Social Psychology - Essay Example

Situationist social psychologists tell us that information about people’s distinctive character traits, opinions, attitudes, values, or past behavior is not as useful for determining what they will do as is information about the details of their situations. One would expect, they say, that the possessor of a given character trait would behave consistently across situations that are similar in calling for the relevant behavior, but under experimental conditions, people’s behavior is not found to be cross-situationally consistent.

Instead, across a range of situations, the person’s behavior tends to converge on the behavioral norm for those situations. So situationists reason that people’s situations, rather than their characters, are the explanatorily powerful factors in determining why different people behave differently. They add that if behavior does not covary with character traits, then ordinary people, “folk psychologists” who try to explain and predict and the cognitive obstacles to transferring strategies may help to explain cross-situational inconsistency.

Furthermore, social motives are general characteristics of a person and since they are learned motives, their strength differs greatly from one individual to other. The social motive that will activate an individual is dependent upon an individual's own social experience. It is unique to him and depends upon ways of perceiving things. Since these motives are inferred from behavior, it is very difficult to measure these motives. This type of difficulty stems from the problem that we do not know which particular type of behavior is associated with which particular motive.

Need for Affiliation (Belonging) Sometimes we find people trying desperately to get close to people, to seek their help, and to become members of their group. This type of behavior seeking other human beings and wanting to be close to them both physically psychologically is called affiliation. In other words, affiliation refers to the need that people have to be with others. This affiliation need is aroused when individuals feel threatened or helpless and also when they are happy. People high on this need are motivated to seek the company of others and to maintain friendly relationships with other people.

The human motive to belong is essentially universal. Studies revealed that fear and anxiety are closely associated with the affiliation motive. But where the degree of anxiety and threat is very high, such affiliation behavior is often absent. Studies revealed that children who are brought up to be dependent or raised with close family ties show a stronger affiliation motive than those coming from more loosely-knit families that encourage early independence. Affiliation needs are stronger in some cultures than in others.

For example, Indian society is strongly affiliating in nature compared to many of the western societies. Cooperation Motive (Understanding) Cooperation is an acquired motive. It is a condition manifested when two or more individuals or groups work together to achieve a common goal, cooperation signifies lack of mutual disagreement and opposition among fellow group-members, and absence of rivalry. People are demonstrably motivated to develop a socially shared understanding of each other and their environment (Fiske, 2002, 2004).

A shared information framework allows people to function in groups and in any kind of relationship. It informs their assessment of