The Historical Background of Social Psychology - Essay Example

People always strive for mastery, which means they try to comprehend and forecast events in the social world in order to obtain encouragement. They enjoy feeling experienced and effective and will do their best to obtain these feelings. And on the contrary, they are likely to avoid situations that exclude obtaining them. People are apt to seek connectedness, i.e. they look for support, love, and acceptance from those who surround them. Due to these groups, they care about and value usually makes people behave in a manner of liking from representatives of such groups.

People value "me and mine" that means they wish to see themselves - as well as other people and groups they like - in a positive light. It makes people collect and remember information in the support of this positive motivation, and neglect or simply miss information that proves the opposite (Smith and Mackie, 1995).Each of these principles provides a number of effective tools that can be applied to nearly all spheres of human life to explain the interconnection between a wide variety of factors that influence the behavior of an individual or a group.

They can be used to reveal and classify such important aspects of group activity, including motivation, conflict resolution, leadership, communication, negotiations, information handling, decision making, and others (Franzoi, 1996).Question 2Taylor & Brown (1988) have argued that self-enhancing cognitions lead to mental health. In the strong form, such a standpoint leads to the assumption that even if self-enhancing cognitions lack reason and rationality they can still foster mental health and benefit the individual.

The third principle of social psychology suggests that people do tend to adopt a positive view of themselves, even though such a view is not accurate. The effect of an erroneous view of oneself may really be positive for individuals who lack positive attitudes. However, rationality and accurateness of perception sometimes play an even more important role than a positive view of oneself. The phenomenon of stereotyping is a good example of the consequences a positive but the inaccurate view of oneself may have.

In the psychological literature, the term 'stereotype' relates to the system of social beliefs concerning representatives of other social groups. Affiliation with a certain group is an essential aspect of any individual's life. Yet, being affiliated with one group the individual starts to distinguish between his/her group and people who belong to other groups which results in the development of two concepts: in-group and out-group. In-group is defined as " a group to which a person belongs and which forms a part of his or her social identity" while out-group is "any group to which a person does not belong" (Franzoi, 1996: 272).

Evidently, the difference in physical characteristics can be a factor that helps individuals distinguish between in-group and out-group: white males perceive Afro-American males and females as members of out-groups. The major difference between the individual's perception of in-group and out-group members is the following: members of in-groups possess overwhelmingly good personal qualities, while out-group members are perceived with a certain share of negativism. Precisely this trick of perception makes European Americans be sure that they have been endowed with industry, intelligence, reason, honesty, and other positive traits of character, while the minorities are perceived lacking these features though no studies are available to date to provide credible scientific evidence that white race is more responsible, less superstitious, and more intelligent than any other.

One result of this view is the phenomenon of racial discrimination The recent research in the field of self-enhancement processes also demonstrates that an inaccurate and overly positive view of oneself causes interpersonal difficulties and psychological maladjustment (Colvin, Block, & Funder, 1995). Therefore, the accuracy of self-appraisal and rational perception of the social environment may be even more essential elements of mental health than overwhelmingly positive self-evaluation.