Top Psychology Schools in Arizona

Interested in a graduate degree in Psychology from a top program within the state of Arizona? We offer rankings of best Arizona Psychology graduate programs. Review the following schools to see requirements for Master and Doctoral degrees in the area of Psychology.

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Social Psychology

Social psychology is the part of psychology that deals with the social interaction between people and how it is shaped by values, attitudes, social systems and the current situation. Social psychology typically focuses on the individual in a social situation. Since the early 1900s, social psychology has emerged as an independent research branch with its own, distinctive issues and working methods.

Historical background

In the 1890s, Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel de Tarde had published their studies on the psychology of the masses and theories of suggestion and imitation. In 1908 came the first textbooks in social psychology, including William McDougall ‘s An Introduction to Social Psychology. Later, there was a strong expansion in social psychological research. Experimental methods were used and new problems were investigated. Researchers such as Kurt Lewin and Jacob L. Moreno became pioneers for experimental studies of the effects that take place in small groups. Louis Leon Thurstone and Rensis Likert (1903–1981) devised a scaling method, the Likert scale, for measuring people’s attitudes. George H. Mead ‘s theories of the social origin of the self became the subject of renewed interest and led to in-depth studies of social roles. Social anthropological research produced new knowledge about the relationship between culture and personality. This inspired social psychologists to embark on in-depth studies of the impact of the environment on children’s personality development.

From the 1960s, social psychology became more specialized. For example, the small group’s function, structure and process were studied. Another important development from the late 1950s started with, among others, Leon Festinger and Charles E. Osgood, who put forward theories about the relationship between attitudes and behavior. At the same time, the Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider (1896–1988) opened a phenomenological understanding perspective; thoughts that have been continued in attribution theory, about how we spontaneously understand and explain behavior. The cognitive revolution in the 1960s generally led to an increased focus on cognition, which is especially seen in social psychology in the research area social cognition.

Social psychology of today

Modern social psychology encompasses a wide range of topics:

1) Social cognition is about the way in which we organize and make sense of our social environment in our thinking. Important topics are how we form perceptions about other people (impression formation), how we explain behavior (attribution), the consequences our attitude towards others (expectation effects) and how forms organize our understanding of our social environment. Social cognition also deals with how we understand ourselves and our own actions and reactions, for example in self-attribution.

2) Social influence and interaction is another comprehensive area of research. Why we do as others (conformity), why we obey orders (obedience) and comply with the wishes of others (flexibility) are central themes. Stanley Milgram ‘s obedience experiments are an important contribution in this area.

3) The study of attitudes, and in particular of attitude change, is of great interest, not least because knowledge of attitude change is believed to be able to help reduce undesirable behavior (eg smoking) and promote desired behavior (eg responsible traffic behavior).

4) Positive or negative attitudes (sympathy, helpfulness, prejudice, discrimination, aggression) towards others, individuals or groups, are also important research topics in modern social psychology.

5) Knowledge of the behavior and decisions in groups, such as group polarization, social loafing, social facilitation, groupthink and bystander effect constitute important contributions in modern social psychology.

Important experiments

A number of famous experiments that illustrate social psychological principles are often mentioned in the media, including:

Solomon Asch’s conformity experiment
Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments
Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment
The spectator effect (psychologists John M. Darley and Bibb Latané)
Rosenthal Effect(Pygmalion Effect)
Social facilitation and social loffing

Social psychology is an integral part of psychology, both methodically and theoretically. Several applied disciplines in psychology, including health psychology, work psychology, organizational psychology and social psychology, are rooted in social psychology.

Of Norwegian psychologists who have contributed to social psychological research are Berit Ås, Harriet Holter, Ragnar Rommetveit, Karl Halvor Teigen and Bente Tæen.

Rankings	Psychology Programs	Departments and Schools
1	Arizona State University Address: PO Box 871104, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104 Phone: (480) 965-7598 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://psychology.clas.asu.edu/graduate	Department of Psychology
2	University of Arizona Address: PO Box 210068, Tucson, AZ 85721 Phone: (520) 621-7447 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://psychology.arizona.edu/programs/graduate.php	Department of Psychology
3	Northcentral University Address: 10000 E. University Drive, Prescott Valley, AZ 86314 Phone: (928) 541-7777 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.ncu.edu/academics/psychology.aspx	School of Psychology