Social psychology
[6] During World War II, social psychologists were mostly concerned with studies of persuasion and propaganda for the U.S. military (see also psychological warfare).
Following the war, researchers became interested in a variety of social problems, including issues of gender and racial prejudice.
[7] Social stigma,[8] which refers to the disapproval or discrimination against individuals based on perceived differences, became increasingly prevalent as societies sought to redefine norms and group boundaries after the war.
These developments were part of a trend of increasingly sophisticated laboratory experiments using college students as participants and analysis of variance designs.
[10] In the 1970s, a number of conceptual challenges to social psychology emerged over issues such as ethical concerns about laboratory experimentation, whether attitudes could accurately predict behavior, and to what extent science could be done in a cultural context.
[11] It was also in this period where situationism, the theory that human behavior changes based on situational factors, emerged and challenged the relevance of self and personality in psychology.
[21] 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.
The peripheral route is influenced by superficial factors (e.g. smiling, clothing) and results in shorter-lasting change, but does not require as much motivation to process.
[34] Daryl Bem's 1972 self-perception theory claims that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior.
[38]: 15 The second major area of social influence research is compliance, which refers to any change in behavior that is due to a request or suggestion from another person.
[39] The third major form of social influence is obedience; this is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person.
Obedience as a form of compliance was dramatically highlighted by the Milgram study, wherein people were ready to administer shocks to a person in distress on a researcher's command.
[28]: 18 Psychologists have spent decades studying the power of social influence, and the way in which it manipulates people's opinions and behavior.
[46] Physical attractiveness is an important element of romantic relationships, particularly in the early stages characterized by high levels of passion.
Experiments are useful in social psychology because they are high in internal validity, meaning that they are free from the influence of confounding or extraneous variables, and so are more likely to accurately indicate a causal relationship.
However, the small samples used in controlled experiments are typically low in external validity, or the degree to which the results can be generalized to the larger population.
Some psychologists have raised concerns for social psychological research relying too heavily on studies conducted on university undergraduates in academic settings,[49][50] or participants from crowdsourcing labor markets such as Amazon Mechanical Turk.
[49] Regardless of which method has been chosen, social psychologists statistically review the significance of their results before accepting them in evaluating an underlying hypothesis.
The experiment showed that normal American citizens would follow orders even when they believed they were causing an innocent person to suffer or even apparently die.
This was initially argued to be an important demonstration of the power of the immediate social situation and its capacity to overwhelm normal personality traits.
[68] Likewise, a 2012 special edition of Perspectives on Psychological Science focused on issues ranging from publication bias to null-aversion which have contributed to the replication crisis.
[70] Some social psychologists have also published fraudulent research that has entered into mainstream academia, most notably the admitted data fabrication by Diederik Stapel[71] as well as allegations against others.
[72] Many researchers attribute the failure to replicate as a result of the difficulty of being able to recreate the exact same conditions of a study conducted many years before, as the environment and people have changed.
For example, the scientific journal Judgment and Decision Making has published several studies over the years that fail to provide support for the unconscious thought theory.
The heavy reliance on WEIRD samples may result in unrepresentative data, making it difficult to draw accurate conclusions about human behavior that apply to people from all cultural backgrounds.
Researchers have found that relying predominantly on WEIRD samples limits our ability to understand global human behaviors accurately.
This is problematic because WEIRD populations are not representative of the broader diversity of human experiences, which affects our understanding of basic psychological processes such as perception, cognition, and well-being.
[76] Recognizing cultural diversity is essential not only for gaining multiple perspectives in problem-solving but also for ensuring that everyone feels included and represented in the study of psychology.
Understanding different cultures enriches our knowledge of human nature and challenges existing biases, ultimately leading to a more comprehensive and inclusive body of psychological research.
Thus, the WEIRD problem represents both a challenge and an opportunity: a need to broaden the scope of research to better reflect the true diversity of humanity.
