Social Psychology - Assignment Example

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Social psychology is about realizing what is an human behavior in a social meaning. Human behavior therefore is influenced by other people and there are certain facrors that lead human to behave in a certain way. Social psychology aim is to do with the way certain feelings, beliefs and goals are buint and developed. It also figures out how such psychological factors influence the interactions of people with each other. The concepts of social pshychology were derermined by many scientists.

Thus, Aristotle believed that people were sociable by nature and such necessity allows them to live together. Hegel considered that society was connected with the evolution of the social mind thus of the group mind, which was essential in the study of social psychology. The critical role in the social psychology that helps to understand the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of people is the presence of others’ expectations or the expectations that people will behave in certain ways in a certain situations.

These expectations become obvious when people look at the roles they play in society. Social cognition, attitudes, violence and aggression, prosocial behavior, prejudice and discrimination, self and social identity are the major topics social psychologists investigate in their research. As long as these topics are related to social influence, social perception and social interaction, they differentiate the social psychology among other studies. When psychologists study the social behavior, they deal with the norms of ethics, which most of people considers as rules for distinguishing between right and wrong.

However, during the research there often occur the ethical dilemmas, mainly when the research is conducting for exploring the medicine (treatment).Thus, the recent example of a clinical trial that contained an ethical dilemma and a fundamental impact on practice was in research of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial. Cardiac death was connected to ventricular arrhythmias, but certain drugs were used to reduce the ventricular premature contractions. The clinical assumption had been made to treat the ventricular premature contractions with antiarrhythmic drugs and this would low mortality.

Many clients obtained such drugs in anticipation of benefit. Even everything proved that the drugs used clinically to prevent cardiac death, but that called for ethical dilemma among many researchers and society. If to take into account that in case with the use of drugs for saving people, no dilemmas should arise and the society should understand the positive effect of such treatment. However, as every case is unique and different in its nature, it should be examined by experts and researchers to avoid and prevent the unethical behavior of others.

ReferencesCherry, K., n.d. Research Areas in Social Psychology, Available from http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/p/socialresearch.htmFrye, R., Simari, R. & GErsh, B., n.d. Ethical Issues in Cardiovascular Research Involving Humans, Availale from http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/120/21/2113.fullMcLeod, S., 2008. Social Roles, Simply Psychology, Available from http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-roles.html