Concepts in Social Psychology

Social psychology is a complex field that expands rapidly. With only the unifying concept of social interaction, social psychology occupies a no-man's land somewhere between psychology, sociology, physiology, and evolutionary theory in the uncultivated areas of the social sciences (Harold, 2000). Social psychologists relate to questions concerning attitudes, beliefs, conformity, independence and behavior involving individuals. There are an unlimited amount of concepts created by social psychologists that help determine an individual's inner self. There is not one individual who behaves in the same manner as another. Social psychology allows us to learn in detail the different concepts that all individual's face on a daily basis.

Negativity bias refers to the fact that we show greater sensitivity to negative information than to positive information (Baron, Branscombe, & Byrne, 2009). A real life example of negativity bias involves an experience my boyfriend and I had shopping online. My boyfriend, Rob, has been searching online for a new vacuum for us to buy his parents for their anniversary and when he found a good candidate he emailed me the link. I opened the link and noticed that it was a very highly rated vacuum, and then I read some reviews. Out of 238 reviews, only 32 were rated with 1 star with the majority being rated at a 4 or 5 stars. Later that night, Rob asked me if I liked the vacuum. "I really didn't like it that much. Almost half of the reviews talked about the vacuum not working correctly out of the box. And everybody complained about the cord being tangled. Let's keep looking." Instead of noticing the high number of positive reviews, I focused on a few negative ones and blew them out of proportion by claiming that "half" of the reviews were negative and everybody complained." We never kept looking and Rob bought the vacuum before I could find something better. I must say that the vacuum we chose works wonderfully.