Applications of Social Psychology

How Social Psychology Can Contribute to the Solution of Real-World Problems

Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano, Klaus Fiedler, Joseph P. Forgas, William D. Crano, Klaus Fiedler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000036657
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book explores what social psychology can contribute to our understanding of real-life problems and how it can inform rational interventions in any area of social life. By reviewing some of the most recent achievements in applying social psychology to pressing contemporary problems, Forgas, Crano, and Fiedler convey a fundamentally optimistic message about social psychology's achievements and prospects.

The book is organized into four sections. Part I focuses on the basic issues and methods of applying social psychology to real-life problems, discussing evolutionary influences on human sociability, the role of psychological 'mindsets' in interpreting reality, and the use of attitude change techniques to promote adaptive behaviors. Part II explores the applications of social psychology to improve individual health and well-being, including managing aggression, eating disorders, and improving therapeutic interactions. Part III turns to the application of social psychology to improve interpersonal relations and communication, including attachment processes in social relationships, the role of parent-child interaction in preventing adolescent suicide, and analyzing social relations in legal settings and online social networks. Finally, Part IV addresses the question of how social psychology may improve our understanding of public affairs and political behavior.

The book will be of interest to students and academics in social psychology, and professionals working in applied settings.

1

APPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

History, Issues and Prospects

Joseph P. Forgas, Klaus Fiedler and William D. Crano

Introduction

We may introduce this volume with a fundamental claim: at its heart, all social psychology is applied. From the earliest beginnings of our discipline, researchers have always been interested in exploring how their work might help to make the world a better place. And in turn, every theory-driven research program in social psychology has important applications in real life. This claim should not be surprising. Hardly any other discipline is as close to everyday life and experience as social psychology. The dramatic steps taken sometime at the end of the 19th century of finally applying scientific methods to study the most complex, most fascinating and least understood aspects of human life, sociability, heralded a new era in understanding ourselves and the world we live in. No matter where one sticks the pin on the dartboard of social psychology’s inception, social psychology has been identified with, and most strongly celebrated, when it has turned to research on the practical implications of its evidence-based theories.

The ambition to be useful and applied can already be discerned in the classical experiments by Triplett (1898) to which experimental social psychology often traces its origins (Allport, 1924). Triplett discovered a spontaneous and difficult to explain improvement in motor performance when a task was performed in the company of others. This discovery held out the applied promise of an easily obtainable productivity benefit in simple motor tasks. We should not forget that this was the period of rapidly-improving industrial production, and the rational desire to increase performance was at the forefront of applied interest. Although Triplett’s explanation for socially-induced improvements in motor performance was not much of a theory by today’s standards, the explosive interest in his findings was no doubt fueled by an applied imperative.

The objective of this volume is to offer a review of the most recent achievements of applying social psychology to the real world. Our invited contributors are all internationally respected scholars who present cutting-edge work. Of course, no single volume can hope to address all of the many pressing concerns that currently occupy the world in which we find ourselves. However, we believe that the reader will find the issues addressed here of interest, spanning a range of concerns from teenage suicide, the effects of social media, clinical interactions, aggression, eating disorders, and the rise of political populism and illiberalism in the world today. We hope that the overall message of this volume is to offer hope that social psychologists can do a great deal to ameliorate some of the most vexing problems faced by contemporary society.

Theoretical vs Applied Research

One long-standing misunderstanding in social psychology is the often-voiced conflict between theoretical versus practical research. Kurt Lewin’s (1943) dictum that “There is nothing as practical as good theory” (p. 118) has often been used to highlight the usefulness of applications outside the laboratory, a task many researchers still consider the ultimate aim of our discipline. Fiedler (this volume) has written eloquently on this issue in his discussion of translational science, and he clearly rejects claims about the priority of “basic science” over translational science.

We may consider a number of arguments in support of Lewin’s statement. First of all, this claim is true historically. The most important practical contributions to psychological science were naturally embedded in strong theorizing. Alfred Binet’s seminal work on intelligence testing – perhaps the most compelling practical contribution ever – was the result of deep theoretical thinking (Wolf, 1969), unfolding in relation to other intriguing topics such as the intelligence of the deaf (Binet & Simon, 1909). Hugo Münsterberg’s (1915) foundation of modern legal psychology in his famous book On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime, was deeply rooted in theoretical reasoning about the pitfalls of witness reports under stress and under the influence of social taboos. This pioneering work continues to stimulate cutting-edge research today, as the chapter by Kovera (this volume) illustrates.

Another classic example of how theory-driven experimental research can tell us something profound about the human condition is Sherif’s (1936) pioneering work on the spontaneous formation and maintenance of social norms. Notwithstanding the artificiality of the experiment itself, requiring participants to judge the illusory movement of stationary light sources, Sherif made a profound point about the fundamental evolutionary inclination of human beings to spontaneously establish and maintain consensual norms. More recently, the practical question of how to improve tolerance in a diverse society would not have been possible without a good theoretical understanding of human social cognition and social identity processes (Tajfel, 1969; see also Schmader, this volume).

Of course, the relationship between theory and practice cannot be a one-way street. Theorizing is not only antecedent to practical uses but is also improved by feedback from its practical applications. It is well to remember that many of our theories derive from practical problems which demanded solution and ultimately gave rise to research. Theoretical analysis is always essential to organize the mass of data collected in attempts to meet critical practical needs. Applied issues put selective evolutionary pressure on theorizing, calling for quantitative measurement, precise prediction, and maximization of cost-benefit ratios (see also Fiedler, this volume). This process was described by Campbell (1974) as “evolutionary epistemology.” Based on Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, Campbell suggested that science progresses by proposing new theoretical conjectures followed by a critical phase of selective elimination, a process that also occurs at the applied societal level in “experimenting societies” (Campbell, 1974).

Applications have been strong generators of new theories, whose derived insights are at least as valuable as those discovered within the more sterile and more confined walls of our laboratories. Indeed, application may be both the origin and the true end point in the evaluation process of scientific work (see also Koole et al.; Kross & Chandhok; Walton & Brady; and Jussim et al., this volume). Practical aims like better personality assessment, prevention of human suffering, conflict resolution, improving relationships or better learning outcomes in academic settings have given rise to ground-breaking theoretical work (see chapters by Crano & Ruybal; Krahé; Mikulincer & Shaver; and Papies, this volume).

Further, the ultimate progress in applied domains is often dependent on the methodological advances developed in basic science, often in distant domains. For example, the Purkinje effect (based on the differential sensitivity of rods and cones on the retina to light of different wave length) is crucial for the ergonomic optimization of work conditions for air traffic controllers (Mook, 1983). The Bayes theorem is essential for effective risk assessment and for diagnostic and prognostic problem-solving. Signal-detection analysis has been applied creatively in manifold applied areas. Swets, Dawes, and Monahan’s (2000) synopsis of useful applications of signal-detection analysis in various domains is among the most fascinating pieces of applied work ever.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we must embrace Kurt Lewin’s statement when we think about the likelihood, and the societal obligation, of applied (or translational) social research to contribute to the future. The challenges are obvious. As a result of unprecedented scientific progress, humanity now finds itself in a world to which it is not fully adapted – a situation we might label as “evolutionary mismatch” (van Vugt, this volume). There is hardly any other scientific discipline of similar relevance to present and future societal problems as social psychology. How can we deal with fake news, conspiracy theories, and uncontrolled influences in the social and electronic media (see for example Forgas & Baumeister, 2019)? How can democracy survive if individual thinking and opinions are no longer rational, but are confounded in an epidemic of emotionalism and conformity effects (see chapters by Forgas & Lantos; and Wohl & Stefaniak, this volume)? What will future workplaces look like given the fast development of machine learning and the growth of intrusive IT technologies? How can we manage racism, intolerance, and ethnocentrism in an increasingly diverse society (see chapters by Jussim et al.; Schmader, this volume)? What can psychology contribute to handling such existential problems as depression, addiction, obesity and aggression (see also chapters by Koole et al.; Kross and Chandhok; Krahé; Papies; Walton & Brady; and Crano & Ruybal, this volume)?

We cannot hope to cope with any of these challenges without good scientific theories that allow us to predict and evaluate the relative impact of different interventions. It is obvious that we cannot expect untested interventions to solve societal, economic, and ecological problems; only scientific theory-driven thinking can do so. This is indeed the ultimate purpose of a good theory – going beyond the present status quo, allowing us to simulate and reason about future outcomes, conditional on different causal conditions and enabling conditions.

With the growing importance of techniques of data collection in real life and powerful tools of data analysis, we can now precisely track and monitor consumer decisions, educational attainment, political and social preferences, physiological states, traffic movements, and much else besides. These techniques offer the promise of rapid feedback and evaluation of scientific theories in the real world. As an example, preconceived theoretical ideas about the role of implicit associations in real-life prejudice and discrimination should now be revised in the light of practical observations about the limited efficacy of such predictions (see Jussim et al., this volume). To maximize efficacy, basic science may model learning paradigms according to the architecture of real-world tasks, expand basic research on aggression to fit natural boundary conditions, and design experiments that take natural sampling processes and multi-causal structures of the real world into account (see also Fiedler; Krahé; Forgas & Lantos, this volume). Really good theories will almost certainly be applied practically, and practical observations – whether they are predicted or unexpected – constitute a crucial challenge for improving basic behavioral research.

History and Background

The origins of applied social psychology are often traced to Hugo Münsterberg, who came to Harvard at the invitation of William James from Berlin, Germany. In addition to his enduring interest in forensic psychology, he was also interested in motivation (purposive psychology) and the application of psychology to social problems. During his stay at Harvard, Münsterberg wrote several books applying psychology to work, education, and business. In no small measure due to Münsterberg’s work, the establishment of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) in 1920 marked the creation of the first international scholarly society in psychology.

During the war years, applied social psychology came into its own and became a respected and sought-after profession. The services of applied social psychologists were recruited to assist the US war effort. The Office of Strategic Services employed numerous psychologists to work on tasks such as propaganda, leadership, improving troop morale, persuasion, and advertising. After the war, applied social psychologists became increasingly in demand outside the walls of academia in educational organizations, marketing, advertising, and a host of other fields. The growing success and attraction of social psychology as a university course owes much to the wide applicability of our discipline to numerous fields outside academia.

Yet, throughout the history of social psychology, relative interest in applied issues waxed and waned depending on the urgency of the demands of society and the historical circumstances. In a sense, our field is just now coming out of a neglect-of-application phase that favored more pure or basic research. A similar development also occurred after World War II, which had first forced a focus on applications at the expense of theory. Then, the necessity for psychology to serve national interests required researchers to adopt an often single-minded focus on using established knowledge to solve immediate and pressing problems, rather than on refreshing the knowledge base of human behavior. In reaction to this enforced applied focus, an ‘applications exhaustion’ ensued after the war, at least in academia, and the tide shifted to ‘pure’ science. For example, Carl Hovland’s work after the war became heavily theory-oriented, specifically and by design, after Hovland had been devoted almost exclusively to the application of basic principles of memory and learning to foster persuasion goals during the war (Sears, 1961).

However, it would be a misreading of history to see these later efforts as eschewing applications. Hovland and others clearly recognized the need for a more theory-based social psychology, with his focus on communication and persuasion, but his research activities were anything but practically insignificant. Indeed, he laid the groundwork of much of what constitutes today’s social psychology of attitudes, persuasion, and communication and much of that work was honed by the interplay of his own prior applied focus and its extension back to the laboratory (see also Blanton et al.; and Petty & Briñol, this volume).

Another illuminating historical example is Campbell’s notion of the experimenting society (Campbell, 1969, 1974), a call to bring our theories and methodological tools to bear in the service of society. Campbell envisioned an enlightened and rational society in which competing social programs were put to the test and evaluated – did they succeed in their stated goals, did they produce better outcomes, did they avoid unexpected detrimental consequences? His call for an experimenting society paved the way for the growing emphasis on evaluation research, an approach which has become a critical field of scientific endeavor in its own right, and which today is seen as a crucial factor in applied or translational research.

However, as a historical review of any scientific enterprise is bound to show, the application of social psychology to real-life problems has not been without its share of biases, false assumptions, and conceptual failures. We shall look at some of these issues in the following section in the hope that we can better learn to deal with the future by learning from the past.

Mistaken Assumptions

As in every field of human endeavor, applied social psychology also suffers from a number of false starts, mistaken assumptions, and ideological biases that have hindered its progress over the yea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Applications of Social Psychology: History, Issues and Prospects
• Part I Basic Issues and Methods
• Part II Promoting Individual Health and Well-Being
• Part III Improving Interpersonal Relations and Communication
• Part IV Public Affairs and Political Behavior
• Index