Читать книгу Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett - Страница 38

During its formative years in the early 20th century, social psychology was heavily influenced by B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism—which focused solely on external causes—and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis—which emphasized internal factors. These two perspectives on the causes of social behavior were seemingly incompatible. Resolution of this disagreement between advocates of the externalist versus internalist positions was achieved by Kurt Lewin, a Jewish émigré who fled Germany to escape persecution by the Nazis. Lewin theorized that human behavior was a product of both the person and the situation. That is, human social behavior can only be understood when both characteristics of the person and features of the environment are considered. For instance, understanding why a young mother yelled at her son at the local grocery store requires knowledge of her internal states (thoughts, emotions, personality traits, etc.) and of the context (what the child had done, the number and nature of bystanders, etc.).

Lewin (1946) called his formulation “field theory” in order to signify the need to examine the person in the context. Let’s take a person walking through a crowd as an example. Any explanation of the path she takes is incomplete unless we consider how assertively she walks, her goals in passing through, and so forth, as well as aspects of the crowd, such as its density, whether or not people are moving, and so forth (see Figure 1.2). Lewin (1946) offered a simple yet elegant representation of this formulation: B = F(P,E). Behavior (B), Lewin argued, was a function (F) or product of both the person (P) and the environment (E).

Will Joanna walk around the crowd, through the crowd, or to her friends en route to her destination? This figure illustrates Lewin’s formulation of behavior as the product of the person and the environment (B = F(P,E)). Joanna’s behavior (B) depends on person (P) and environment (E) factors such as (a) her internal traits (e.g., assertive and willing to push through the crowd, conscientious about getting to her job on time, etc.), (b) who she encounters (how many people, density, etc.), (c) how important her friends are; and (d) what her goals are (going to work or the art museum).

During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, social psychology was strongly influenced by the atrocities of World War II and other historical events and, especially in the United States, developed an increasingly experimental focus as it examined their psychological underpinning (Moscovici & Markova, 2006). For instance, the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust led Stanley Milgram (1963) to investigate why people obey authority, even when ordered to harm innocent victims. In Chapter 6 we will examine Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience, along with other forms of social influence.

One major theoretical advance that occurred during these years was prompted by Leon Festinger’s desire to understand why people sometimes say one thing but do the opposite and/or simultaneously hold two attitudes that conflict with one another. Festinger (1957) created the theory of cognitive dissonance to help explain these inconsistencies, arguing that the existence of these inconsistencies sometimes produces discomfort or dissonance in people. Festinger postulated that, in general, people will strive to overcome this dissonance by changing an attitude, belief, or behavior accordingly and thereby removing the inconsistency. Festinger’s theory was enormously influential and will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter 7 on persuasion.

Figure 1.2 Lewin’s Field Theory