EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Today scientific psychology is generally defined as the science of behaviour. The term 'behaviour' is employed in a very inclusive and comprehensive sense. We may now see the difference between the layperson's definition of psychology as the science of the mind and the scientific definition of psychology as a science of behaviour. A few decades ago even scientific psychologists defined psychology as the study of the mind. Soon, however, it was found that defining psychology as the field concerned with the study of the mind created certain problems. Social psychologists have studied attitude formation, the structure of attitudes, attitude change, the function of attitudes, and the relationship between attitudes and Behaviour. Because people are influenced by the situation, general attitudes are not always good predictors of specific Behaviour. For a variety of reasons, a person may value the environment and not recycle a can on a particular day. This book materials are used to theoretical and practical significant of students and researchers, teachers and sociologists.