Stella Barenholz
APPLYING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 1: Introduction
Social theories
Social psychology is a basic science which tries to build knowledge through experiments and
surveys. Social problems often also have psychological problems and causes, therefore social
psychology may not only help in clarifying such problems, but also contribute to finding
solutions. We will now apply some psychological theories to develop an intervention.
Step 1 – Problem: Formulating a problem definition
In this book, the problem of HIV/AIDS is taken as a worldwide social phenomenon, causing
problems for more than 2 million people in the world. Several organizations have taken action to
decrease this number, often involving the help of the general population. New methods are
focusing on some new techniques, like not showing too many depressing stories, but highlight
the incurable nature of the disease. In doing so, there is a need to emphasize that the victims
are not to blame, and that everybody is potentially at risk of contracting HIV.
The first step of a social psychologist is the problem definition. In this case, the problem might
be too broad to find a good definition for. Instead, there is an abundant amount of social
psychological literature on people's willingness to donate money for charity that the
psychologist can consult. Based on this, he might come up with specific suggestions on how to
set up the campaign.
Step 2 – Analysis: Finding explanations for the problem
If there is a solution possible, social psychologists also look for explanations. Looking at the HIV/
AIDS problem, literature on topics such as helping, altruism, cooperation and prosocial behavior
might help. A second option is social influence, explaining what influence strategies can help you
to get people to do what you need them to do. In this example, social psychologists may find
three kinds of helping: emergency intervention, organizational helping, and sharing and
donating resources.
Because most donating cases are about emergency and organizational helping, psychologists
need to look further. The Schwartz model states that there are various steps that affect people’s
prosocial behavior: awareness that others need help, opportunities to help, ability to help,
personal norms, and responsibility.
The psychologist then can find things that can increase the sympathy of donators, like not
holding the victims responsible for their fate, or make them identify themselves with the victims:
similarity often leads to empathy.
There still could be some issues here, like the belief in a just world. This theory assumes that
people have a natural tendency to believe they live in a just world in which everyone gets what
they deserve. The social psychologist therefore concludes that the campaign would have to
emphasize the unfairness of the plight of people with HIV/AIDS in Africa, but not stress the
injustice too much.
In this step, the social psychologist develops a process model. When a specific question is
asked, different boxes can be added with explanations.
Step 3 – Test: Developing and testing the process model
In the process model, there is an outcome variable we want to achieve: the willingness to
donate money to help people with HIV. In this step, psychologists have to take a look at more
variables that could be an influence. They then put all of these in the process model to see what
kind of influences there are. The social psychologist could further suggest to the campaign team
that some relationships in the process model are not yet clear in the literature and require
further testing through research.
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