Social Psychology — in simple terms

 

Social psychology is the study of how other people and our social environment influence the way we think, feel, and behave.

The important thing is that “other people” doesn't necessarily mean someone has to be physically present. We can be influenced by:

• People who are actually around us
• People we are thinking about
• Social expectations
• Groups we belong to
• Cultural norms
• What we see other people doing
• What we believe other people think about us

The Fundamental Attribution Error

This is a particularly useful concept.

We often explain someone else's behaviour by their personality, while overlooking the circumstances they may be experiencing.

For example:

“That person is rude.”

rather than:

“I wonder whether something is happening in their life that caused them to behave that way.”

Your driving example demonstrates this well.

However, we can sometimes make the opposite mistake with ourselves. That's where the self-serving bias comes in:

“I succeeded because I'm good at it.”
“I failed because something went wrong outside my control.”

Cognitive biases

A useful Easy Read way to describe a cognitive bias is:

A cognitive bias is a tendency for our thinking to be influenced in a particular way.

It doesn't necessarily mean that someone is unintelligent or deliberately making a bad decision. Human brains use shortcuts when processing enormous amounts of information, and these shortcuts can sometimes lead us to inaccurate conclusions.

For example:

Confirmation bias

We may look for information that supports what we already believe and pay less attention to information that challenges it.

Availability heuristic

We may think something is more common or likely because examples of it are easy to remember.

Just-world hypothesis

This one is particularly important when discussing victim-blaming.

The basic idea is:

“People get what they deserve, and the world is basically fair.”

If something terrible happens to an innocent person, that belief can be uncomfortable. One way people may psychologically deal with that discomfort is by looking for something the victim supposedly did to cause it.

For example:

“They must have done something to bring this on themselves.”

This can create victim-blaming and can be extremely harmful.

A connection to mental health

This is where social psychology becomes particularly interesting for your material.

People can make assumptions about someone with a disability, mental-health condition, substance use disorder, or personality disorder based on what they see rather than what they don't see.

For example:

“They're not trying hard enough.”

may overlook factors such as disability, trauma, poverty, lack of support, discrimination, inaccessible services, or other circumstances.

So social psychology can teach us an important lesson:

Before judging someone's behaviour, consider both the person and the situation.

That fits very well with the non-judgmental, person-centred approach you're using throughout your mental-health awareness material.