Psychology 2070A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Kurt Lewin, Gestalt Psychology, Folk Psychology

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2070A/B
• Professor: Ian Nicholson

Document Summary

Social psychology is defined as the scientific study of the (cid:449)a(cid:455) i(cid:374) (cid:449)hi(cid:272)h people"s thoughts, feeli(cid:374)gs, a(cid:374)d a(cid:272)tio(cid:374)s are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people (allport, 1985) Social psychologists are interested in studying how and why our thoughts, feelings, behaviours are shaped by our social environment. Curiosity: people are interesting, desire to understand self, reduce future attempts to influence self. Many important problems are fundamentally social: environmental issues, health/well-being, political issues, relationship issues. Other disciplines (e. g. anthropology, sociology) are also interested in how people are influenced by their social environments. Social psychology differs because it is concerned more with how people are influenced by their construal (interpretation) of their social envionrment. The way in which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world (lewin, 1943) Construals are subjective interpretations of social phenomena. Different people interpret the same evidence differently: believe their choices are more popular than they actually are (ross et al. , 1977)