An Intro to Social Psychology

An Intro to Social Psychology

When people ask what I do for work, I often introduce myself as a social psychologist. I say this because if I say I’m a psychologist, they immediately assuming clinical and therefore therapy. I am in no way equipped to deal with that. I started using social psychologist to differentiate, and quickly learned two things.
Firstly, no one knows what that means. Secondly, it’s a great conversation opener to explore what I actually do within my work. So I decided to write it down for anyone who wants to understand more about the theory and background behind the work I do, and why social psychology influences all of us and every organisation we’re part of.

The “official” definition of social psychology is “the study of how an individual’s thoughts feelings and actions are affected by the actual, imagined, or symbolically represented presence of other people” (APA Dictionary, 2018). But what does that mean?

More simply put, social psychology considers how we, as individuals, are influenced by others. Since none of us lives inside a vacuum, we are all influenced by others. This impacts our thoughts, our emotional responses, our behaviours, our choices in life and so on. What is really interesting though, is what the “others” part means. Go back to the definition – it is not just actual presence of other people. It’s also the imagined or symbolically presented other people. This means we are not just influenced by the real tangible people in our lives, like our loved ones, friends, colleagues and so on. We are also influenced by “other” in the greater sense of the word, as in, anyone who is not us.

The Imagined and Symbolic Other

The “imagined” other shows up for us as our perception of other people. This is largely based on assumptions and stereotypes about what other people do or think, and most importantly in this context, what we perceive they think about us. More often than not, our behaviours or feelings are in response to our perception of the other persons thoughts. We rarely pause to validate them as true.

The “symbolic” other can be most easily understood as society. Society is the aggregated representation of a group of people. Its represents values, beliefs, behaviours and many other things that we, as individuals, compare ourselves against, and this then informs our sense of self.

This is important for me working in the DEI space and in my coaching, as we start to understand how other people and the society we live in is shaping our beliefs, thoughts, values and behaviours.
Recognising which external influences are supporting us as individuals and what may be limiting us is key in supporting our development, and in ensuring organisations create cultures that foster belonging and inclusion.

What does this mean for you as an individual? I encourage you to take a moment to think of times, in your work or personal life, you have been heavily impacted by the “other”. This might be a person you spent time with, or it might be something you saw on social media, or it might be a new trend or norm that we’ve adopted as society.
How is that moment influencing you? What was your response in the moment? What lesson have you internalised from that experience? Taking the time to reflecting on how we are affected by others gives us better autonomy in choosing how we respond to the world, in a way that is true and authentic to us, the individual.

Let me know any thoughts or questions around this!

we are not just influenced by the real tangible people in our lives, like our loved ones, friends, colleagues and so on. We are also influenced by “other” in the greater sense of the word, as in, anyone who is not us.

Hilary Davies