Social Psychology Theories

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Social psychology is the study of how individual or group behavior is influenced by the presence and behavior of others. The major question social psychologists ponder is this: How and why are people’s perceptions and actions influenced by environmental factors, such as social interaction?

Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.

Social Psychology Theories

• Action Identification Theory - Holds that an action can be identified by the performer in different ways, and that these various act identities differ in their appropriateness for maintaining the action effectively. Optimal action identification exists when a personally easy action is identified in relatively high-level terms (i.e., the action's effects and implications) or a personally difficult action is identified in relatively low-level terms (i.e., the action's mechanical details).
  
  
• Attachment Theory - An attachment refers to the strong emotional bond that exists between an infant and his or her caretaker. The attachment theory is designed to explain the evolution of that bond, its development, and its implications for human experience and relationships across the life course. 
  
  
• Attribution Theory - is concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behaviour of others. The theory divides the way people attribute causes to events into two types. External or "situational" attributions assign causality to an outside factor, such as the weather. Internal or "dispositional" attributions assign causality to factors within the person, such as ability or personality.
  
  
• Balance Theory - Balance theory describes the structure of people’s opinions about other individuals and objects as well as the perceived relation between them. The central notion of balance theory is that certain structures between individuals and objects are balanced, whereas other structures are imbalanced, and that balanced structures are generally preferred over imbalanced structures. Specifically, balance theory claims that unbalanced structures are associated with an uncomfortable feeling of negative affect, and that this negative feeling leads people to strive for balanced structures and to avoid imbalanced structures.
  
  
• Broaden-and-Build Theory - The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions was developed to explain why people experience positive emotions. What purpose might be served by fleeting feelings of joy, gratitude, serenity, or love? Did such pleasant states confer adaptive value over the course of human evolution? Within prior theories of emotions, positive emotions posed a puzzle. This was because most prior accounts rested on the assumption that all emotions— both pleasant and unpleasant—were adaptive to human ancestors because they produced urges to act in particular ways, by triggering specific action tendencies.
  
  
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory - Originally based on the concept of cognitive consistency, but is now more related to self-concept theory. When people do something that violates their view of themselves, this causes an uncomfortable state of dissonance that motivates a change in either attitudes or behaviour (Festinger, 1957).
  
  
• Correspondent Inference Theory - A correspondent inference, sometimes also called a correspondent trait inference, is a judgment that a person’s personality matches or corresponds to his or her behavior. For example, if we notice that Taliyah is behaving in a friendly manner and we infer that she has a friendly personality, we have made, or drawn, a correspondent inference. Or, if we notice that Carl is behaving in an aggressive manner and we conclude that he is an aggressive sort of person, we have drawn a correspondent inference. Sometimes it is reasonable to infer that people’s personalities correspond to their behavior and sometimes it is not reasonable. Correspondent inference theory outlines when it is appropriate to infer that a person’s personality corresponds to his or her behavior.
  
  
• Drive Theory - Drive refers to increased arousal and internal motivation to reach a particular goal. Psychologists differentiate between primary and secondary drives. Primary drives are directly related to survival and include the need for food, water, and oxygen. Secondary or acquired drives are those that are culturally determined or learned, such as the drive to obtain money, intimacy, or social approval. Drive theory holds that these drives motivate people to reduce desires by choosing responses that will most effectively do so. For instance, when a person feels hunger, he or she is motivated to reduce that drive by eating; when there is a task at hand, the person is motivated to complete it.
  
  
• Dual Process Theories - They distinguish two basic ways of thinking about information: a relatively fast, superficial, spontaneous mode based on intuitive associations, and a more in-depth, effortful, step-by-step mode based on systematic reasoning. Dual process theories have been applied in many areas of psychology, including persuasion, stereotyping, person perception, memory, and negotiation. In general, these theories assume that people will think about information in a relatively superficial and spontaneous way unless they are both able and motivated to think more carefully.
  
  
• Dynamic Systems Theory - Emotions go up and down over the course of days. But sometimes emotions are more constant. For instance, depression could be characterized with fairly constant negative emotions across days. When will hearing some negative information lead a person into a depressed pattern? When will the same negative information just lead to a bad day among the good days? Dynamical systems theory (also known as dynamic systems theory or just systems theory) is a series of principles and tools for studying change.
  
  
• Elaboration Likelihood Model – Maintains that information processing, often in the case of a persuasion attempt can be divided into two separate processes based on the "likelihood of cognitive elaborations," that is, whether people think critically about the content of a message, or respond to superficial aspects of the message and other immediate cues.
  
  
• Equity Theory - Posits that when it comes to relationships, two concerns stand out: (1) How rewarding are their societal, family, and work relationships? (2) How fair and equitable are those relationships? According to equity theory, people feel most comfortable when they are getting exactly what they deserve from their relationships—no more and certainly no less.
  
  
• Error Management Theory - In the decision making process, when faced with uncertainty, a subject can make two possible errors: type I or type II. A type I error is a false positive, thinking that an effect is there, when it is not. For example, acting on a fire alarm that turns out to be false. When someone infers sexual interest, where there is none, then a false-positive error has occurred. A type II error is a false negative, not seeing an effect where one exists. Ignoring the fire alarm that turns out to be accurate, due to scepticism, illustrates this point. Falsely inferring a lack of intent about sexual interest means a false negative error has occurred.
  
  
• Escape Theory - Escape theory refers to the tendency for people to engage in behaviors to avoid an unpleasant psychological reaction. Whereas the common use of the term escape suggests physically removing oneself from a physical location (such as escaping from prison), escape theory is used to describe behaviors that enable a person to flee from negative perceptions of the self. Escape from the self may help a person temporarily avoid a negative psychological reaction, but the behaviors that follow from a motivation to escape from the self are frequently undesirable.
  
  
• Excitation-Transfer Theory - Excitation-transfer theory purports that residual excitation from one stimulus will amplify the excitatory response to another stimulus, though the hedonic valences of the stimuli may differ. The excitation-transfer process is not limited to a single emotion. For example, when watching a movie, a viewer may be angered by seeing the hero wronged by the villain, but this initial excitation may intensify the viewer's pleasure in witnessing the villain's punishment later. Thus, although the excitation from the original stimulus of seeing the hero wronged was cognitively accessed as anger, the excitation after the second stimulus of seeing the villain punished is cognitively assessed as pleasure, though part of the excitation from the second stimulus is residual from the first.
  
  
• Implicit Personality Theory
  
  
• Inoculation Theory
  
  
• Interdependence Theory
  
  
• Learning Theory
  
  
• Logical Positivism
  
  
• Motivation Crowding Theory - suggests that extrinsic motivators such as monetary incentives or punishments can undermine (or, under different conditions, strengthen) intrinsic motivation.
  
  
• Narcissistic Reactance Theory
  
  
• Objectification Theory
  
  
• Observational learning (social learning) - suggests that behaviour can be acquired by observation and imitation of others, unlike traditional learning theories which require reinforcement or punishment for learning to occur.
  
  
• Opponent Process Theory
  
  
• Optimal Distinctiveness Theory
  
  
• Positioning Theory - focuses on the moral orders that occur in conversations as a result of the interplay between the speech-acts uttered, the positions taken and the developing story-line.
  
  
• Prospect Theory
  
  
• Realistic Group Conflict Theory
  
  
• Reasoned Action Theory
  
  
• Reductionism
  
  
• Regulatory Focus Theory
  
  
• Relational Models Theory
  
  
• Role Theory
  
  
• Scapegoat Theory
  
  
• Schemata Theory - focuses on "schemas" which are cognitive structures that organize knowledge and guide information processing. They take the form of generalized beliefs that can operate automatically and lead to biases in perception and memory.
  
  
• Self-Affirmation Theory
  
  
• Self-Categorization Theory
  
  
• Self-Determination Theory
  
  
• Self-Discrepancy Theory
  
  
• Self-Expansion Theory
  
  
• Self-Perception Theory - emphasizes that we observe ourselves in the same manner that we observe others, and draw conclusions about our likes and dislikes. Extrinsic self perceptions can lead to the over-justification effect.
  
  
• Self-Verification Theory - focuses on people’s desire to be known and understood by others. The key assumption is that once people develop firmly held beliefs about themselves, they come to prefer that others see them as they see themselves.
  
  
• Sexual Economics Theory
  
  
• Sexual Strategies Theory
  
  
• Social Comparison Theory - suggests that humans gain information about themselves, and make inferences that are relevant to self-esteem, by comparison to relevant others.
  
  
• Social Exchange Theory - is an economic social theory that assumes human relationships are based on rational choice and cost-benefit analyses. If one partner's costs begin to outweigh his or her benefits, that person may leave the relationship, especially if there are good alternatives available.
  
  
• Social Identity Theory - was developed by Henri Tajfel and examines how categorizing people (including oneself) into ingroups or outgroups affects perceptions, attitudes, and behavior.
  
  
• Social Impact Theory
  
  
• Social Penetration Theory - proposes that, as relationships develop, interpersonal communication moves from relatively shallow, non-intimate levels to deeper, more intimate ones. The theory was formulated by psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor in 1973 to provide an understanding of the closeness between two individuals.
  
  
• Sociobiological Theory
  
  
• Socioemotional Selectivity Theory - posits that as people age and their perceived time left in life decreases, they shift from focusing on information seeking goals to focusing on emotional goals.
  
  
• Stress Appraisal Theory
  
  
• Symbolic Interactionism
  
  
• System Justification Theory - proposes that people have a motivation to defend and bolster the status quo, in order to continue believing that their social, political, and economic systems are legitimate and just.
  
  
• Temporal Construal Theory
  
  
• Terror Management Theory - suggests that human mortality causes existential dread and terror, and that much of human behavior exists as a buffer against this dread (e.g., self-esteem and worldviews).
  
  
• Theory of Mind
  
  
• Theory of Planned Behavior
  
  
• Threatened Egotism Theory
  
  
• Triangular Theory of Love - by Sternberg, characterizes love in an interpersonal relationship on three different scales: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Different stages and types of love can be categorized by different combinations of these three elements.