Social Psychology in School Setting - Essay Example

Contents Introduction 3 Social Psychological Theories and concepts 4 Social Psychological Perspectives 6 Social Psychological Perspectives to individual behavior 9 Changing society and changing nature of social care 10 References INTRODUCTION Social psychology has become excessively useful in social care institutions for a better understanding and mutual compatibility between the teacher and the taught. The term social psychology has dynamically evolved with modern demographic requirements since its perception. In 1918 McDougal came with his first text book "An introduction to social psychology" which was influenced by Charles Darwin's concept of evolution which escorted certain innate characteristics of human mind on the basis of social life. In the period immediately after world war-I, instinct based psychology of McDougal and others took the form of behaviorism. Behaviorism argued that a subject matter of psychology must be firmly grounded in observed human behavior rather than in unobservable mental constructs. This approach suggested completely new theoretical structures and empirical approaches. Thus at a time it seemed that the majority of social psychologists were behaviorists, which asserts that human behavior can be understood in terms of stimulus response relationship without necessarily referring to underlying mental state. Then Gestalt inspired group dynamics (MCGARTY, 1997:1-15). He claimed that social environment is not only made up of things but of relations bettering things, Thus Gestalt's tradition promoted a concern with groups as real social entities. Another trend 'Attitude Change' came in vogue with the end of World War II. The third major Trend that was occurring in 1960s, with the breakdown of the dominance of attitude concept, was the rise of 'Attribution theory'. The ground work of this theory was laid by Heider's book, 1958 "The Psychology of Interpersonal Relation" during 1970s and became the most dominant concern in social psychology. But it was social cognition that really took mainstream of social psychology up to the present day. (MCGARTY, 1997:1-15) SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES AND CONCEPTS RELATIVE TO SCHOOL: Cognitive Dissonance (McGarty, 1997:20-26): According to Festinger, theory of Cognitive Dissonance is a deft blend of motivational and cognitive constructs. Cognitive dissonance is a type of psychological discomfort, produced by having attitudes in consistent with behavior, which creates pressure to change those attitudes. When a teacher has to mould or change children's attitude, most of the occasions, reward and punishment is applied but the previous notorious behavior is seen to be repeated in some other social context or situation. The application of cognitive dissonance theory can bring stability and positivism when applied for a purpose of attitude change. Freedman in 1965 conducted an experiment "forbidden toy" of Aronson and Garlsmith regarding the permanence of dissonance induced opinion change. Its utility in school setting is thus: If the children become aggressive when punished for touching forbidden things then dissonance should be generated in them through mild threat for that thing. So this cognitive dissonance generated in them makes the forbidden item less attractive. This mild threat will bring in them self persuasion which will lead to neutral attitude for that thing. (MCGARTY, 1997:20-26) Self-Perception VS. Cognitive Dissonance (Bem 1972:1-62) : Self-perception theory differs from cognitive dissonance theory in that it does not hold that people experience a "negative drive state called "dissonance" which they seek to relieve. Instead, people simply infer their attitudes from their own behavior in the same way that an outside observer might. Self-perception theory is a special case of attribution theory. Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958): This theory is concerned with the ways in which people explain (or attribute) the behavior of others, or themselves (self attribution), with something else. It explores how individuals attribute causes to events and how this cognitive perception affects their motivation. The theory divides the way people attribute causes two events into two types. External or "situational" attribution assigns 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. Attribution theory was developed by Fritz Heider, Harold Kelly, Edward E. Jones and Lee Ross. Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) : It is the idea that there is a drive within individuals to look to outside images in order to evaluate their own opinions and abilities. These images may be a reference to physical reality or in comparison to other people. People look to the images portrayed by others to be obtainable and realistic, and subsequently, make comparisons among themselves, others and the idealized images. In his initial theory, Festinger hypothesized several things. First, he stated that humans have a drive to evaluate themselves by examining their opinions and abilities in comparison to others.He continued with the idea that to cease comparison between one's self and others causes hostility and deprecation of opinions. His hypotheses also stated that a shift in the importance of a comparison group will increase pressure towards uniformity with that group. However, if the person, image or comparison group is too divergent from the evaluator, the tendency to narrow the range of comparability becomes stronger (Festinger, 1954). SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN SCHOOL: Social psychology views school as social care institution, it brings dynamic changes in children's behavior and attitude. Attitude Formation (MIDDLEBROOK, 1974:167): Attitude has three components: Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral. A concept is generally considered attitude only if it possess, to at least some degree, each of three elements. Attitude formation is the process of forming an attitude. Our own personal experiences, the influences of others and our own emotional reactions are the three main determinants of our attitude. Children's attitude is the outcome of their surrounding, family, and friends. Brigham says "Attitudes are primarily based on the information provided by social sources; family, friends, the mass media, school courses and so on". Audience Effect It is the effect because of which the performance of an individual gets influenced in presence of passive audience. Various studies have been carried out to see the effect of audience on individuals performing tasks. In some cases if individual's performance was enhanced while in other it manifested negative effects. The effect has been observed in humans as well as in various animals too. This phenomenon is quite an important issue where children are concerned, because children are more sensitive and are conscious of other's presence. Social Facilitation & Social Interference: When several students are working together on same task at same time, even when they are not interacting with each other, they usually work faster and their performance is sometimes better than when each individual works alone. This phenomenon has been termed as "Social Facilitation". Zajonc in 1965 (MIDDLEBROOK, 1974:424-428) has theorized that presence of other people increases the general level of motivation or drive or special energy. Presence of other people not always facilitates and enhances the quality of performance but sometimes it also had been found to interfere. For example if the students try to compete during their learning stage of some craft work then they will mostly commit mistakes and the work will be degraded. But once they master the task and then compete, the theory of social facilitation comes in to play and enhances the performance. Social Perception(POTTER, 1987:36): The study of social perception largely concerns how people talk about other people; it is a linguistic study as well as an investigation of visual process. Social perception and interpersonal behavior is explained through simple cognitive configurations (MEDWAY, 1992:92) (viz. a P-O-X triad) describing by attitude, the positive or negative relationship of a person 'P' to another person 'O', or to an impersonal entity 'X' that may be any situation, event, idea or thing. Thus, there are three relations, P-O, the person's liking for the evaluation of the other; P-X, the person's evaluation of the object; and O-X, the person's perception of others evaluation of the object. A P-O-X triad is balanced when all relations are positive or when two of the three are negative. In other situations, with one or three negative relations, a change is necessary to restore consistency within the P-O-X triad. Bullying and Aggression: Bullying and Aggression are very common phenomena among children. bullying is viewed as the form of social interaction in which a more dominant individual{the bully}exhibits aggressive behavior which is intended to and does, in fact, cause distress to a less dominant individual {the victim} (TATTUM, 1988:45-46). Aggressive behavior may be in the form of direct physical or verbal attack or the bully may spread false information about the victim. Bullying describes bully's aggression as well as victims experienced distress. (OLWEUS, 1993:76-77). Psychologically Aggression (MIDDLEBROOK, 1974:289-299) is most commonly defined as "a response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism". To classify a behavior as aggressive, all one has to know is that it is hurtful. The cause of Aggression may be parent's violent behaviour at home, imitation from television, specific aggressive attitude of the best student in class or such attitude of some of his favorite teacher helps him in developing aggression. There must be a constant readiness to counteract such tendencies in schol environment. teachers as well as parents should gain more knowledge about suitable methods of dealing with these problems.Each teacher can become part of a group for the development of social milieu of the school and discuss various problems at the school,share one another's experience and learn from one another's experience(OLWEUS, 1993:76-77). Conformity & Obedience (MIDDLEBROOK, 1974:429-430): Conformity and Obedience are the two forms of social influence. The process through which individuals change their opinions or behaviors so as to bring them into line with those of other people is conformity. The more difficult and ambiguous the task is the greater is the probability that subject will confirm. Sometimes students confirm to avoid punishments for deviancy, to win group acceptance or to avoid embarrassment of being different. So the conformity does not let the student be confident and self assured. It's the duty of the teacher to introduce children's with their inherent talents and make them confident about their behavior attitude and knowledge. Obedience is a change in behavior that is the result of direct command or order from another person. It can be implemented in children only through presentation of a model, so the teacher should always present herself as an ideal and perfect personality. This presence of perfection in teacher has a great psychological impact upon children which is always positive; it makes a pressure of obedience upon children. Social Psychological perspectives to individual behavior: The fields of social psychology and personality have merged over the years, and social psychologists have developed an interest in a variety of individual behavioral phenomena. Conformity helps an individual to improve, at the same time it can even degrade individual behavior.Teacher with proper kknowledge of social and individual psychology will try to make the children realilze their 'self esteem' and 'self efficiency' through motivation and appreciation of their completed jobs.individual behavior is product of either 'within- child' (e.g. limited ability, mental illness, deliquency, wilfulness) or 'home based' factors (e.g. poor parenting, lack of parental control, poverty). Some times school administration , curriculum and school environment also play some role in maintaining such problems.(GRAY, 2004:131).Here it becomes the duty of the teacher to work with the emotions of the student rationally and sympatheticaly .it will be displeasing on the part of the teacher if she shosw wrath and gets angry about the students. Changing society and changing nature of social care: (BARNES, 2001) Structure of society is getting transformed every year. Family, the biggest constituent of society, has changed structurally. Now we see nuclear families instead of joint family, working parents instead of employed father and housewife mother and in today's context single parenting is also in vogue. So this scattered structure of family makes the job of social care institutions more complicated and responsible. Now the implementation of socio-cultural values and responsibilities has to be done by these institutions only. Here child's emotional need has to be satisfied and emotions have to be trained. Changes in family structure and values have both advantages and disadvantages, because children with extraordinary talent may find themselves restricted and can become introvert and less assertive if the caring institution lacks psychological wits and material facilities; on the other hand children from less affluent families with average abilities get better options of emotional, social, cultural, moral and intellectual development. Child care, day care institutions and boarding schools are being run to provide various cares including social care to the children. Good social care institutions, according to present structure of society provide recreation centers, youth serving organizations, inculcate morals and duties, bring children of various cultures together. References BANDURA, A. (1977) Social Learning Theory. New Jersey: Prentice Hall BARNES, P (Ed.). (2001). Personal, social, and emotional development of children. Milton Keynes, UK, Open University. BEM, D.J., L. Berkowitz (Ed.). (1972). Self-perception theory: Advances in Experimental Social psychology, Vol. 6, New York, Academic Press. BLAGG, N. (1987). School phobia and its treatment. London, Croom Helm. FESTINGER, L. (1975). Human relations:A theory of social comparison processes. Indianapolis, Ind. Bobbs-Merrill. FONATANA, D. (1988). Psychology for Teachers. 2nd Edn. Hongkong. British Psychological Society in association with Macmillan Publishers Ltd. GRAY, P. (2002). Working with emotions: Responding to the challenge of difficult pupil behaviour in schools. London, Routledge/Falmer. HEIDER, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. MCDOUGAL, W., (1918). An Introduction to Social Psychology., J.W. Luce & Co., California. MCGARTY, C. & HASLAM, S.A. (Eds.). (1997). 'Introduction and a Short History of Social Psychology' in The Message of Social Psychology: Perspectives on Mind in Society. Oxford, UK and Cambridge. MEDWAY, F. J., & CAFFERTY, T. P. (1992). School psychology a social psychological perspective. School Psychology. Hillsdale, N.J., Erlbaum Associates. MIDDLEBROOK, P. N. (1974). Social psychology and modern life. 2nd Edn. New York, Knopf. OLWEUS, D. (1993). Bullying at school what we know and what we can do. Understanding children's worlds. Oxford, UK, Blackwell POTTER, J., & WETHERELL, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology beyond attitudes and behaviour. London, Sage Publications. TATTUM, D. P., & LANE, D. A. (1988). Bullying in schools. Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham. Read More