ABSTRACT
Psychology and sociology are two separate but closely related social science disciplines. Psychology is currently defined as “the scientific investigation of mental processes (thinking, remembering, feeling, etc.) and behavior.” Psychologists study the subjects such as sensation, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, motivation, emotion, development, personality, stress, and mental health. They use various research methods ranging from surveys to experiments.
Sociology is generally defined as “the study of human societies. It comprises the scientific study of human life, social groups, whole societies and the human world as such.” The topics studied in sociology are in a very large spectrum. Socialization, social groups, and organizations, social deviance, crime, social classes, social stratification, gender, race and ethnicity, family, politics, education, religion, media, urbanization, and health are some of these topics.
On the other hand, social psychology is closely related to both psychology and sociology while it was generally thought as a subdiscipline of psychology. Most of the social psychologists adopted Allport’s definition that the attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others. Several topics such as social influence, social cognition, social perception and attributions, attitudes and attitude change, self, aggression, prosocial behavior, interpersonal attraction, group dynamics, prejudice, and intergroup conflicts are studied by social psychology researchers using experimenting and surveying methodologies.
At first sight, it seems that it is difficult to make a distinction between social psychology and two others as there are similarities in their subjects. However, social psychology’s emphasis is on the social interactions, that is, social influence. The social-psychological concepts and theories are used to explain the effects of “the other” on the individual. Besides, various methods which social psychologists use and levels of analysis distinguish social psychology from psychology and sociology.
In this chapter, the area of social psychology is addressed by making comparisons between three areas in their subject areas: levels of analysis; main problems the discipline is focused on; and perspectives, methodology, and interpretation of the results.
