Good evening and welcome back to The Psych Era! This week has honestly been hectic, but today I want to talk about something that I find extremely interesting- social psychology. As humans, we crave social interaction or what we call an affiliation need. The more that is satisfied, the more comfort and peace we feel. But let’s not forget the fact that humans are the opposite of simple. We use heuristics to form assumptions about people, lie, cheat and act delusional. A bit too harsh? Too bad. Anyways, social psychology seeks to explore why human beings act the way they do in social situations, even the ones I described.

To understand this, let me ask you guys a question. Have you ever seen someone and automatically labeled them as a bad person? If you said no, you are lying. The reason why we do this is due to the lack of consideration for the power of a situation. We all think the world revolves around us(in a sense, it does); therefore, when people do things that do not align with our beliefs, we label them as wrong. For example, let’s say that you see a child being yelled at in the grocery store. Due to a phenomenon known as the fundamental attribution error, one is quick to assume that the child’s parents are aggressive. In reality, the child knocked down gaming consoles worth thousands of dollars, and the parents are angry for obvious reasons. Of course, you would not know that because nobody will go through the trouble to investigate the situation and figure that out! The main point I am trying to convey here is that we are not as lenient with other people’s emotions as we would be with ours. If we are angry or upset about a situation, we forgive our actions and state it has nothing to do with who we are; however, if someone else acts a certain way due to emotion, we consider that a testament to who they are.

One more social psychology topic I would like to discuss is one of the most interesting in the field of psychology. Have you ever found yourself making assumptions about a situation to the point it actually comes to fruition? For example, you may think your significant other is mad at you but they had a bad day the whole time, and you made it worse(oddly specific, I know). Self-fulfilling prophecy. This is when our thought process takes physical form because we start making assumptions about the outcome of a situation. I am here to warn you to analyze all situations. Be skeptical but not delusional. Do not be quick to judge because this will make your life and relationships better. The human race has an extremely long way to go but the more you know, the more success you will have in these situations. Thank you for tuning in and see you next time!