so much TV.

Helping or prosocial behavior occurs from one of two motivations: Altruistic, a motivational state with the ultimate aim of increasing the other’s welfare or egoism, a motivational state with the ultimate aim of increasing one’s own welfare. Helping behavior is influence by rewards, mood and empathy and norms. Helping in emergencies is determined in part by the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility, which results in a lower likelihood of helping when more people are present. Deciding to help is the outcome of a four-stage process consist of noticing a possible need for help, interpreting the situation as requiring aid, assuming responsibility for taking action, and deciding on and implementing a form of assistance. A negative decision at any stage assures no helping. An individual is less likely to help if there are others present or if they believe the victim does not deserve to be helped.