Question: what is social psychology?

Viren Swami answered on 11 Jun 2018:

In short, social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual or imagined presence of others.

Social psychology is a science because it uses the scientific method to construct and test theories. Social psychologists construct theories of human behaviour, thoughts, and feelings from previous theories and then conducted research in which data are collected to test the theory.

Social psychologists study behaviour because behaviour can be observed and measured, but we’re also interested in feelings, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and intentions – these can’t be directly observed by can be inferred from behaviour.

What makes social psychology “social” is that it deals with how people are affected by other people who are physically present (like an audience) or who are imagined to be presented (for example, when you imagine yourself performing in front of an audience).