Chapter 14 Application of Social Psychology

Chapter 14: Application of Social
Psychology

Application to Health Psychology
Health psychology is a branch of applied psychology that applies the principles, theories and knowledge about
psychology to the filed of health, both personal and community.
Social psychology can be used in health psychology not only to understand health related behaviours but also to
develop suitable intervention strategy in order to modify the behaviours.
Relationship between health attitudes and health behaviour
Healthy behaviours are key to health, wellbeing and overall development of an individual. And attitudes in this
context that people have can have an influence on the health related behaviour or individuals. The relationship
between health attitudes and health behaviour cane be described with the help of the following beliefs (Sears,
Peplau and Taylor, 1991):
- General health values: These pertain to the display of interest and concern with regard to health. For example:
An individual may or may not be concerned about recurrent cough that he/ she is getting.

Application to Health Psychology
Threat to health: Degree of severity of the threat of a disease or disorder to health. For example: What is
the extent of threat posed by the cough? its severity. Whether it is just usual coughing or is it more severe
may be related to more severe disease.
Vulnerability of the person: How vulnerable is this person to the disease or disorder. For example, what is
the perception of the individual with regard to how vulnerable he/ she feels of developing tuberculosis or
lung cancer.
Self efficacy with regard to dealing with the threat: To what extent is the individual confident that he/
she will be able to deal with the threat posed by the disease or disorder. For example, to what extent they
feel that they will be able to make certain lifestyle and behavioural changes.
Response efficacy: If certain measures are taken by the individual whether they will result in the desired
outcome or not. For example, to what extent they feel that if the lifestyle and behavioural changes are made
then it will result in prevention or management of the disease, in this case tuberculosis or lung cancer.

This model states that the health related behaviour of individuals depends on their presumption of the
threat that is posed by the illness as well as the advantages and disadvantages of taking suitable action.
The following will thus determine the action taken by the individual:
1. Perceived susceptibility or vulnerability: The perception of the individual about his/ her susceptibility
to the illness in based of any precaution or protective measures.
2. Perceived severity: This mainly has to do with the severity of the illness and also the consequences of
this illness, to what extent it will affect the individual physical and socially.
3. Perceived benefits: This is related to the benefits if certain health related behaviours as recommended
by say medical practitioner or lifestyle coach is followed. Whether they will reduce the perceived
susceptibility/ vulnerability or perceived severity or not.
4. Perceived barriers: This is related to the barriers or negative features of the health related behaviour
that has been suggested to the individual.
Health Belief Model

1. With my sedentary lifestyle and the fact that my parents
also have diabetic, I am susceptible to developing diabetes
2. Developing diabetes will result in restriction of food, need
to take medication, increased vulnerability to other illnesses.
This will restrict my day to day life
3. If I exercise regular and stop consumption of certain types of
food, development of diabetes can be avoided.
4. But I will not be able to live my life to the fullest and will
not be able to consume what i like. Also it is impossible to
spend so much time on exercise with my tight work schedule
and lack of time for family
Belief that developing
diabetes is a threat
If I change my life style and
follow healthy diet, diabetes
can be avoided
Will follow health life style
and diet
Example

The theory was proposed by Ajzen. The focus here is on behavioural intensions and the theory states that in order to bering
about change in health related behaviour of individuals we need to focus on behaviour intentions. Behavioural intensions in
this case can be as a result of attitude towards behaviour, that includes and beliefs and evaluation of the consequences;
subjective norms about the behaviour, that is beliefs related to other’s expectations and how motivate the individual is to
follow the norms. There is also a third aspect and that is the perception about the control that he/ she has on the behaviour.
Regular practice of Yoga will help me deal with my
stress.
Will start practicing
yoga
My colleagues and my parents strongly believe that
practicing yoga will help me deal with stress and
enhance my wellbeing.
I intend to learn and
practice yoga
I feel that I will be able to practice yoga on regular
basis and thus deal effectively with stress.
Theory of Planned Behaviour

This model was developed by Prochaska and Diclemente. The stages in this model are described as follows:
Stage 1: Precontemplation: This is the very first stage where the individual has no intentions what so ever
about changing the behaviour. They have not yet perceived the behaviour as causing a problem. For example,
the individual has not realised that regular and frequent consumption of junk food and soft drinks could have
negative consequences on his/ her health.
Stage 2: Contemplation: This is the second stage where individual realise that they need to change their
behaviour and are contemplating on changing the said behaviour. For example, the individual realises that
regular and frequent consumption of junk food and soft drinks can have negative health impacts and thus he/
she is contemplating that either the consumption should be stopped or drastically reduced.
Stages of Change Model

Stages of Change Model
Stage 3: Preparation: Based on his/ her contemplation in the second stage now the individual makes
preparation to make the necessary health change. They will decide that from the day they will practice the
required health related behaviour. They might also take some action in the direction of achieving the health
related behaviour. For example, they may inform friends about their decision and that they should not tempt
him/ her with the junk food or soft drinks henceforward.
Stage 4: Action: Her the individual will actually change the behaviour. They will take necessary action in this
direction. For example, they will stop buying junk food and soft drinks or whenever hungry, will go for
alternative healthy options.
Stage 5: Maintenance: Once the health behaviour is adopted, it is really important to maintain the same and
that can also be difficult. here the individual with work toads maintaining the health related behaviour. For
example, the individual will maintain the behaviour of not consuming junk food or soft drinks.

• Chronic illnesses obviously have a major negative impact on the individuals’, their health, their activities and even their close
family and friends. Most often than not, individuals suffering from any of the chronic illnesses will have a theory with regard to
how they developed this illness, which could be some injury, stress, bacteria or even God’s will.
• The impact of chronic illness affects all facets of an individual’s life including their day to day activities, family life, work and
leisure activities etc. There could also be side effects of the medication and frequent trips to the doctor and financial implications.
The person may also go though the coping process and may or may not accept the situation that he/ she is going through.
• Certain chronic illness like HIV/ AIDS also have stigma attached to them and individuals suffering from such illness may also
be stigmatised and may not received required treatment. Individuals suffering from chronic illnesses and their family members
may requires suitable counselling or psychotherapy. Interventions can also be designed for such individuals and their family
members.
• Social psychology can also be applied to prevention of illness and promotion of healthy behaviour besides on the relationship
between the patient and practitioner whether psychologist, psychiatrist or a medical doctor. It can also play a major role in
dealing with certain misconc
• Social psychology can also in greater way contribute to evaluation and improvement of health care system in a particular
society.
Perspective of Social Psychology on
Chronic Illness

• Industrial and Organisational psychology is a branch of psychology that mainly includes
systematic and scientific study of human behaviour at workplace.
• It is application of theories and principles of psychology to an organisational set up. Industrial
psychology may focus to a greater extent on the individual at workplace, where as the
organisational psychology focuses on the structure of and processes in organisations and also
the interactions amongst the employees.
• These are two important terms that determine the productivity and performance of an employee.
• Motivation can be categorised into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic
motivation is one where the individual internally feels that he needs to work in a particular
direction and extrinsic motivation is when an individual is driven to perform due to an external
source.
Application to Industrial and
Organisational Psychology

• In an organisational set up, individuals are necessarily interdependent and have to work in tandem with each other despite of
their differences.
• In this context how others are perceived by the individuals is significant. Fiske (1993) defined social perception as “ the
process of selecting and interpreting information about how we view others and ourselves”
• Others are most often perceived in a subjective manner and in this there could be a number of perceptual biases.
• Perceptual biases can be described as errors that interfere with the process of perception.
• Two significant perceptual biases that are discussed in this regard are:
- Selective perception: We are normally exposed to a large amount of information and it is not possible to absorb all this
information. Thus only certain information that mainly catches our attention is taken by us. In a crowd of people, therefore, we
may easily notice clown due to its distinctive costume and behaviour. Selective perception is extremely important in an
organisational set up as from selection to performance appraisal, there could occur perceptual biases that can be traced to
selective perception. In this context the schemas and heuristics that we discussed in social cognition (chapter 4) are relevant.
- Halo effect: In this generalisations are made about an individual based on a single piece of information. For example, an
employee who is punctual will be seen by the superior as being particular about work and honest and an employee is clumsy
with arrangement on his/ her may be seen as ineffective. This may not be a reality though and thus perceptual bias can take
place. Halo effect can also be as a result of “similar to me effect”, where a manager will have a favourable perceptions about
an employee because he/ she perceives the employees as being similar to him/ her.
Social Perception in Organisational Setup

• Most often we also want to know why certain individuals behave or perform the way they behave. The
process in which causes are assigned to such behaviours can be described as attribution process
• In this context a covariance model was suggested by Kelly in 1973 ( Coutts and Gruman, 2012). In this model an
individuals behaviour is attributed two either something that is internal (under control of the individual) or something
external (due to factors not under control of the individual).
• Further, while making these attributions and deciding whether they are due to internal or external factors there are three
different types of information that are considered.
- Distinctiveness: Whether the behaviour is distinctive or not? Is is common to many situations or not. If it is
common then distinctiveness is low and if it is not common distinctiveness is high.
- Consensus: Do others behave in this manner as well or not? If yes then consensus if high and if no then consensus
is low.
- Consistency: This has to dow with behaviour over the period of time. Whether the person behaves the same way in
such situations in other times as well or not. If yes then the consistency is high and if no then the consistency is low.
• Based on the above if an individual display high distinctiveness and consensus but low consistency we could attribute
his/ her behaviour to external causes and in case if the individual displayed low distinctiveness and consensus but high
consistency then his/ her behaviour will be attributed to internal causes.
Social Perception in Organisational Setup Cont…

Conflicts could often occur when individuals are working together. Such conflicts could not only affect the
productivity of the individuals but will hamper the overall production and profitability of an organization. Conflicts could be at
workers level or even at highest levels of management. Either ways it if necessary to understand them so as to deal with them
effectively.
There are number of causes of conflict at work place, they are discussed as follows:
- Organisational causes: These are related to the structure and process in an organization. These include, competition with
regard to resources, power disparities, lack of clarity in roles, responsibilities and even jurisdiction, work interdependence and
reward systems that are increasingly competitive in nature (Baron and Byrne, 1995).
- Interpersonal factors: There are also certain interpersonal factors or causes related to lack of adequate communications,
attributions that are faulty, stereotypes and negative attitudes, feelings of resentment and inequality and having grievances
(Baron and Byrne, 1995). What we studied in the chapter 6 on interpersonal relationship finds its application here.
As is obvious, conflicts can have grave impact on the functioning of the organization. Differences in opinions are in a way
necessary to promote creativity and effective problem solving in an organization. Therefore necessary steps need to be taken to
promote constructive arguments and criticism but avoid conflicts.
1. Bargaining
2. Superordinate goals
3. Incompatibility response strategy
Conflict at Workplace

Application of Social Psychology Topics to Organisational Setup
Social Psychology topic Application to organisational set up
Social Cognition and Social
perception
Can be used to understand the thinking pattern of the employees as well see how they
perceive each other. Could have its application from selection to performance appraisal
Interpersonal relationship How employees relate to each other in organisational set up. This is also important as in an
organisational set up employees may also develop friendship or even close relationship.
Attitudes It is very important to focus on employee attitude towards the organization, its structure and
process and towards the people working in it. Attitude towards technology and use of safety
devices etc. can also be important
Social influence Since employees are working in group, definitely their behaviours are influence by each
other.
Group dynamics Group dynamics can help understand the behaviour of the employees in groups and teams.

• Application to teams
Teams can be described as a group of people with a common goal, though they are more matured when
compared to a group and also have a higher degree of interdependence especially when compared to a group.
Team can be described as a small group of people having skills that are complementary in nature and this group
of people have common goals, purpose and strategy and for which they can be held accountable as a team.
(Moorhead and Griffin, 2010).
There are four main features of team cohesion as described by Carron et al (1997), they are multidimensional,
dynamic, affective and instrumental.
- Multidimensional means that the cohesion is a complex factor and is as a result of various factors and not
single factor.
- Dynamic denotes that cohesion can change or fluctuate over a period of time despite being comparatively
stable.
- Affectivity, as the name suggests, is related to the team members or the sportspersons emotional state.
- Instrumental mainly deals with the goals and objectives of the team towards which the team works.
Application to Sports

Application to Sports Cont…
Self efficacy and collective efficacy of the team member: Yet another aspect in the teams that a social
psychologist might to work on is the self efficacy and collective efficacy. Self efficacy can be described as “a
belief that one can perform adequately in a particular situation (Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2006, pg 480). On the other
hand the collective efficacy has been defined as Bandura in 1997 (Sullivan, Feltz and Dithurbide, 2012 pg 122) as
“ a group’s shared belief in its ability to organise and execute the course of action required to obtain a certain
outcome”. Both these terms are relevant in this context.
Burton in 1989 (Sullivan, Feltz and Dithurbide, 2012 pg 128) stated different types of goal orientations, they are
discussed as follows:
– Outcome goals: The focus here is on the outcome, that is whether the team won or lost. The contribution of the
team members or how they played, whether their did their best or did not play that well does not matter. What
is important is the outcome of the game.
– Performance goals: In this case the performance is more important than the outcome. The focus is on the team
players own performance and achievement of success is also based on comparison with self.
– Process goals: These goals focus on skills that are performed during the game.

• Leadership in sports can be viewed in two ways, one is the captain of the team who acts as the leader. Besides
there is
also the coach who also in a way plays role of a leader guiding the team towards achieving its goals.
• Leadership can be defined as “the process through which one member of a group (its leader) influences other
group members toward the attainment of specific group goal” (Yukl, 1989).
• Leadership styles can be autocratic, democratic or laissez faire.
- In autocratic leadership, all the control is vested with the leader and all the decisions are taken by him/ her
without entertaining any opinions from the group or team member.
In democratic leadership, the leader encourages exchange of ideas amongst the team members and promotes their
participation. members thus get to play a significant role in decision making.
Application to Leadership

Application to Leadership
In laissez faire leadership, the leader is not as such involved and is almost absent.
Stogdill in 1974 stated that certain traits like ability to adapt, self confidence, persistence, intelligence, creativity
can play a role in determining success.
Effective communication and reinforcement besides clear instruction are also significant (Crust and Lawrence,
2006).
Thus theories with reference to leadership as discussed in social psychology can be applied in order to enhance
the leadership in sports team.
In teams leader also plays a significant role in calcifying the roles that each member has to play besides Role can
be described as set of behaviours that person is expected to display when in social situations. So a goal keeper
in a football team is expected to avoid a goal from the opposite team.
Besides role clarity, the team members need to displays both role acceptance and role performance.
Role acceptance the the extent to which the person playing the role agrees to adhere with the depends of the role
and role performance can be described as completion of the responsibilities of that role by the member
(Sullivan, Feltz and Dithurbide, 2012).

In the context of team, effective team communication has been defined by Sullivan and Gee (2007) as “interactions
between teammates that result in enhanced team attributes and/or functioning”. In a study carried out by them
satisfaction experiences by the athletes was positively correlated with effective communication.
Hanin in 1992 (Sullivan, Feltz and Dithurbide, 2012) stated four styles of communication, discussed as follows:
- Orientation messages: messages with regard to strategies related to planning. Team members always discuss
strategies and techniques they would be using before the game. Planning is also essential component of team work.
- Stimulation messages: Messages that are used to reinforce and motivate the members. Leaders in teams often use
such messages to encourage team member from performing to their best. This are mainly used during the
performance.
- Evaluation messages: These are related to evaluation or assessment of the members performance related to their
effort, ability and overall performance. These are used after the performance when the team members are given
feedback with regard to their performance. `
- Task irrelevant messages: Any communication that does not fall under the above three categories are terms as task
irrelevant messages.
• Besides verbal communications, there are also non verbal communications.
Application to Communication

• Social-clinical interface’, which is used mainly to bridge the gap that exists between basic social
psychological research and clinical practices (Tashiro and Motensen, 2006).
• Though bridging of this gap initially met with dead end as it was though that there is no connection what
sos even between social psychology and the area of mental health.
• Goldstein, heller and Sechrest (1966) stated that no such thing as social psychology of psychotherapy
existed and Strong (1987) also indicated that not a single innovation in psychotherapy was as a result of
contribution from social psychology.
• According to Hart, Ledgerwood and Ianni (2012, pg 87) social clinical interface comprises of attempts to
comprehension, diagnoses and modification of some of the psychological problems and issues including
jealousy, anger, shame, guilt, embarrassment, regret, and remorse. Social psychology theories related to
self, attribution theories, expectancy theories and so on can be adequately applied to understand and
resolve most of these issues.
• In the present chapter the application of social psychology to these to ver important fields will be
discussed in terms of the following three categories:
Application to Clinical and Counselling
Psychology

The application of social psychology to these to very important fields
will be discussed in terms of the following three categories:
1. Social psychology and origin of psychological problems and
disorders
2. Diagnosis
3. Treatment of psychological disorder
Application to Social Psychology

• The application of social psychology to education mainly focuses the behaviour in an educational setup that can be
termed as
a system in itself.
• Social psychology can also be applied in an educational setup in order deal with specific problems and issues and in order
to improve educational output.
• Distance education is one such educational technique that emerged as a response to socio economic needs.
• The main aim of any educational system is to provide instructions for development of skills, strive to built a cultivated
society, to promote learning and convey the secular point of view of individuals.
• Any educational system whether conventional (that is, face to face or distance mode) have to work towards achieving the
above aim. However, there are additional socio- economic needs mainly in developing countries like India that need to be
achieved and it may not be possible to do so with conventional mode of education. These needs are as follows:
- Need for educational system with flexible arrangements so that individuals can earn and educate themselves at the same
time.
- Need for specialised programmes and courses for employed individuals
- Need for certification without necessity of following the formalities of conventional education system.
Application to Education

Application to Education
Further there are other challenges like,
- Proving education to large numbers of students who have diverse educational needs.
-Need for innovation in educational system.
In this context the Open Distance Learning plays an important role in fulfilling the needs by providing
courses in flexible form and providing courses for employed individuals that help them function in the
society in a better way.
The main concepts of distance education are
1. Learner autonomy or independence
2. Indirect education where there is flexibility
3. Education in actual or real set up.

• The overall relationship between psychology and law is comparatively not
much researched, certain studies have been carried out on topics like perception of eyewitness’s
and his/her testimony (Fisher, 1982).
• Tapp in 1973 identified three main areas of interaction between psychology and law, they are, the
process of legal socialization in a particular community or society, the judicial processes in court
of law and the criminal justice process (Fisher, 1982).
• Social psychology can be applied in a legal set up to study the behaviours of the judge, lawyers,
defendants, eyewitness and accused themselves.
• It can also focus on aspects like arrest, interrogation and prosecution (Fisher, 1982).
• They can greatly contribute to changes and modifications of legal and judicial procedures.
• It can thus be used to improve the overall legal system.
• Further, social psychology can also be applied to build and evaluated programmes and
interventions for preventing crime and ways of rehabilitating offenders.
Application to Law

Environmental psychology can be described as a study of relationship between behaviour and the
environment (natural or created by human beings).Various environmental issues that we come across like
garbage management, pollution, crowding or even sense of alienation (even though surrounded by numerous
people) can be termed as social issues.
As Kurt Levin has suggested B=f (P, E), that is behaviour is a function of both the person or an individual and
environment. Though initially Lewin meant psychological environment by ‘E’ but as he moved towards
social psychology, he broadened the concept to an environment as perceived by the individual or his/ her
subjective perception of the environment (Fisher, 1982).
Social psychology can be applied to the field on environmental psychology in following ways:
1. Our environmental perceptions can have an influence our attitude. This can be of great interest of social
psychologists as they can not only understand how attitude develops but also work towards how to modify
and change individuals’ attitude.
2. The theories and principles of social psychology can be used to deal with certain environmental issues like
pollution (both air and noise), garbage and overall deterioration of environment.
3. Social psychologists can study the interactions amongst individuals based on the personal space.
Application to Environmental Psychology

• Consumer psychology can be defined as a branch of psychology that studies the
behaviour of individuals in terms of reasons and influences on the bases of which they buy
or do buy products.
• Consumer psychology as a field initially started with mainly studies on advertising and
sales of products.
• Consumer behaviour can in a way be termed as social behaviour and thus numerous
developments in the fields of consumer psychology can be attributed to the theories and
models of social psychology (Fisher, 1982).
• Various aspects like attitude, expectations, behaviours, decision making, influences,
communication and so on need to be examined to understand the consumer behaviours of
individuals (Fisher, 1982).
• Further, in this context we also need to focus on the economical aspect of the consumers
that can determine their behaviour.
Application to Consumer Psychology

Chapter 14 Application of Social Psychology

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Chapter 14 Application of Social Psychology